IDENTITY WORK
Individual experience within the service environment
The most significant factor that impacts job satisfaction when post-service is the individual’s (now) fixed identity. In the post-service employment environment, this fixed identify dictates their ability to assimilate into the civilian world and to achieve job satisfaction in their new role….
Post-service identity theory stipulates that service organisations such as the police, military and emergency services create an environment of training and routine that creates an identity connection between individuals and the service organisation. The service organisations have a static environment that creates soldiers for the purposes of organisational needs and demand. In turn, the individuals have a fluid experience of change as members of the service that creates identification with the service role, to the exclusion of other identities, particularly their former civilian or non-service identity. Unique to this group, the identity becomes fixed and does not follow the normal patterns of culture adaptation, causing the individuals not to be able to shed their service identity and adopt new ones in the post-service employment environment.
The participants narrate their career transition with little to no awareness of the identity connection they have formed with the service organisation. There are two levels of influence here: the service environment that perpetuates the connection and the individual experience that is receptive to the connection. Generally, job satisfaction issues for former service personnel in the post-service environment arise primarily from this identity connection with their service role. If they remain connected to their service role persona and are unwilling or unable to re-create themselves in the civilian world, they can experience poor job satisfaction.
“The usual labour market job satisfaction determinants, such as pay, working hours, and career prospects, are not determinants of job satisfaction for this group. However, the absence of these determinants does result in poor job satisfaction.”
VIDEO
Follow along as Dr Kate Martin explains the Individual experience within the service environment image above.
“Without an organisation to blame, individuals have a better chance of improving their own perspectives and taking ownership of their future.”
— Dr Kate Martin
Post Service Experiences
By considering former members of police, military and emergency services to be part of one group of former service members, instead of former members of separate and distinct industry groups, information could be grouped together to help identify the individual issues that impacted post-service experiences, as opposed to organisational issues. For example, the ADF offers a twelve-month transition program for those separating for reasons other than mental health and has post-service transition seminars and processes that are developed to support separation from service. The police and emergency service organisations do not offer the same transition processes. Yet, the military personnel were not any better off in the post-service environment than the police and emergency services members. To say that the ADF transition processes are, therefore, ineffective has some basis however the findings across all participants indicate that each individual needs to participate in identity work, skills transfer and retraining, if necessary, as a solution to the transition issues. Even though we are starting to see them, the findings did not support the introduction of transition programs for police and emergency services to match the military, nor a better transition process for the military; but instead supported the need for new programs to support transitioning service members from all three service groups, that are not connected to the organisation’s themselves.
Shared Experiences
Given the shared experiences, the individual participants will benefit from understanding that their issues post-service are not related directly to the organisation they separated from, but from the type of service they were trained for and commissioned into, and which instilled changes to their individual identity. Therefore, the solution lies with the individual and not the organisation. Un-creating their military, police or emergency services identity is not possible, but imparting an understanding of why they face these challenges and providing tools to support the development of a new identity will be most beneficial. The significance of the finding that the experiences are shared amongst all three service groups lies in the potential treatment options. Without an organisation to blame, individuals have a better chance of improving their own perspectives and taking ownership of their future. This includes their ability to secure future employment and to improve post-service job satisfaction. Further, understanding that the experiences of the three service groups are shared, better informs the allocation of support resources for separated members. At the moment, military get the largest allocation of Government funding for post-service support, and the community as a whole is less aware of the challenges faced by police and emergency services. Publicly acknowledging that former members from all three service groups share the same experiences, and thereafter the same post-service challenges, will help demand an increase in the support services available for police and emergency services.