adminAlmost a third of US veterans in civilian jobs hide their war injuries from employers and many downplay their military service to get along with co-workers, according to a new study by the Centre for Talent Innovation.
Minority veterans are more uneasy at work than whites, the survey said.
More than 40 percent of Hispanic veterans said they try to mask their experience as soldiers to avoid being judged as gun-loving or aggressive.
About 57 percent of working veterans don’t aspire to move up in their jobs; 39 percent of those who do feel stalled.
US companies from Capital One Financial Corp to Wal-Mart Stores Inc have hired millions of men and women returning from wars in the Middle East and Afghanistan in the last decade, prodded by Obama administration tax incentives of up to $9 600 per person.
The veteran unemployment rate — at 3,9 percent in October — is at the lowest since 2008 and well below the national average of 5 percent.
“It’s quite a culture shock to move from the military to the civilian world,” said Linda Huber, chief financial officer of Moody’s Corp, who rose to captain while in the US army from 1980 to 1984.
“Veterans can be very careful about saying too much about their status.”
Thirty percent of recruiting budgets at US companies now fund programmes to bring in veterans, according to CTI, a New York-based non-profit that advises companies on diversity.
About 21 million veterans work in the US, including 6,5 million from the first and second Gulf wars and 9,2 million who served in Vietnam, Korea and the Second World War, according to the US Bureau of Labour Statistics.
Veterans often don’t stay with their first employer, according to a 2014 survey by Institute for Veterans and Military Families and VetAdvisor. About 28 percent said they lasted six months or less in their first job and another 16,3 percent remained only 7 to 12 months. CTI did its study in June and July of this year among 1 022 US military veterans who are now working in full time salaried positions.
Some companies are focused on keeping the workers they train. Prudential Financial Inc., the second-largest US life insurer, offers internships for enlisted military personnel to work toward an entry-level full-time job at the company. Retention has been about 75 percent, with 88 interns hired and another 50 in the pipeline, the company said.
“There are a raft of stigmas and stereotypes that go along with being a veteran, some not positive, so people are reticent, ”said Charles Sevola, Prudential’s vice president of veterans initiatives, who left the military in 1990 after serving as a US army communications officer. Prudential’s programme includes mentoring and other veteran-specific resources, he said.
Moody’s Huber said veterans are starting to benefit from a broader push for workplace diversity and may become more visible. “We had a women’s network, a multi-cultural network and an LGBT network before we had a veteran’s network,” said Huber, who provided executive sponsorship to create that group in 2013.— Bloomberg.
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