As the United States sees the Baby Boomer generation leave the workplace and enter the relaxing green fields of retirement, the country is also seeing the rise of new problems and questions about the modern workplace. One of the more pressing questions that any reader has probably heard or read from the news concerns talent management. Specifically: how do companies attract and retain their talent? It’s a broad question that could touch on a hundred different topics as wide ranging as remote work to 401k offerings. But recently, the Department of Defense has started to grapple with a different angle of talent management that we may not hear as much about from the news: the need to prepare talent with the skills required to run our nation’s technical services. After all, questions about working from home or Gen Z cell phone use in the office are important, but only if there are actual people working at your company to answer those questions.
A recent commentary article by Karen DePonte Thornton in Defense News laid out the bones of the problem that the Department of Defense faces. Especially in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, workforce attrition rates among DoD civilians are rising steeply. Combined with the fact that significant portions of the Federal civilian workforce are retirement-eligible (for example, 17% of the acquisition workforce were eligible in fiscal year 2021 and another 27% will be over the following ten years), there is a real concern that these positions will be unable to refill their ranks with qualified talent. If that happens, our military could lose support for its supply and management chains, critical components of modern warfare.
With the current generational shifts and an economy very much in flux, there are no immediately clear answers to this talent problem. However, Thornton makes it clear in her article that solutions can be found if the Department of Defense increases its ability to train and produce its own workforce of the future. Educational pipelines with local universities and internship opportunities with leading industry are ways that future workers can be taught, and they also supply the DoD with recruitable talent that are trained to the needs of the jobs. But to create these talent pipelines, the DoD will need to lean heavily on local partnerships and programs.
This is where communities like Beaufort shine. With nearby military installations and exceptional educational infrastructure such as USC Beaufort and the Technical College of the Lowcountry, Beaufort County is well positioned to facilitate exactly the kinds of on-the-job educational experiences and industry training that the Department of Defense needs, especially for servicemembers transitioning from active-duty assignments. It’s also very positive that local organizations like the South Coast Cyber Center are taking the lead to facilitate joint military-educational-industry programs to establish the hybrid partnerships that will create future talent the DoD will depend on.
As the Department of Defense looks for its talent of the future, Beaufort can be confident in its ability to leverage its unique abilities as a deeply interconnected civilian/military community focused on delivering the workforce of tomorrow.
