When I think of all the instances of states employing NG–distributing food, border patrol, riots, fires, etc. why would any employer hire them, knowing they would have to pay them without them doing their job for extended length of time without warning and having to replace their loss of skills? it seems to me to be non-incentive for hiring
It’s illegal to discriminate against them for exactly the reasons you state.
Some managements like those folks on the grounds they’re mature and reliable and self-disciplined and all the other good traits associated with the military. Others question how much those traits are real versus PTSD, a reputation for heavy drinking, etc., which are also associated with the military.
So NG status may be a plus for you (any you) at one employer and a minus at another.
In my unit, a lot of the guys were also employed by police departments, fire departments, and EMT’s. A few guys were involved in all 3, with one as their day job, picking up extra shifts here and there in the other roles. In those jobs, it’s advantageous to have guys like that who want to be hometown heroes in every possible sense. But I did always wonder what happened to those functions when the unit deployed.
When I got out into the white-collar world, the drawbacks became apparent. I had assigned tasks on a deadline, I had to hand them off to someone else. At one point, I was slated to be given some additional responsibility, and after a 3-week deployment I found it had been given to someone else instead. I guess I could’ve taken some action, but I was ready to be finished with both that employer and the NG, so I left both.
I wouldn’t really recommend NG, both as employer and employee, unless the military job has close alignment with the civilian job, or unless it’s the type of job where you can just suddenly lose a key employee for a week, month, or even a year.
I was active duty army then I went national guard. The biggest benefit I saw was that vets take care of young soldiers. Many veterans will go completely out of their way to hire someone they know who is in the Nasty Guard or a fellow veteran.
They know how hard it can be straddling the line between civilian and military life. Plus they know that because you’re in the service you’ll probably show up on time and be an otherwise dependable employee.
HOWEVER there are also a lot of lifelong civilians who will actively work against getting you hired and assume the worst possible things because you will not fit into their “workplace culture,” like you’re probably a staunch conservative and support Trump. I am neither. I hate Trump’s guts.
My first job after college, I was hired by a Vietnam War veteran. He said that in his experience, veterans know how to be part of a team.
When I was in the reserves, I liked that my 2 weeks of training in the summer was a good break from work without having to use any of my accrued vacation time. Those 2 weeks included many long working days and often living in miserable conditions like in the Mojave Desert where it was 115 during the day, but still that time was a good break from work.
I was hired sight-unseen by my boss in Alaska (I was in Africa at the time). She loved to hire ex-military because of that team ethic.
I would imagine that my grandson’s employer is pretty unhappy at this point, as he (grandson) got recalled to active duty and is now in Kuwait for a year.
Bad autocomplete, or intentional?
This has been my experience with hiring National Guard folks:
I’ve been in Retail most of my career, mostly corporate jobs.
Assistant Store Manager and Loss Prevention Manager. Great experience. It’s relatively easy to get someone else to cover during the weekend and annual commitments. And we have “bench strength” in both jobs within a geography to cover even deployments.
Six month deployment of a Data Analyst was awkward. He had some projects on his desk that we had a hard time keeping going when he was given notice. If I recall it was only 49 days notice and even in a big company it was hard to temporary transition the projects. We moved someone into that slot temporarily and called it a Development Experience (similar to what we would do for parental leave).
I can tell you that for store management, loss prevention, field training, etc. these folks bring people skills and work habits we dream of. It helps that we have lots of veterans in our operations leadership (Store Managers, District Managers, Trainers, Field HR Managers) so there is a lot of mentorship
On the other hand we had a guy who was a media officer (or something) in the NG and we hired him in our Internal Communications department and he was absolutely awful at writing.
It was intentional. Many of us prior active duty to Nasty Guard guys use that term because the standards are more laxed and they’re not as rigid on appearence among other things.
As others have pointed out, it’s illegal to discriminate against someone based on their being in the military. And being able to serve either active duty or National Guard requirements is covered by the Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act (USERRA). I handle leave issues at work (FMLA, short term disability, parental leave, etc., etc.) and of course military leave is part of that.
If an employee goes on military leave, they’re not required by law to pay that employee. (They’re required to pay a salaried employee for the entire week even if they only worked a day though.) I have two employees who are currently on military leave, active duty, and we’re not paying them at all. The same is true for the National Guard. If you’re away from work for two weeks of Guard duty, we don’t have to pay you. You’re being paid by the Guard to work those days.
At least for my employer, the few employees we have in the Guard or who go active duty aren’t really a burden on us. In my experience, as a whole, veterans make pretty good employees.
Some people dont mind doing the Right Thing.
Some government agencies do pay them, however. And some very nice employers do also.
If I can figure out family emergencies and people giving two weeks notice when they’re leaving for other jobs, I can figure out planned absences with longer lead times. Deployment, planned surgery, babies.
Granted, I have over 50 people on my team, so it’s not that hard to absorb all this. Much harder if you have a couple three.
I used to work for a company that had operations in Europe and the US. The difference in approach to handling extended absences was stark. In Europe a six month absence for parental leave was covered by a whole organization of 50-100 people (say all of Finance or Marketing). But in the US the immediate manager with 3-10 people had to figure it out.
It was treated as an opportunity for cross-training, development and succession planning in one side of the pond, but as a disaster mitigation exercise on the other.
Yes, that’s one of those dreaded “woke” DSI programs. Employers have to collect stats on who they hire, including minority status, disability, and military service. National Guard status is part of it.
If I wasn’t a government employee I doubt I would have been able to stay in the Guard until retirement. My job never gave me any problems while I was out for military duty and most of the time I double dipped. I had a lot of troops who left because it was too difficult to balance both jobs. There are many ways an employer can make things difficult that still meet the letter of the law.
I’m fortunate in that I work for a fairly decent employer, and we don’t give any employee a hard time for doing their civic duties including military service, jury duty, etc., etc. We do pay employees who go on inactive duty (Guard) if they make less doing that than they do with us, but when they go active duty we don’t pay anything. A lot of companies that violate USERRA do so on accident, but there are others who are just jerks and either don’t care or just hope they’re not caught.
In New Jersey there is a law that all state, county and municipal employees must be paid (double dip) for 90 working days per calendar year for military duty with the Guard and 30 days for Reserves. My town also passed an ordinance to make up the difference in pay for any days not covered in the 90.
Not guardsmen specifically, but hiring ex-military employees implies a certain minimum standard of literacy, ability to shine shoes, adapt to unusual hours and so on. And many military personnel prefer to stay on TriCare rather than enroll in employer health plans. That can be a huge saving for small employers (IIRC, TriCare functions as a secondary payer for military personnel who work for employers with more than 20 employees and who provide health insurance).