AD ALTA
JOURNAL OF INTERDISCIPLINARY RESEARCH
Sophisticated model could be found, for example, in France. As
France wants to keep the armed forces young (average age of
solders is 32 years), and the average annual number of
terminated military contracts climbs up to 20 000, it pays
considerable attention to preparing its professional soldiers for a
second career. Since 2009, the Defense Mobility Agency, known
as Défense Mobilité, has been part of the Ministry of Defense’s
personnel policy. It supports the external mobility of military
personnel and strengthens the attractiveness of the military
profession in the labor market, both for public and private
companies. The agency relies on a network of more than 700
members of local military and civilian retraining specialists, with
excellent knowledge of the specific soldiers’ needs and
cooperates with more than 7 000 public and private companies.
The agency monitors professional soldiers, provides them with
professional assistance in the development of their personal,
professional projects, helps them to find training appropriate to
their needs, accompanies them, and connects with employers.
More than 16 000 candidates make use of the agency’s services
each year. The agency has its headquarters in Paris, 6 regional
centers, 57 local offices (52 in France and 5 overseas), 1
retraining center for officers, 1 military training center and 1
unemployment center. The agency provides its services on the
principle of equality, regardless of rank or function in the
military.
A similar approach can be followed in the United Kingdom,
where the Career Transition Partnership (CTP) project is created
in collaboration with the Ministry of Defense of the United
Kingdom and Right Management Ltd. company. It provides
services to outgoing soldiers two years before and two years
after their release to find further employment opportunities and
prepare them for professional growth. It has helped more than
200 000 soldiers coming from all kinds of troops. Within the
United Kingdom, the company uses 9 contact centers, and 1 is in
Germany. The company also actively works with employers
interested in former soldiers as potential employees and connects
them together. More than 14 000 soldiers are released from the
armed forces every year in the United Kingdom. Assistance is
provided to everyone, regardless of the rank or length of service,
but the assistance level varies according to individual criteria.
Initial contact takes place through registration on the project web
portal.
Another good example is Germany, where around 10 000 - 15
000 soldiers terminate their military contract every year. A
special educational institution, known as the
Bundeswehrfachschule, and career agency, known as the
Berufsförderungsdienst, play an important role in preparing a
soldier for civilian work. The agency employs approximately 1
000 civilian specialists at 46 offices across all military districts.
It provides planned and systematic preparation for a job change,
starting from basic military training and lasting throughout and
after military service [16].
Poland, where around 5 000 soldiers are released from the armed
forces every year, also takes care of soldiers and their second
career. The core of the integration of soldiers into the labor
market is a system based on the cooperation of specialized
institutions, so called Professional Activation Centers, known as
Ośrodki Aktywizacji Zawodowej, located in eight cities:
Warsaw, where the headquarter is located (14 employees),
Bydgoszcz, Gdynia, Krakow, Lublin, Olsztyn, Szczecin and
Wroclaw (5 employees each). In 2007, the Ministry of Defence
of Poland took action aimed at implementing the relevant
legislative changes to implement the system approach to
preparation of soldiers for a second career. This field is currently
listed in at least eight normative legal acts. All soldiers with the
exception of persons who have renounced Polish citizenship,
have been deprived of their service due to a serious disciplinary
offense or a criminal conviction to an unconditional prison
sentence are eligible for labor market integration assistance.
Ministries of defense of all of the above mentioned countries
usually provide individual career advice related to job search
assistance, conduct seminars to acquire necessary skills to find
employment in the labor market and organize job fairs where
military representatives meet with employers from civilian sector
interested in hiring former soldiers. Soldiers are offered the
possibility of further education with certification, applicable in
the civilian sector, or preferential job placement in the public
sector. Beside this, ministries and ministerial agencies designed
for this purpose provide other means of care such as operation of
special job portals, financial assistance or special leave in order
to ensure sufficient preparation for a second career. The
preparation usually starts 2 years before the termination of the
military service and continues even after it.
The Czech Republic that has been building a career soldier
system since the beginning of 2005, should also deal with the
systematic preparation of soldiers for the transition to civilian
sector. It needs to be secured, especially concerning the fact that
the Czech Armed Forces releases and will continue to release
soldiers of working age (about 1 000 soldiers with an average
age of 36 years every year), and also in connection with the
priority measures of the current conception of the construction of
the army that aims at increasing the attractiveness and
competitiveness of the military profession, the application of a
career management system in personnel management, and
creating appropriate prerequisites for the use of the skills of
soldiers after the termination of their service. The study is,
therefore, very topical.
3 Research objective and methodology
Twenty semi-structured interviews lasting from 30 to 120
minutes were conducted in order to find out the information
concerning the preparation of soldiers of the Czech Armed
Forces for a second career. The following research question was
asked: What is your opinion on the current form of preparation
of soldiers for a second career in the Czech Republic? The
method of deliberate, quota selection was used for the selection
of respondents. The criterion was a job position at the field of
human resources management within the Ministry of Defense of
the Czech Republic, at war veteran associations and companies
involved in implementation of projects of the European Social
Fund to support the employment of war veterans. During the
interviews, a record sheet was used, and a non-directive style of
interviewing was applied.
In order to verify the obtained expert testimonies, additional
qualitative research was carried out and distributed via an
electronic questionnaire to a target group of former professional
soldiers of the Czech Armed Forces whose contract terminated 1
- 3 years prior to the research. The research was attended by 313
former professional soldiers of all ranks, most of them in the
rank of Corporal, Sergeant, Master Sergeant and Colonel. 90%
of the interviewees were men, 10% women, half of them having
secondary education with a school-leaving certificate, half of
them a bachelor’s or master’s degree. The length of military
service was for 8% of respondents up to 5 years, for 14% of
respondents 5 - 10 years, for 19% of respondents 10 - 15 years,
for 24% of respondents 15 - 20 years and for 35% of respondents
more than 20 years. To find an employment in the civilian sector
took to almost a quarter of the respondents more than 6 months.
7% of respondents were not employed at the time of the
research. The research question for this part of the research was
the same: What is your opinion on the current form of
preparation of soldiers for a second career in the Czech
Republic? The specific open questions focused on the kind of
assistance Ministry of Defense provided the respondents before
leaving the army, their satisfaction with the offer of retraining
courses, and the issues encountered during the integration into
the labor market after leaving the army.
The answers of the respondents of both parts of the research
were processed using an inductive coding strategy. After the
reduction of the first text of the respondents’ answers, the
subsequent open coding and categorization of terms was used.
The findings were summarized and served as an input for the
SWOT analysis.
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