Coast Guard leadership reached out to the workforce to participate in an initiative that will help shape the service’s critical goal of transforming recruitment and retention to ensure a ready and resilient force that can meet future challenges.
In a message to the workforce Tuesday, Rear Adm. Brian Penoyer, director of the Talent Management Transformation Task Force, invited Coasties to be part of a series of “sprints” intended to develop ideas and formulate recommendations.
In her first State of the Coast Guard address last month, Commandant Adm. Linda Fagan emphasized the importance of investing in personnel with a transformed talent management system, new investments in recruiting infrastructure, better access to healthcare and childcare, and policies that provide greater flexibility in service.
Fagan announced the creation of the Talent Management Transformation Task Force to “build the agile and integrated human resources structure we need to manage our workforce more creatively.”
“Like the other branches of the Armed Forces, and much of private sector, the Coast Guard is experiencing a workforce shortage. We are struggling to recruit the people we need to hire into our ranks,” Fagan said. “Our recruiting shortfall threatens our readiness and ability to serve the American people. I have a sense of urgency to address this challenge. We must ensure that every American, from coast to coast and throughout the inland states, knows who we are and what we do.”
Fagan also announced the launch of a new marketing campaign to build awareness and “do a better job telling the Coast Guard story.”
“When we make the talent management, family services, and recruiting transformations we need, we will be prepared to meet the demands of the future,” she said. “I am fully confident of the Coast Guard’s ability to succeed in this work.”
Penoyer told the workforce this week that the established Talent Management Transformation Task Force will “redefine how our Service approaches talent management” and will “identify and recommend the most efficient and mission effective methods to transform the Coast Guard’s personnel readiness enterprise to meet the total workforce needs of today and tomorrow.”
“The team will deliver a comprehensive roadmap to Coast Guard Leadership outlining a phased approach for implementing REFs (A)-(C), including governance, organization, and new initiatives,” he added. “The Service has taken some important, initial steps to transform our workforce, but there is more to be done. We must transform the systems and processes we use to manage our talent and support our workforce, both modernizing them and embedding innovation so that they can continue to adapt.”
The Task Force will focus on six lines of effort: Force Design and Integration; Recruiting, Hiring, and Accessions; Total Force Management; Training, Education, and Learning; World-Class Support; and Data and Analytics.
The Task Force will be conducting “a series of three-to-four-week sprints between now and September,” Penoyer said. Service members can either sign up as a sprint volunteer, during which they will spend half of their time developing recommendations and deliverables, or as a sprint contributor, which will take about four hours and consist of “supporting focus groups, generating ideas, benchmarking, sourcing references and other information, etc.”
The effort is expected to take six months and is working throughout the Deputy Commandant for Mission Support (DCMS), Deputy of Personnel Readiness (DCMS-DPR).
