Strategies for managing diversity in the U.S. military

Military Diversity

Diversity in the Armed forces

For over three decades, military diversity has been a very complex topic within the defense units or national security departments for many nations. This arises when it comes to matters of conceptual and practical leadership, as well as the managerial implications. It represents one of the most essential, but challenging topics for the human resource management departments that leaders within the armed forces have been facing for over three to four decades. One of the greatest diversity challenges for the traditional military has been within the fields of development, employment, and recruitment, with regards to keeping their institutional norms, attitudes, beliefs, and values. This scenario has caused a continuous revision of the human resource policies, philosophies, practices and programs conducted by the armed forces. As a result, many researchers on the military activities recommend that the armed forces should be a reflection of the entire nation (Andrew, 2013), virtually involving or representing every possible religious and ethnic groups. This paper brings together all the possible evidences of progress in order to assist in understanding the strategies for managing diversity within the armed forces.

In all its guises and forms, diversity has been a topic of contemporary concern through debates, besides its influence on transformation and change as it poses a challenge on the government, institutions of liberal deliberations, as well as employers. To a common understanding, diversity is about differences, perceived or real, among diverse groups, coming along with the consequences of belonging to a certain group, especially with respect to social, political or economic contexts. The diversity of contemporary importance encompasses those of gender, sexual orientations, age, disability status, race, family status, ethnic origin or nationality, and religion (Military Leadership Diversity Commission, 2009). These differences are virtually important to the workplace in relations to leadership and managerial capabilities, work ethic and habits, and intellectual orientations. Elaborately, all of the listed aspects can only be achievable and developed through training, education, experience and various forms of socialization.

In the United States, military encompasses a team of both women and men from every region within the states, working together with a single goal: to protect the United States and fight for its freedom. Currently, the U.S. military service members comprise a team with exceptional traits and identity, and each service member is only judged by their performance; not by color, race, religion or gender as it used to be in the traditional military institutions. If the whole of the American society was to act like the military in this regard, the entire United States could be a better place than before (Trevor & Ernes, 1998). Nevertheless, there exist traces of diversity problems that still remain unresolved. Thereby, the military leadership emphasizes hierarchy, discipline, and prioritization of every group through individuals, and utilizes symbols and rituals in order to convey imperative meanings and transitions. Moreover, the military laws require that the commanding officers together with those in authority should demonstrate honor, virtue, subordination, and patriotism in all aspects of their daily lives and everything they do.

Top Leadership Commitment to Military Diversity

For over the past five decades, the U.S. military has been struggling to increase the military opportunities to a maximum number for all Americans through its leadership in effective forces and diverse recruitments. A number of recent military reports reveal the military leadership realization of the need for increasing the number of young individuals, as well as females who can qualify for the military services. As a result, they also realized the need for not only continued efforts for making improvements in all the military branches, but also leadership partnerships with other sectors from all over the American society. In order to grip the perceived changes and continue along the positive path of diversity and inclusion, the leadership within the Armed Forces must take action towards eliminating both unconscious and conscious racism from the military. This will promote the positive diversity and inclusion as described within the DoD's strategic plan for diversity and inclusion, as well as within the full recommendations by the military leadership diversity commission.

The military leadership has put forth the strategies to support an evidence-based public investment that majorly addresses children, including the improvement of the quality of early childhood education, as well as obesity prevention and other dietetic measures. This strategy would help in bringing up youths with strength and potential, making them qualify for the military recruitments. As individuals from different races, the military leadership is difficult, but critical discussions about race can help boost their understanding on advanced racial healing, as well as unconscious bias, thereby putting racism beneath the military operations hence eradicating its influences (Military Leadership Diversity Commission, 2009).

A commission created to promote diversity, and total inclusion among the military leadership, issued a set of twenty recommendations as eighteen-month research finding on 8th March, 2011. This commission believes that these recommendations will positively impact on a better military reflection of the hierarchical composition and representation of every group within the U.S. Armed Forces. Created by 2009 as part of the National Defense Authorization Act (Trevor & Ernes, 1998), the Military Leadership Diversity Commission issued its findings and recommendations on how the departments of defense can promote the representation of females, the youth, and diverse races within the military, during the times when the entire nation faces high expectations of becoming diverse.

The U.S. Armed Forces Reputation with regards to Diversity

Currently, the U.S. military is working hard to create an inclusive force that reflects ethnic and racial diversity of every population within the United States. Consequently, a congress chartered commission reported the achievement of the diversity goals within the lower ranks of military leadership hence the commission expects further improvements within the uppermost ranks of the military leadership. Moreover, the department of veterans' affairs (VA) through its commitments serves to foster a diverse workforce and work environment that is free from employment discrimination, and free from barriers to equal employment opportunities (EEO). The VA's ODI (Office Of Diversity and Inclusion) developed a guide of best practicesin recruitment and selection, thereby blocking the EEO's pitfalls in order to create a diverse workplace (Karen, 1994). The office found this achievable through the assistance of key stakeholders, managers, and supervisors who ensure there are no barriers to EEO within the military selection and recruitment process hence properly serving the nation's veterans.

The U.S. military veterans' affairs (VA) have a commitment to ensure EEO (equal employment opportunity) through the promotion of diversity and inclusion, as well as constructively resolving workforce conflicts in order uphold the high performance the military workforce, and in service to the nation's veterans.According to Charles (1988), the military departments vigorously involve in the enforcement of all applicable federal EEO regulations, laws, leadership directives, applicable policies, and executive orders in order to ensure equal military recruitment opportunities. In accordance to its stakeholders, the military leadership is committed to ensuring equal recruitment opportunities within the military departments (Henning, 1994). The departmental leadership thereby ensures the provision of equal opportunity in military recruitment for all qualified individuals. Moreover, they have the obligations allow the military information and programs accessible to every citizen so that all eligible individuals with talents to carry-out military missions can apply. The Armed Forces departments now prohibit discrimination against origin, race, age, gender, religion, color, sexual orientation (Robert, 2009), disability or parental/family status. The focal aim of this act is to establish an environment that is free from harassments and discriminations.

Despite the fact, the Navy and Air Force have generated large volumes of headlines about the much debated Pacific re-balance of the Pentagons; the Army currently takes a series of initiatives in order to advance its stand within the Pacific region. The Army leaders expanded their exercise with the allies, emphasized on the importance of military partnerships, and boosted military's foreign sales. This service introduced novel plans aligned regional units across the Army and established expertise within the Pacific, along with the U.S. Army operations in the rest of the world (Charles, 1988).

Improving the Military's Current Diversity Strategy:

Policies Procedures and Practices

The U.S. Armed Forces have a common diversity mission, which aims at developing and implementing strategies that contribute to performance readiness while sustaining and transforming the military the national leader in diversity. The diverse leaders will embrace the strength of diverse groups within an inclusive environment, manage and invest in talents through valuing every individual and developing soldiers and civilians who are culturally astute (Karen, 1994). This strategy will as well enhance the preparedness of the U.S. communities for global engagements and dimensional human leadership. These strategic goals will offer directives for the organizational, procedural, climate and structural changes in the Armies' pursuit of the world's leading diversity model (Military Leadership Diversity Commission, 2009).

With the increasing number of military members with disabilities and diversity in ages, the military can successfully serve total workforce, meet different needs, expectations and attitudes while valuing and understanding the potential influences and contributions of the diverse backgrounds toward the mission accomplishment. Charles (1988) affirms that in order to maintain the role of national security by the Armed Forces, the military leadership must keep on recruiting the top talents. This will enhance the position of the forces as an employer of choice, allowing its wide-spread reach into the communities within which the military has a less historical familiarity. As a result, the Armed Forces will remain competitive within the on-going battle of talents among the academic, government and corporate sectors. According to Henning (1994), high performance people make up high-performing organizations. Upon the recruitment of the American top talents, the military can understand the contribution of high performance by individuals who utilize their diverse talents, attributes and skills in leadership, as well as in driving their experiences and backgrounds. Through the integration of people's talents into making decisions and accomplishing missions, the military can then come up with a group of motivated personnel who can perform best within the workforce.

By paying much attention to the principles and practices of organizational diversity, the military creates a power appreciation from diverse contributions of the inspired service members. This appreciation contributes to personnel processes and systems for talent management hence leading to a climate of high performance through the enhancement of individual opportunities and capabilities (Henning, 1994). With regards to the education policies and training, the Armed Forces have strong incentives for diversity in education and training. Most of the service members are likely to face cultural challenges arising from conflict or multitudes of external mission from other sectors. The cultural understanding instigates at home hence the military's future demographics may lead to the use of new languages, as well as new cultural challenges among the leadership ranks. Karen (1994) elicits that by understanding their own culture, personal and interpersonal differences through education and training, soldiers will be capable of developing a proclivity for understanding others, either during their deployment missions or future generation recruitments.

Given that the augmenting number of females and black accessions to the combat arms are an essential strategy towards improving the senior ranks' diversity, the 2005 development report on CODA by Colonel Glover David of the U.S. Army Accessions Command recommended various policies, procedures and strategies towards diversity (Charles, 1988). One of the recommendations was to examine the order of merit list (OML) and its processes of commissioning in order to ratify its impacts on the branching process and officers' placement within the Pentagon. Additionally, he recommended the refinement of the existing model of officer branching, with an aim of providing a widespread quality and diversity across all departments. The Lieutenant Colonel Smith also recommended an accountability assessment, evaluation of the soldiers, soldiers' involvement in the recruitment process and mentoring of the service members (Andrew, 2013). Failure to implement the required procedures, policies and strategies, could lead to racial, gender, and regional imbalance within the military's diverse representations.

Types of Diversity and their Roles in the Military Culture

At least in parts, religion comprises the humans' responses towards divinity in all its variety and complexity. Different reports assert religion as a great source of power, strength, and/or confusion depending on the manner and context of its embracement by leaders, as well as their subordinates across the military services (Kaiser & Kosmin, 2008). As one of the principal underpinnings of human culture, religion serves the role of influencing human behaviors. In this context, the U.S. military forces in Afghanistan and Iraq have been witnesses to the robust power of religious adherence, allegiance, and beliefs in the national and local politics. Generally, the Americans highly regard themselves as religious people. The nation remained Christian dominated by 2009; hence both the federal and military leaders can benefit from the statistically valid information on the religious practices and identifications by the DoD personnel (Kaiser&Kosmin, 2008).

With respect to gender, just like men, every woman may long to be regarded as a soldier in every aspect of life, and establish a positive and healthy relationship with colleagues. At the macro-levels, it is evident that, for the past three decades, women have been playing an increasingly vital role within the Western armed forces. Andrew (2013) reveals that in the past, during the process of opening up the military services to women, the fundamental issue was on the identification of a woman's role within the forces. These traditional policies went under critical and subsequent revisions hence today the U.S. armed forces policy personnel replaced the traditional exclusion policy, through qualified inclusions, and finally to the contemporary open policies on total inclusion. The contemporary women in the armed forces, service in roles those are readily associated with distant or impersonal combat. These roles may include missile launch operations, aircrew specialties, and a range of billet duties on military ships.

With the increasing number of military members with disabilities and diversity in ages and minorities, the military can successfully serve total workforce, meet different needs, expectations and attitudes while valuing and understanding the potential influences and contributions of the diverse backgrounds toward the mission accomplishment. By 2009, the U.S. military was the world's most diverse service, with minorities making upto fifteen percent of its overall number of service members. However, a shift in racial/ethnic composition of the U.S. military was evident in the last decade as the number of African-Americans declined with that of Hispanics (including the Hispanic women). Through a complete inclusion of every U.S. citizen, without any disability, racial/ethnic, age, and religious discriminations, the department of defense asserts that the recruitment of the widest or largest possible pool of diverse talents is not only the right diversity strategy, but also a national security concern. This brings sense since a dedicated team of both women and men, dedicated to serving in the United States armed forces make up the backbone of the U.S. national security (Henning, 1994). Moreover, research conducted by the DoD commissions elicited that the recruitment of young people (from the age of 20) would allow for the military inclusion of strong, energetic, and visionary members.

Since 1995, gay men have been more visible within different workplaces and in daily lives of the Americans (Robert, 2009). Consequently, the public opinions about lesbians and gay men have been shifting from negative to positive. Different polls now prove that almost half of the American population now accepts the existence of lesbianism, gay and bisexuality hence approximately 80% of the population agrees that lesbians and gay individuals should share equal job opportunities as other people (Robert, 2009). Additionally, sexual orientation studies reveal that the disclosure of an individual's sexual orientation information would lead to better interpersonal relationships and trust while non-disclosure may interfere with people's individual health. Nonetheless, several health concerns express that the inclusion of gay men and lesbians within the military without any restrictions may tamper with the military's effectiveness and readiness through complicating the recruitments and retentions, eroding cohesion units, and posing much threats to the health of service members.

Military Leadership Standards and Diversity Management

The 2009 military leadership commission made recommendations that were to ensure the removal of any existing barriers to military services through the enhancement of career programs, cultural, and inclusive recruitment of eligible candidates. For further diversity promotion, the leadership should increase a broad-based pool of officer candidates and recruits. The pentagon statistics elicit that four out of five young Americans under the age bracket of 17 and 21 are not eligible to attain the military standards due to low education, criminal history, or due to unsatisfactory requirements of health and physical fitness (Andrew, 2013). The commission also recommends that the Pentagon should uplift its ban on female assignments to ground combat units beneath the brigade levels, stating that the policy may form a barrier to other women's attainment of the most senior military ranks.

As a competent military leader, in order to enhance the diversity initiatives, I would establish a diversity baseline that the organization to assess the progress of its services in the upcoming years. This would help boost the number of females and black male recruitment by the ROTC and assessment into the army through the use of CODA's recommendations. I would ensure the quality of officers through the quality education assurance. In the long-term, some of the strategies that would be applicable in this context would be the engagement of females; those with disabilities but eligible, and every individual from every race or ethnic group as a long-standing strategy towards boosting the number of females and minorities recruited by the source commissioners. This would oblige the commissioning sources to establish systems, which ensure that every person receives training which reflects the tools of evaluation useful in the determination of the order of merits list.