Retention Is Also about the Family

The U.S. Coast Guard recently has taken a number of actions in response to the findings of the RAND study on improving diversity in the service.¹ These steps should provide more options for women in the Coast Guard and lead to improved retention; however, more must be done to maintain the momentum. The service must go beyond the servicemember and focus on the military spouse.

The RAND study notes that “[f]requent transfers and remote locations can limit a civilian spouse’s career.” A Coast Guard family experiences a move an average of every two to four years. While personnel transfers provide useful benefits to the service—allowing it to adjust force structures, promote the acquisition of new skills, and standardize processes across the nation—it wreaks havoc on spouses by disrupting support networks, college studies, and careers. 

According to a recent article in The Atlantic, “All this moving around can lead to gaps and inconsistencies on a resume and can scream to hiring managers, ‘This person could have to relocate at any second,’ which might discourage companies from bringing military spouses on board.” The article also cites a Blue Star Families survey that found “military spouse employment was second only to time away from family” as the top military family concern.³ Another finding indicated military spouses earned “far less than their civilian counterparts.” Only 47 percent of military spouse respondents reported employment, and of those, 51 percent earned less than $20,000 in 2016, a year in which the median income of all working women across the United States was $30,246.

Until relatively recently, military spouses predominantly were women. This is changing as more women join the Coast Guard and with the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” but regardless of gender, all spouses find their careers take a backseat. Just as they begin to establish themselves and progress with an employer, they must sever those relationships and start anew. In comparison to other armed services, Coast Guard spouses generally do not have the same level of community support services or easy access to Department of Defense spousal employment programs at most Coast Guard duty locations. 

The combination of a spouse struggling to progress in a civilian career and a servicemember who must transfer for “the needs of the service” can cause the most promising Coast Guardsman to leave—especially if the service does not consider these stressors or attempt to invest in solutions.

To improve retention, the Coast Guard must factor the military spouse prominently in the equation. Two possible ways forward are:

 • In the near term, establish a program to locate and facilitate meaningful employment for military spouses during each move. To this end, assignment officers not only would coordinate the servicemember’s career, but also would strive to limit the negative impact on the spouse’s career. Contracted civilian job locator services could advise assignment officers on the availability of equitable career options for a spouse at a prospective duty location and then facilitate employment for the spouse upon his or her arrival. 

 • In the long term, establish a career path for servicemembers who are unable to move without significant disruption to their spouses’ careers. This nontraditional solution would establish a restricted line officer career path for members who have spouses with immobile careers. These servicemembers would be able to complete 20 years of service, but without the opportunity for command and senior enlisted or flag officer rank. They would remain at one location and become subject matter/technical experts, providing continued value to the service and nation. The trade-offs and benefits for both the Coast Guard and the servicemember are obvious: The servicemember gains stability for his or her family in exchange for a promotion ceiling, and the Coast Guard gets to retain a talented servicemember in exchange for sacrificing the traditional benefits of transferring personnel. 

Establishing this restricted line officer/petty officer career path would fundamentally change the advancement/promotion and assignment processes for the entire Coast Guard. To begin, the service would need to commission a detailed study to determine the appropriate balance of restricted and unrestricted officers in each operational and highly specialized career path, recategorize a number of positions for restricted line officers/petty officers, and establish parallel promotion schemes. Then implementing a change of this magnitude would be difficult, and likely met with resistance by those afraid of the potential negative effects on the service’s workforce and culture. Those fears are valid, but we also must acknowledge a growing body of evidence—our own study included—that family stability is a high priority that often conflicts with a 20th-century force management process. 

We cannot continue to manage our people with 20th century methods. We must leverage the knowledge and opportunities generated by our own study and continue to modernize our approach to fit the 21st-century military family.