Personnel policies are decades old and no longer fit for purpose. We have seen these issues firsthand in militaries around the world. The militaries in Britain, France, and Belgium already include noncitizens among their ranks. The Dutch military has considered filling troop shortfalls with soldiers from other countries that have ties to the Netherlands, including South Africa.The British military has contracted in size for the past nine years, with the Army falling 7,000 troops short of its target of 82,000.
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The German military recently opened a new cyber defense facility, but it has struggled to reach full staffing levels.The Royal Canadian Air Force did not meet its North American Air Defense Command and NATO requirements in 2019 because of a shortfall of both pilots and maintenance personnel.The US Army missed its recruiting target in 2018-despite spending tens of millions of dollars on a marketing campaign-as did militaries in Denmark and Australia.In the aggregate, all of these factors are significantly eroding militaries’ ability to recruit, and the resulting skills gaps are putting military readiness at risk. In the war for talent, they are outgunned and-perhaps predictably-they’re losing. They don’t have a clear sense of what skills they will need in the future, or when, and they’re unable to measure the effectiveness of any individual initiative. In contrast, many militaries still have immature HR functions in areas such as strategic workforce planning, workforce analytics, and tailoring the employee value proposition to the needs of the market. In fact, because companies recognize that any shortage of this kind of talent is a limiting factor on their growth, many are taking ambitious measures to transform their employee value proposition and approach to talent management. The labor market has become far more competitive, with basic laws of supply and demand leading to higher salaries and more attractive offers from private-sector employers for people with high-demand skills, including pilots, engineers, and data scientists.
These new technologies also require that militaries work in new ways, with more agile training cycles, more specialized activities, more collaboration with a wider range of stakeholders, and, most important, a greater reliance on data and information technologies.īut perhaps the biggest challenge is that militaries must contend for talent with private employers that are-not coincidentally-vying for an insufficient pool of workers with the same critical skills. Technology continues to advance at an accelerating rate, with all functions increasingly dependent on advanced data analytics, digital engineering, artificial intelligence, and related fields. For example, they have different expectations regarding a work-life balance, and in many cases, they want to start companies rather than work for one.Ī bigger factor is that military operations have become increasingly complex, as forces operate in new domains such as space and cyber. And younger people have far different standards and expectations for their career than people in previous generations.
Aging populations in many developed countries have led to a net outflow from the military and a smaller pool of younger people from which to recruit. Demographic shifts are one contributing factor. People are the decisive advantage for any military, yet most armed forces are experiencing a large and growing talent gap, which has become acute in the past few years and is almost certain to get worse. This is a significant undertaking, but it’s essential to ensure that forces have the skills they need in order to meet future mission requirements. In addition to implementing reforms, a ministry needs foundational capabilities including strategic workforce planning, workforce analytics, and project management to optimize outcomes. Specifically, we believe that flexible career paths, an agile organization, and customized training have the potential to deliver a significant ROI. We surveyed and benchmarked military and commercial HR practices across the globe to identify the most promising reforms-most already in use in the private sector-that militaries can apply.
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