Legion holds national credentialing roundtable

More than 50 employers and others received updates on credentialing practices during a national roundtable hosted by The American Legion Feb. 23 during its 57th annual Washington Conference.

“We’re looking at how we facilitate military people transitioning to civilian employment and ways in which we can more effectively and efficiently do that,” said Roy Swift, executive director of WorkCred. “And also more effectively identify the competencies that military people bring.”

The roundtable event coincided with a release of the Legion’s report, “The State of Credentialing of Service Members and Veterans: Challenges, Successes and Opportunities,” funded by a grant from Military.com and prepared by SOLID, LLC. It noted the growing awareness among U.S. lawmakers of the need to provide troops with civilian licenses and certifications required for employment, according to a Military.com article.

The Legion’s report, the article noted, identified eight opportunities for action that can help soldiers succeed in civilian life:

• Improve the Post-9/11 GI Bill Licensing and Certification Benefit (to pro-rate the amount charged to the cost of the exam);

• Ensure quality of certification programs;

• Ensure quality of the nontraditional credential preparation programs;

• Better identify labor market demand for credentials;

• Track credential attainment outcomes;

• Reduce state licensure barriers;

• Develop best practices for credentialing servicemembers and veterans; and

• Ensure military and veteran interests are represented in civilian workforce credentialing initiatives.

“There’s a need to further identify the labor market demand for credentials and frankly, the competencies,” Swift said. “The report indicates that there’s still work to be done on the civilian side of the workforce system, as well as the military side of the system.”

Maj. Gen. Hugh Van Roosen, deputy G-1 at the U.S. Department of the Army, said the Army could do more to help soldiers be employable. The Army is already doing credentialing in its medical fields, but there’s a lot of areas, particularly in the IT field, that the Army doesn’t do anything like that and there’s not any particularly good reason for it, reported Military.com.

“What we’ve found is that our efforts are very stovepiped and we have way too many of them,” Van Roosen said as he gave opening remarks during the roundtable event at the Washington Hilton Hotel in Washington, D.C. “We’re always struggling with hours in the training day. However, we have to balance that against whatever we can do to ensure a solider who’s leaving has a soft a landing as possible.”

Van Roosen noted that only a small fraction of troops, roughly 15 percent, retire from the military after 20 years of service. The vast majority of soldiers leave around the five-year mark, which translates into 135,000 soldiers transitioning out every year. In addition, about 60 percent of soldiers who leave active duty return to their home state while 20 percent relocate to another state and another 20 percent actually stay near the base where they last served, according to Military.com. “We’re only touching a small percentage,” he said. “That’s not enough. We need to go where the soldiers are going.”

The event also featured presentations on Department of Defense credentialing update, finding information about credentials, building communication bridges between the military, higher education and business communities, the relationship between military occupation and civilian labor force outcomes, credentialing innovation initiatives and the veteran economic landscape.

“It is our enlisted population that is separating from the military, or have separated from the military that do not have a degree or positive credential, that makes up the bulk of transitioning servicemembers and the bulk of our veteran workforce,” said Rosye Cloud, senior adviser for veteran employment at the Department of Veterans Affairs. “That is a key demographic that we tend to focus on. The good news story that we found is that by and large … the trends in education for women where they are participating in educational programs is … they’re graduating at a higher rate and we’re seeing less of a pay gap between veteran women and non-veteran men in the general population, which we think is a testament to not only the values and the trainings they (received) through service, but also the type of character of our men and women who serve.”

Lisa Lutz, president of SOLID, LLC, who has worked with The American Legion for more than 20 years, said the organization takes a lead role when it comes to continued devotion to fellow servicemembers and veterans. She hopes the Legion’s next roundtable event in June will set the stage for more opportunities, specifically about how servicemembers and veterans can readily obtain the credentials they need and demonstrate what competencies they have to offer for civilian employers.

“This meeting, just engaging that variety of stakeholders, has been really instrumental in that regard,” Lutz said. “As you listen to the people around the table talk and just watch their reactions, you can see the light bulbs going off and sort of connecting the dots.”

With the diverse array of stakeholders in the field of licensing and credentialing, John Kamin, assistant director of the Legion’s Veterans Employment and Education Division, said the Legion has a unique role to fulfill for the nation’s servicemembers as a convening authority. By welcoming leaders from the fields of academia, industry, military and government, the organization can continue to ensure that credentialing best practices are reviewed and disseminated across multiple sectors, he said.

“We have a very technologically advanced military,” said National Commander Charles E. Schmidt. “The skills that make people great soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines should carry over well in civilian society if we can remove the bureaucratic hurdles presented by unreasonable credentialing requirements.”