The human resource challenges facing our organisation are well known. The most recent figures reveal a 12-month rolling separation rate of 13% within the full-time Army, while Defence Force Recruiting achieved an average of just 75% of targets for enlistments into the permanent force (Defence Annual Report 2021-2022). This has resulted in an annual net loss of personnel in Army and the Australian Defence Force (ADF).
However, workforce pressures are also being felt externally to Defence. In 2022, the job vacancy rate (the percentage of unfilled job positions) hit an all-time high – double pre-pandemic levels – while unemployment remains at record-low levels not seen since the 1970s. Put simply, for the first time on record in Australia’s history, there are more job openings than unemployed people.
However, one key group is not included in these extreme workforce statistics: students (who are considered neither ‘employed’ nor unemployed). With an unemployment rate that’s almost impossible to further reduce, and more Australians attending university than ever before, employers are increasingly targeting university students before they graduate and enter the workforce.
In other words, employers are generating their own jobseekers because there aren’t enough in the official workforce. Students are being poached and starting work earlier through a range of pre-graduate programs (such as paid internships, traineeships, cadetships, and summer/vacationer programs). Recruiters are visiting university campuses and offering part-time jobs to first-year undergraduate students, just months out of high school, in the hopes of retaining them on graduation.
A host of sign-on, retention, and peer recruitment bonuses are being offered to graduates as corporate Australia fights for talent in a hostile labour market. Defence – specifically Army – must do the same, or else remain uncompetitive in a market that shows little sign of easing.
In addition to the changing nature of the labour market, the type of capability – and workforce – being demanded of the Army Reserve is also changing. A key recommendation (11.5) from the Defence Strategic Review (DSR) is that the Reserves “must not just complement the total Defence workforce but also provide the expansion base for the ADF in times of crisis.” To achieve this, it recommends Defence “investigate innovative ways to adapt the structure, shape and role of the Reserves, as well as reconsider past programs…”
In order to transition from providing a complementary capability, to providing an expansionary capability, the Reserves must grow its workforce. It must recruit, train, and retain people on a scale not seen for decades. But where will this new workforce come from? Over its history, the Army Reserve’s workforce has grown many times in response to strategic circumstances: in 1938, the Citizen Military Forces (a precursor to today’s Army Reserve) doubled from 35,000 to 70,000 in less than a year.
However, at no time in its history has the Army Reserve had to contend with labour market conditions as difficult as today’s. Almost a decade into the Great Depression and with unemployment at a “low” of 11%, the labour market conditions of Australia in 1938 were starkly different to today.
But providing capability is more than just filling position numbers. The workforce must be continually trained, drilled, and refined. To complement the ADF, we must have adequate levels of skills, training, and experience to reinforce gaps in the fulltime force when required. To provide an expansionary base, we must maintain a large pool of already trained assets.
The key factor limiting both of these roles is workforce availability. The recruitment difficulties being faced in the civilian workforce mean existing employees are having to take on extra workloads and are working longer than before, with less workplace flexibility for staff absences or leave – meaning reservists can devote less of their time to Army. Short-notice or reactive taskings are even more problematic for Service Category (SERCAT) 5 members, due to the part-time and voluntary nature of their service.
The commitments of civilian jobs, families, and lives often cannot be rearranged or cancelled at very short notice. The Reserve Service (Protection) Act (2001) isn’t a ‘get-out-of-jail-free card’ that immediately nullifies that project deliverable, that important meeting, that wedding, or that specialist appointment. This constraint has been brought to the fore in recent times by years of bushfires, floods, and a pandemic leading to multiple Defence Assistance to the Civil Community (DACC) tasks.
Not only were many reservists unable to contribute to disaster relief efforts due to their short-notice nature, but many also held roles in state governments as emergency service personnel or essential workers, who were already contributing in a higher-value civilian role.
Although the ADF’s provision of DACC will change over the coming years, as the DSR notes it must be “the force of last resort for domestic aid to the civil community” (5.5), the role of the Army Reserve in providing short-notice contingency capability is unlikely to fade. On the contrary, the DSR specifically recommends the reconsideration of the Ready Reserve Scheme (11.5) – where mostly 17-25 year-olds completed 12-months full-time service before returning to the Reserves, in the effort to provide enhanced skills and short-notice capability to the Army Reserve.
University students are in unique positions to provide both short-notice capability and a greater time commitment than the average employed reservist. University today is more flexible than ever before: lectures are recorded and available online for students to watch at their leisure, while most assessments and exams are completed online.
Under the Reserve Service Act, universities are legally required to support students who render Reserve service, typically through granting extensions and deferrals of assignments and assessments. The typical university student has no dependents to care for; no civilian employer to irritate with short-notice reserve service; and fewer personal, financial, or lifestyle commitments. Hence, a short-notice task doesn’t require life rearrangement or pleading with civilian bosses (and spouses) to be released – it merely requires a Notice of Reserve Service to be provided to the university.
Along with superior flexibility and greater agility to respond to short-notice taskings, university students are also relatively time-rich. The typical academic year is around 28 weeks long, with semester breaks ideal for the completion of career courses, or participation in field exercises. Even longer commitments such the end-of-year Rifle Company Butterworth rotation conveniently fall outside of semester. Instead of taking a semester off to go backpacking in Europe, students could nominate for a 6-month Transit Security Element rotation.
This article has outlined two issues being faced by the Army Reserve: a tight labour market making recruitment, retention, and workforce availability difficult; and the need to vastly grow the workforce while retaining a short-notice capability. It has also presented a largely untapped, high-yield labour resource: university students. Yes, Defence Force Recruiting could (and should) just increase their recruitment efforts amongst students. But this paper argues that Army must also restructure if it is to harness this labour resource most efficiently.
Today, Army’s six university regiments are largely training organisations, running most of the training for reserve soldiers and officers. There is little affiliation with the universities they are each named after, beyond a historical and ceremonial association. Previously, university regiments were infantry units, providing military training to students, maintaining rifle and support platoons, and running training activities just as regular reserve units do today. However, cuts to funding and personnel in Defence’s 1991 Force Structure Review ultimately saw the regiments reoriented from university students to focus on training reservists.
This paper proposes restructuring to a hybrid model – where the university regiments maintain their current training role, but also return to their original purpose. Already present in every state and territory, university regiments could raise “University Platoons/Companies” manned by reservists from tertiary educations (including TAFEs) in the area.
Regiments could return to maintaining active working relationships with universities, liaising to support their members, and conducting community engagement activities within the student body. Longer training activities, courses, periods, and weekends could be planned alongside the academic calendar – with increases in tempo over semester breaks – all in the effort to maximise the ability of members to render reserve service. An internal university company could be drawn upon by university regiments to support their own training activities and courses, reducing the burden of Training Support Requests (TSRs) often borne by external reserve units.
The Chief of Army has noted “our people are our greatest asset and the key to unlocking our potential”, and our people equally represent our greatest recruiting asset. Studies have consistently found referral recruitment (where current employees refer people from their social networks) to be highly effective – generating more applicants, more hires, and better-performing employees than other recruitment methods such as job advertisements. A platoon of students at a university could generate referral recruitment momentum – where other students are encouraged (and referred) by their peers to join, in the same fashion that clubs or sporting teams recruit members on campus.
Specific academic and financial measures to support reservists, similar to ones already offered in American universities could be considered. For example, the completion of a certain amount of Army Reserve Training Days (ARTDs) within a financial quarter could equate to an academic credit towards your degree (incentivising and enabling students to provide greater capability). A financial incentive similar to the Defence Home Ownership Assistance Scheme (DHOAS) could also be considered – where completion of an amount of ARTDs or years of service equates to a dollar-value reduction in students’ HECS debts.
The return of university students to university regiments could also support the re-introduction of the Ready Reserves Scheme (which was originally focused at university students). On completion of 12 months of fulltime service they could be posted to a university regiment, allowing them to complete study while fulfilling their obligation to provide higher capability and shorter-notice service than traditional reservists.
The DSR (11) also calls for more recruitment in key technical and specialist trades such as cyber, engineering, and space. With STEM degrees comprising over 20% of university enrolments, Army could not only increase short-term capability by employing STEM students as reservists in university regiments while studying, but guarantee longer-term specialist capability through their retention once graduated, and subsequent employment in technical fields.
This could diversify and broaden the ADF’s specialist skills pipeline, which is currently largely dependent on the Australian Defence Force Academy (ADFA) – offering a narrower range of degrees and research opportunities compared to public universities.
This article doesn’t propose an all-out militarisation of university campuses, nor does it suggest a return to national service. It also doesn’t propose the demolition of our current university regiments. Rather, it proposes we move away from a one-size-fits-all approach to Reserve capability in order to efficiently target specific populations. The success of this tailored approach is already evident in Army’s Regional Force Surveillance Group (RFSG), which employs large numbers of Indigenous Australians as reservists to harness their intimate local knowledge in remote Northern and Western Australia. Regional Force Surveillance Units (RFSUs) have tailored their structure to best support their members – offering pre-recruit programs, a tailored RFSU Recruit Course, an RFSG-specific Employment Category Number (ECN), and running local community engagement programs.
The success of RFSUs lies in their ability to harness an underutilised population with unique capabilities to increase and diversify Army’s capability. In the same vein, university students represent an underutilised population with a unique capability. They may not have intimate local land knowledge, but they do offer unique short-notice flexibility, increased availability to serve, and significant potential for incentivisation and future retention through tertiary institutions.
The DSR has established a clear mandate for the the revisiting of past programs, and the adoption of an “innovative and bold approach” (11.2) to recruitment. Faced with serious internal and external labour force pressures, Army is presented with an underutilised population of potential workers, with greater availability and flexibility than employed reservists. Facing similar issues, corporate Australia has seen the same opportunity, and adapted to harness it. We must do the same, or risk being left in their dust.
The Reserve Uni Regt may be better placed to host SERCAT 7 direct SSO under grads, where they could undertake training blocks. At present, we abandon them during under grad study, given them six-week officer training, fail to integrate them into a GSO dominated environment (often as a CAPT), set them up to fail then wonder why they rapidly become depressed and exit. I know three leaving shortly for this reason.
One of the key findings was around "age". Not in terms of how old you are in years, but in terms of where you are relative to study and employment. In real terms from roughly 2001 to 2018 the average age of OCDT's enlisted/appointed had increased by over 2.5 years. I attributed this to board conservatism. This was due to a counter observation where a particular SO1 Selections and Appointments gave clear advice about addressing conservative bias lowering that periods outcome by an average of 2 years.
That 2 to 2.5 years, evolved slowly over 18 years and lowered officer training completion outcomes as the entry age increased. However, given the age moved from roughly 18 to 21 this can hardly be attributed to cognitive or physical outcomes, all of which biologically are typically improving in this window.
Instead, what was observed is that as the later requirements of training increased, Reserve workforce found themselves in conflict between gaining a full-time job on transition from study to full-time employment vs the demands of TB4 & TB5.
The net was, that it wasn't really about age, but about time and the demands of various transitions in life. When the same analysis was placed over an age bracket of 26-28, we found similar conflict with changing relationship status (getting married and to a lesser extent having children).
What was the solution? In the analysis for the early age bracket it was clear, in fact almost crystal clear. Selection board should be seeking to select people younger, should be accepting risk (associated with people still developing skills) and where possible we should be recruiting from the ranks of 1st year students wherever possible, so that they can reach a point of capability outcome that will allow continuity of service through life's various points of transition.
For the record soldier ECNs were examined with similar results for RAE (similar training time to officer training), and slightly lower correlations for ECNs with shorter training time.
The bottom line, no different to SERCAT 7, lets target our recruitment early to gain maximum advantage of not conflicting with major life events.
Economically speaking, the training of an ADF member is an investment in human capital. The organisation foots high upfront costs incurred to train and equip the member, and the 'returns on investment' only begin once the member starts performing their job role, gradually increasing as the member accrues knowledge, skills and experience. Theoretically, there is a 'break-even point', where the value of the member's total contribution equals the costs incurred to train them - this would be roughly the ROSO date for SERCAT 7.
If the ADF fails to retain them until this point (ie they do not complete training, or depart early in their service), then the human capital investment is a net loss - translating to a net reduction in capability. Because of the nature of reserve service, members cannot be 'locked in' with a ROSO to guarantee they will contribute net positive capability.
The data shows that some 'investments' are riskier than others. A 27 year-old OCDT is statistically less likely to complete their training than a 21 year-old. Trainees on full-time contracts (eg. GAP Year / Full-time Army Reserve Officer programs) are less risky again.
So yes, recruitment (and the Army Reserve, eg. University Regiments) should be well targeted towards demographics that have better prospects of completing training and generating positive capability.