The Transition Experience
Once it was established that many participants did not consider their separation from the service organisation to be voluntary, it became important to capture the experience of these individuals during the separation period. Unlike other employment, the process of separation is referred to as transition. This is a formally used term for the military (ADF, 2019) and an informal but applied term for the police and emergency services (Blue Hope, 2019). The term transition is accepted by this group as the process of separating from their service employment and seeking a new job. Therefore, it refers to pre-separation, separation and post-separation processes and timeframes. For the military members of the Australian Defence Force, it usually commences one year prior to separation, involves undertaking a transition seminar (including resume preparation and job readiness support) and, for some, accessing financial resources (correlated to rank and years of service) to assist with resettlement. For the police and emergency services there is no formal transition process, simply a resignation from the employment. For all three service groups there are mechanisms for compensation when workplace injury, physical or mental, is involved in the separation but this can be a long process and take years to resolve. When members of this group refer to transition, they are also often referring to the organisational response to their leaving. That is, they include reference to their experiences with the employer during the transition period. This seems to influence their overall transition experience. Generally, the descriptions of transition experiences are negative. Direct questioning was used to ask the participants about their transition experience.
In normal employment, should an employee choose to leave, they issue a resignation with the requisite amount of notice, are provided with their payout benefits, such as outstanding leave, and terminate their employment. This is a similar process whether the employee or employer issues the termination. In some circumstances redundancies are payable. Few other employment sectors use the term transition when someone resigns and seeks new employment. So why is the term transition used so heavily for these service groups? None of the participants could verbalise nor explain why the transition process was in place for their organisation, nor could they explain why the term transition was used for their separation when it is not used for other employment sectors. They did, however, relate to the term and agreed that their separation process was a transition (Schlossberg, 2011) and that it was different to any other jobs they had held. Few could explain why this was the case.
One of the negative aspects of having a transition process is that it places unrealistic expectations on the employer to support the employee once they resign. This is not a normal requirement in the labour market. Skye declared ‘…the Navy just don’t set you up for when you leave’, while Paul explained
I think the transition, and I can only imagine, the transition for people who have recently done active service in a war zone has a very, very, very different set of issues to anything I would raise or anybody who’d done you know 20 years police work would say. I think it also depends on the circumstances in which they leave the police force. I think people leave because they can’t [stay], it’s too traumatic for them. And I had the most, to me the most respect I had was not for the smartest guy I met, it was for the people who suffered the most doing the job.
Paul also stated, ‘From the organisation that they gave everything to at a cost that they can never be repaid for, I mean that’s a terrible thing to have to try and manage your way through’. Many participants referenced this point, that the organisation owes them more on transition than what is currently offered. This mentality is well established throughout the data, yet there is little conscious awareness amongst any of the participants as to why this may be.
The participants generally considered a level of responsibility lay with the organisation to help them transition successfully out of the service employment and into other work. They did not specifically hold the organisation responsible for obtaining a new job for them but stressed the fact that they were not ready to face the world outside the service organisation and needed better support to make this change with less stress. The reasons why the participants tend to hold the organisation responsible for their transition issues are twofold. Firstly, many of them have work-related injuries, physical or psychological, that require attention by the organisation during separation. Secondly, the individual connection to the service organisation is encouraged through training and skill development in a hegemonic masculine environment consolidating an identity that is hard to discard post-service. The participants explained that both these responsibilities were poorly met by their service organisations. Charles explained
…they just cut you loose into the wind as soon as your career is over. Oh they’ll say you know we’ve got to transition assistance scheme, it’s utter bullshit. It’s grossly inadequate at best, you know it’s a few thousand dollars here or there. Honestly it was absolutely worthless to me.
Walter reported ‘the transition period was quite straightforward, pretty, pretty good. You know you get exit interviews and all the rest of the stuff’, but Raymond explained ‘once I had discharged I got, I got the real feeling that I was sort of by myself’. Skye explained that it was the lack of translation of her skills from military to civilian that made the transition difficult. She stated
But the Navy just don’t set you up for when you leave, they say that, you know they give you these counselling interviews at the end of you know when you put your discharge in saying oh look these are all the things out here, these are the resume places to go, but they don’t actually give you the pieces of paper to say well done, now you can have that and you can go and apply for something because you are qualified, because you’re not.
Although Walter’s transition was smooth, he had similar issues with the translation of skills, explaining
The thing I struggled with probably the most was when you know the qualifications like you know can you please show us this, can you show us that and you’re like well I’ve got this, I’ve got that, yes but you know do you have a certificate, I struggled. And probably the bit that I hated the most trying to get that sort of understood.
Lucy noted that
when I, when I did put my discharge in and was going through all that process, it did feel very lonely. Like I didn’t feel like I had a lot of support and in actual fact, I felt like I got more from [outside support organisation] than I did from the organisation that I had given 10 years to.
Many participants believed their time in service was a sacrifice that required some sort of recompense or recognition from their service organisation. The work of Higate (2001) is influential in this area and his suggestion that masculinity, identity work and continuity impact on the transition process for the US military is supported in this current study. Schmaltz’s (2011) suggestion that change management practices would benefit those transitioning from the military with injury and Gill’s (2002) suggestion that service members in general would benefit from being adept to change are also both supported by this current study. However, the literature on transition processes for the US and UK military does not address organisational responsibility (Ahern et al., 2015; Brunger et al., 2013; Higate, 2001). This is touched upon in the studies of hegemonic masculinity (Connell & Messerschmidt, 2005), but in the context of transition, the move from the service organisation remains the responsibility of the individual as it does in other forms of employment. The fact that the participants in this current study place the responsibility on the organisation is an indication of their lack of understanding of what is contributing to their transition issues and confusion over who should be responsible for fixing these problems. Charles states
for a start, transition is a misnomer, it’s not a transition, you just drop off a cliff. You know once you’re out of the military, you are gone. Yep it’s a yawning chasm that you just fall into. And then it took me quite a while to find a job, mostly because of injury…
However, Warwick demonstrated an understanding of the realities of employment transition, stating ‘no workplace trains you for a career in another place’. He suggested that the issues could be avoided if the service organisation explained the potential problems on separation at initial commencement. He explained
…we need to start, we need to transition our people to civilian life when they first move in and make them know straight away that if you want to have civilian qualifications then you’re going to have to supplement your workplace training with outside training,
but also reminded all service employees that
…what we have to remember…is that the military is training you for them to employ you, not for the civilian world to get someone that’s been trained for nothing.
Warwick was the only participant who had a realistic understanding of the organisation’s role in the separation of its employees. The ADF offers transition seminars that are designed to link its separating members with services that will help them transition to the civilian world. This includes support for medical issues, resume preparation, and some advice around pursuing employment. The military participants view this transition process as inadequate at best. As recently as July 2019, the ADF through the Department of Veteran Affairs, now offers more comprehensive medical treatment for separated members to resolve ongoing health issues for its former personnel. The participants from police and emergency services describe no transition support when exiting their organisations. As is normal labour market practice, their resignations or medical terminations are processed, and they leave following the normal notice period.
For some long-term officers, in both of these service groups, there is sometimes a celebration of their service and the issue of a plaque reflecting their time in the organisation, but no participant in this study experienced this on exit. The unique factor here is that the participants have high expectations of the organisation’s performance when they leave which is unrealistic in any labour market. As Warwick acknowledged, any workplace organisation is only responsible for training and preparing their employees for the job they are employed to do, they have no existing responsibility to train and prepare them for external jobs. However, there are several factors that complicate the process for former members of police, military and emergency services; all of which arise from the nature of the training in the hegemonic masculine environment (Connell & Messerschmidt, 2005) and their focus on the collective goal (King, 2006). These factors are then further complicated by the presence of physical and mental health injuries and the involuntary nature of the participants’ exits from service.
For these participants, the inability to effectively communicate their skills and explain the way in which they can contribute to a civilian organisation presents a significant challenge. There is no single solution, given that the employment sector is wide and many different opportunities exist. However, there are means by which they can have their skills translated into qualifications recognised in the non-police, military and emergency services workplaces. By translating skills, the individuals from the service organisations are better prepared for recruitment processes outside the service organisation and are better prepared to compete with non-service personnel.
A second negative outcome is that these individuals consider their separation from employment to be a unique process. Participants described viewing themselves as somehow distinct from the rest of society. They verbalise themselves as separating from the service organisation and delving into the civilian world, as if the world they have been living and working in was not that of civilians. The fact that the resignation process is viewed as different to the process in other forms of employment, creates a stronger illusion amongst the individuals that their experience of leaving one job to go to another is different from mainstream employment practices.