Rethinking Army HR: Experience Matters in Critical Touchpoints with our All Volunteer Force

A version of this article has been submitted to a professional publication, but with one of the authors changing jobs, we want to get the thoughts here out in circulation for discussion soonest!

Customer Experience in the Modern Talent Landscape

In today’s competitive talent battlefield, providing exceptional customer experiences for those needing human resources support is a crucial element for success, for both meeting customer needs and recruiting and retaining talent. These experiences in the HR space often translate to quality of life and quality of work. But in the DoD, quality customer experiences and touchpoints play a role in determining the future of the All Volunteer Force.

We often hear leaders give the mandate to subordinate commanders that people come first, that they need to take care of Soldiers and families, but in the Army, that often manifests itself in transactional human capital work. Did a Soldier get an award or a promotion processed in a timely manner? Did their pay and benefits arrive accurately and on-time? Was a personnel record concern addressed and updated appropriately? Were families given answers to questions regarding survivor benefits with speed, understanding, and empathy?

These touchpoints and the services provided by the Army’s human resources professionals are tangible manifestations of the Army’s ability and willingness to take care of people, to maintain trust in its ability to take care of Soldiers and families, and to support the recruiting and retention of the talent needed to fight and win our nation’s wars.

United States Army Human Resources Command is transforming to improve these touchpoints. This effort, named #HRC2030 in support of the Army’s larger Army 2030 strategic plan, seeks to reorganize and modernize the command charged with the Army’s HR actions so that it is more transparent, agile, and customer centered.

The customer focus comes along with a values-based customer experience framework to help HRC better address the needs of its customers. These include current and former Soldiers across the Active, Guard, and Reserve components, their families, the organizations relying on HRC for HR data and technology, and HRC’s own employees; all total, roughly six million people.

By implementing customer experience management techniques and an improved focus on personnel actions not as standalone events but as part of cohesive customer experience journeys, HRC will create a more positive and impactful experience for the six million people relying on the command for support. This, in turn, can lead to higher Soldier engagement, productivity, and ultimately, better trust in the Army’s promise to take care of people, the most critical component of supporting and maintaining the All Volunteer Force.

What is Customer Experience Management and why does HRC need it?

Customer Experience Management (CEM) is the process of identifying, designing, monitoring, and improving the interactions that customers have with an organization through the entirety of a customer journey. The process involves understanding and meeting customer needs, wants, and expectations in a way that creates a positive connection between customers and the organization.

Soldiers may not typically think of themselves as “customers” and think of HRC only as the function that hosts promotion boards, publishes orders, and takes on other transactional human resource responsibilities, not a “business” that needs to manage customer experience. Impersonal transactional treatment of Soldier services and actions, especially when involving emotionally-charged services such as promotion, benefits, assignments, and care of families, can create emotional dissonance, a lack of trust, and a lack of faith in the Army’s ability to take care of people. Impersonal customer interactions in these cases are frustrating and stressful for Soldiers, and make services feel fragmented and disjointed.

HRC must address this through personalizing service and creating consistent and trustworthy standards of service through employing customer service management techniques. Inconsistency and the impersonal treatment of actions that feel inherently personal erode trust, and HRC can serve as a vital element of improving trust by improving these interactions and experiences.

HRC leadership knows that service interactions have a tremendous impact on retention and recruiting because of the trust they can create or undermine. Putting the customer first lies at the heart of HRC’s transformation and reorganization. By building a culture that values and prioritizes customer and employee experience, HRC can improve engagement and preserve the trust needed to improve Army recruiting and retention.

The command has begun working with teams of experts, both internally and through industry partners, to equip its teams with a framework that provides defined expectations and standards. By adding workflow automation and using low- and no-code solutions, the command will empower sections to visualize and share processes, and collaborate on finding efficiencies to expedite and conduct quality control checks on these processes.

What does Customer Experience (CX) look like at HRC?

When HRC has world class CX and CEM programs in place, we will see teams equipped with a values-based customer service framework that provides defined expectations and standards to guide work activities, well-delineated customer service standards, and measurable accounts of work outcomes that are meaningful to employees, customers, and decision makers. We will also see feedback loops where performance is highly visible both for monitoring and process improvement. HRC teams empowered with clear expectations, measurable impact, the ability to receive and give timely feedback, and an avenue to contribute to the ongoing review and improvement of processes will create an environment for increased engagement and allows for more meaningful, consistent, and positive customer experiences throughout the command.

To reach this state, HRC will embark on a multi-faceted customer experience project. The command will develop and implement means to:

1. Define our customer experience framework and philosophy;
2. Hire or appoint customer experience leads throughout the command;
3. Leverage best practices from organizations both in the federal government and industry that are known for world-class customer/employee experience and proven methodologies in design thinking, change management, and communication;
4. Re-organize the department structure and role responsibilities to better monitor and manage customer experience;
5. Utilize technology solutions to allow for more efficient processes, improved reporting, transparency in outcomes, measure sentiment and inform understanding of performance, and to provide better engagement with our customers;
6. Identify and establish a reporting cycle for meaningful metrics, including intangibles such as trust and engagement;
7. Establish ongoing listening, feedback, and improvement tools, both outward/customer-facing and internal to our HRC employees;
8. Engage HRC teams to provide a consistent, values-based customer experience, contribute to process improvement, and communicate the value of a data-driven performance model.

HRC will achieve this by employing a number of customer experience management techniques. One important technique is a needs assessment that helps an organization better understand customer needs and expectations. This involves collecting data and feedback from employees, job candidates, and customers about their experience with HRC’s services. The command can use this information to write performance standards, identify areas that need improvement or automation, and create tailored solutions that meet the unique needs of each stakeholder group.

Finally, implementing continuous improvement processes is essential to the customer experience. Customers’ needs change over time, and the command cannot provide a one-size-fits-all service solution that we don’t expect to change. We will regularly review and update our processes and services and conduct needs assessments to ensure that we have the necessary capabilities to best meet our customers’ needs.

Challenges and considerations for implementing Customer Experience Management at HRC

All large organizations have their own inertia, and HRC is no exception. Even though the command is undergoing a transformation, some of the challenges that made a transformation necessary continue to work against change. A command already grappling with change to many existing processes and systems may continue to resist further change.

HRC leaders must be prepared to address concerns, clearly communicate the customer experience vision, provide training on customer service and customer experience to all personnel, highlight and reward all the customer service that is being done well, and outline the benefits of making these changes to employees and customers to gain buy-in.

Culture represents the biggest challenge for any transformation effort. In the Army, an organization where traditions play a huge role and disciplined adherence to systems and processes are often inculcated early in a career, culture provides an exceptional challenge. It often takes a crisis to jog a large bureaucracy into motion because of this, but talent management and personnel actions are not an area where we can afford to wait until a crisis happens. This kind of change requires organizational buy-in, emphasis from leaders at all level, modeling behavior, constant communication, and trust.

Limited resources and budget constraints also present a significant challenge. The Army rolls out modernization visions and directives every year that are primarily focused on weapons and systems directly meant for the warfighter, and often does not include with this sufficient resources to ensure the Army has the people necessary to use and adopt those systems. Those resources then end up getting requested when the project is fully in motion, forcing the organization to play catch-up.

CEM at HRC requires investment in technology, the transformation or modernization of an aging IT infrastructure and legacy systems, new processes, and new hires. The command continues to explore ways to optimize existing resources and creative solutions to minimize costs, but continues to advocate for additional investment in people, the Army’s most important asset.

Integration of customer experience management with existing processes and methods is another challenge we must consider. HRC has a complex network of tools and processes, both new and old, that must be integrated to create a seamless employee and customer experience. HRC leaders are working hard on both internal and external systems integration and bringing on experts in change management to ensure the necessary systems and processes are in place, integrated, and functioning correctly.

HRC has implemented several key actions toward developing a CX vision and framework in the Adjutant General Directorate (TAG-D) as a pilot for the rest of the command. These actions include:

1. Develop, implement, and monitor standards of service;
2. Building monitoring and listening capability through social media listening and service analytics;
3. Reframing the organizational mindset to push status updates for interactions;
4. Providing the team with customer experience training;
5. Including customer experience objectives in work development plans and ratings.

This pilot program allows HRC to measure and evaluate significant services within TAG-D that have significant meaning for service members, including promotions, evaluations, and the awarding of other benefits. Commitment to measuring, improving these services, and ensuring transparency and communication are all critical to demonstrating the command’s ability to achieve goals under the HRC 2030 vision and showcasing the Army’s ability and willingness to take care of its people.

Driving Positive Change

Customer experience management is a critical component of modernizing HRC as an organization, and modernizing the Army’s human resource processes. However, prioritizing a customer focus, HRC’s leaders are driving a positive change for Soldiers and families, for readiness, and for the Army experience. With the competition for talent and escalating tension with competitors in the national security space, customer interactions in the HR space play an ever increasing role in the Army’s ability to retain talent and demonstrate its willingness to take care of Soldiers and their families.

Without these capabilities, we will be unable to retain talented Soldiers even if we succeed in overcoming barriers to recruiting them. If the Army fails to recruit and retain talent, the future of the All Volunteer Force is at risk, and that volunteer force is critical to providing the Army with the largest, most creative, and most diverse talent bench possible, the force multiplier needed to fight and win.

Brigadier General Greg Johnson serves as the Adjutant General of the Army, leads the team at The Adjutant General Directorate , and has been a driving force behind #HRC2030 modernization efforts.

Colonel Kris Saling recently assumed leadership of the newly established US Army Recruiting Command Innovation Directorate and previously led the Commander's Innovation Cell - US Army Human Resources Command .