Large Main Street Bank made a commitment to employ 20,000 veteran team members by 2020, a hiring and retention goal. I conducted an ethnographic research study, to help this large financial services company better understand veteran’s everyday life working outside the military.
Challenge – The Military Veteran Human Resources leadership team aimed to bring about significant shifts in their employee recruiting, retention, and self-identification strategies.
Timeline – over 15 weeks, we brought military veterans and allies perspectives into focus.
Methodology - Between April 26th 2018 and July 31st 2018, I studied veteran identity, suppression and long-term retention in the workplace. Human Resources leadership wished to gain a deeper understanding of U.S. military veteran covering tactics in the civilian workplace. Due to the sensitive nature of this research topic, I employed a snowball sampling tactic and interviewed 5 military veterans and allies at the company about their sharing and covering experiences. I performed a literature review and expert interviews to justify the research topic, design, and methodology. For comparison, I conducted a digital Dscout diary study with 22 U.S. military veterans. I employed a purposive and stratified sample of participants who represented the five branches of the military, had a range of work experience after transitioning out the military, and worked in a variety of companies and industries across the United States. We performed a literature review to justify the research topic, design, and methodology. We then performed a remote diary study technique and both in-person and remote interviews to examine everyday work life outside the military.
Findings – Veterans always bear the burden of reading a room and interpreting how their military experience will impact the tone of the room and their ability to connect with those around them. I found that temporal and situational influences including linguistics, visual cues, and politics have profound impacts on U.S. Military Veterans willingness to share their secondary diversity dimension in the workplace. Through a qualitative analysis based on grounded theory, I found that participant’s identification with their secondary diversity dimension produced a set of coping mechanisms to overcoming cognitive dissonance and rationalizing covering tactics and feelings of hidden pride and shame.
Background
At the time of their commitment, Large Main Street Bank employed nearly 7,400 known veteran team members, and as of March 2018 employed 8,283 veterans. Human Resources leadership felt that, in order to successfully identify and retain veteran team members long-term, Large Main Street Bank needed a deeper understanding of U.S. Veterans everyday life working outside the military.
An alarming trend
At the time, Large Main Street Bank was concerned about why a portion of veterans were not self-identifying themselves; they were curious whether what a person suppresses as a veteran was different than from what a person suppresses as a LGBTQ.
Literature Review
While tools such as the Diversity Wheel (Lou & Dean 2010) and mantras like “bring your full self to work” (Robbins 2018) have been instrumental in fueling the diversity industry, many companies are overlooking the interrelated social and cultural aspects of life (Cooley 1922; Festinger 1954; Festinger 1962; Goffman 1959; Heider 1946; Higgins 1987; Stryker 2002), companies fall for myths about self (Austin 2020; Mazzoni 2018), and companies provide limited programs and precise measures around secondary diversity dimensions. Overall, there is little understanding of the everyday lived experiences of employees and how those experiences can undermine a company’s diversity and inclusion efforts and, ultimately, determine the program’s effectiveness or ineffectiveness as a whole.
As Diversity & Inclusion programs and initiatives have grown in prominence and popularity with United States businesses in the years since the Diversity Wheels’ initial introduction, I have observed firsthand companies focusing most of their efforts on the core diversity dimensions, such as gender, race, sexuality, and age, while neglecting the secondary dimensions, such as military experience, political beliefs, and geographic location, even though secondary dimensions are more likely to lead to culture clash and conflict (Loden 1991). At the same time I am exhausted from hearing company leaders and managers repeat the mantra “bring your full self to work”, which neglects that the self is directly linked to the “generalized other”, so we can have multiple selves (Aboulafia 2016).
U.S. Military Veterans frequently experience negative assumptions in the workplace which causes them to “cover”, meaning they downplay or avoid sharing their military service. (Abrams, 2015). This tactic is also found among LGBT employees in the workplace (Yoshino, 2006).
Research questions
What does a good long-term work life looks like for Veterans?
Why are Veterans suppressing their Veteran status in the workplace?
What are the words Large Main Street Bank needs to use / the environment they need to create, so that Military Veterans are comfortable enough to share their Veteran status?
What is necessary for Military Veterans to self-id when applying for a role?
What is necessary for Military Veterans to self-id when they are internal/ already working in a role at Large Main Street Bank?
Identifying as a Veteran is situational in the workplace.
Before, we thought some Veterans just don’t want to identify at work. While only ten out of twenty-two Veterans we spoke to reported that they didn’t always identify as a Vet on a job application and/or with an employer, twenty-one out of twenty-two Veterans could recall a time when they intentionally chose to not tell someone at work.
Identifying is situational for veterans. Every Veteran we spoke with is proud to tell people in the workplace. But in certain situations, being a Veteran could lead to either their embarrassment or the embarrassment of the person with whom they are interacting. Because of this, Veterans always bear the burden of reading the room and interpreting how this status will impact the tone of the room and their ability to connect with those around them. It’s happening before they get a job, when interviewing, during training, and in their everyday work day. It’s happening with recruiters, interviewers, managers, coworkers, customers, and strangers.
Applying social theory in the workplace context
Erving Goffman, C.H. Cooley, George H. Mead, and other social theorists have written extensively about how people live in the minds of others without knowing it. I reviewed dozens of theories over the fifteen week study e.g. dramaturgy, the presentation of self in everyday life, the hidden pride/shame system, cognitive dissonance, identity theory, and social behaviorism.
They were all saying that we as humans are in constant movement between one’s own self and the point of view of others. It’s impression management. When a veteran comes in contact with potential employers, coworkers, supervisors, that individual will attempt to control or guide the impression that others might make of him/her by changing or fixing his or her setting, appearance, and manager. At the same time, the person the individual is interacting with is trying to form and obtain information about the individual. Overall, Veterans have the desire to control the impressions that other people form about them in the workplace to some extent.
Being a Veteran can sometimes be taboo in the workplace.
A key theme/top challenge identified for self-identification of veteran talent is the fear of shame. Fifteen Veterans shared stories related to this theme. These Veterans fear they will be isolated, judged, and mocked, and retaliated against. They believe identifying would create issues in the workplace and that it would be easier to keep the peace by letting it go. Certain topics are taboo. Politics is one of those. Military service is linked to politics and because of this; Veterans may suppress their status in fear of social shame at work. Many times, civilians in the workplace are unaware that their Veteran peers are “covering” (hiding) their Veteran Status.
Veterans use their status to boost credibility and establish connections in the workplace.
After speaking with veterans, we now know that, across the board, these Veterans are proud of their service. If someone at work asks if they are a veteran, they will usually tell. Identifying as a veteran in the civilian life/workplace is a way to boost credibility and create a connection (bond/relationship). In the right work environment, identifying as a veteran is like rocket fuel at liftoff and acts like miracle grow to a budding relationship.
Veterans suppress their status to avoid conflict in the workplace.
Except, sometimes they don’t ask, so veterans don’t tell. In every workplace interaction, Veterans always bear the burden of reading the room and interpreting how this status will impact the tone of the room and their ability to connect with those around them. In everyday interactions with hiring managers, coworkers, customers, Veterans are engaged in practices to avoid being embarrassed or embarrassing others. Suppressing veteran status in the civilian life/workplace is a way to keep the peace / avoid conflict in the workplace. Suppression is a way to use an escape hatch on a rocket and acts like armor/pesticide to one’s workplace impression. Shame is a fundamental aspect of human existence, and a signal of disconnect and alienation. When veterans feel this, attrition is more likely to happen.
Veterans desire to be valued as an employee, to add value through their work i.e. have a sense of purpose, and will work long-term for companies that provide both well.
To increase long-term retention, Large Main Street Bank needs to be providing structure, training, and long-term career path programs that benefit veterans financially, while also providing a sense of value of veterans within the company and community/society.
Big questions
If a person can freely choose to cover any of their many diversity dimensions to keep the peace in the workplace and avoid workplace conflict, then are they bringing their full self to work? Are companies Diversity & Inclusion initiatives successful because employees are covering or are they unsuccessful? Is covering something companies should embrace as a cultural practice with the aim of being more inclusive or is this a bad habit we’ve learned that must be unlearned and replaced with a new practice? I find myself coming up with even more questions. How are companies being inclusive if they narrow their definition and focus of diversity? How do people define their full sense of self? How do they determine whether they are bringing their “full” or “authentic” self to work? Is it up to the company to determine this? Is it up to the individual? Who gets to bring their full self to work and who does not? Are employees supposed to limit their full sense of self to only what the company defines as diversity? More importantly, we must address how bringing your full self to work can cause another to suppress their full self. How do we overcome this?
Business anthropologist certainly have a role to play in helping employees and companies answer these questions.
1. As more companies globally scale their workforce, business anthropologists can influence how companies scale their Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DEI) programs to ensure the entire diversity wheel is integrated.
2. Business Anthropologists can influence companies to look at both the anthropological perspective and the organizational behavior perspective on culture and organization to examine diversity and inclusion in the workplace (Jordan 2013).
3. Business Anthropologists can use their unique perspective and research methods to help bring what is hidden into the light so companies can see the complex and multi-faceted aspects of the workplace and contradictory issues (Jordan 2013) that are undermining their diversity and inclusion programs.
4. Business Anthropologists can employ social theories to help companies better interpret the webs of cultural significance employees themselves have spun (Geertz 1973) and to craft more culturally relative definitions or diversity and inclusion and mantra’s that take into account the interrelated aspects of culture and identity.
Afterwards
After this research study, the Large Main Street Bank Enterprise Military Veterans Recruiting team created a military veteran hiring, retention and self-identification strategy and stood up an internal unit in 2018. Research socialization built awareness among Large Main Street Bank leadership, the St. Louis Campus Veteran Team Member Network, and the Hiring our Heroes partnership.
Patience was key when waiting for these two groups to go from a fledging team to a mature organization. In 2020, the Large Main Street Bank Enterprise Military Veterans Recruiting team coordinated a socialization program for the research to be shared across Large Main Street Bank, to scale awareness to the larger organization and to brainstorm action. Out of this program came a recruiter job aid, a manager meeting in a box, and recommendations on how people can help make a more comfortable workplace.
Core Team: Amanda Andres, Matthew Kaufman, Euieal Asfaw, and Jennifer Allison
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