Civilian employment is the greatest challenge of serving in the RC.  I’ve struggled with this quite a bit but have found my way to employment opportunities that are forgiving of my military service.  This isn’t the case with many of my soldiers who may have challenging civilian careers that take up their lives or, even more so, the Soldiers that are lucky if they have a job at all.

At the Company level we can try to lessen the blow by working with the individual Soldiers.  The best practice is to plan well in advance and provide letters to the employers that inform them of the duty and, at the same time, thank them for supporting the Soldiers.  Unfortunately this is incredibly challenging given the current environment and units that deal with higher OPTEMPTO (focused readiness, anyone?) will struggle to keep their training calendar set in stone for 90 days at a time.

Other ways to work with the Soldiers and civilians is by providing opportunities to conduct Rescheduled Training (RST).  This really only works if the training they are missing isn’t mandatory or collective training.  If the Soldier is struggling financially and can’t find a balance between the Army and the job that pays their bills, you might consider a voluntary transfer to the IRR (for personal cogent reasons).  It can be a bit of a process and it certainly doesn’t help your numbers, but it’s possible and can really help the Soldier.

This challenge has become very real for my unit as we’re attending a CTE this summer and NTC in the fall, putting most Soldiers on orders for about 60 days in less than 6 months.  I don’t believe there’s a perfect, or close enough, solution to this challenge.  Perhaps this commitment needs to be really hammered home during the recruiting process, instead of including it in the 50 pages of contract that requires initials/signature.  The expectations need to be clearly understood from the start.  This doesn’t fix the problem, but it might mitigate some of the pain.