Beyond Yellow Ribbons

By Hannah Rudstam and Wendy Strobel Gower 对于很多人力资源师来说，对于那些退伍军人的招聘以及管理也是一项很重要的工作，因为这些退役的老兵，不乏很多杰出的人才，而社会舆论对退役军人就业问题的关注也使得很多企业在招聘时候对于退役军人敞开了大门，然而战场上的一些经历却使得这些昔日战士们经受着很多心理问题的影响，那么，作为HR人员，又该如何应对这些可能存在的问题呢？

In a not-uncommon situation, a 27-year-old soldier returned from an extended tour of duty in Afghanistan to his pre-military job at a security agency. During the first week of going back to work, he knew something was wrong. Though he'd made it through his tour of duty with minor injuries, he had seen the deaths of several close friends and had been under constant threat during his extended tour of duty. Back at home, it seemed his life was unraveling; he was agitated, anxious and hyper-vigilant. Going to his doctor, he got a diagnosis of post-traumatic-stress disorder and began treatment. But now he felt he was facing another crisis: What would he do if someone at work found out? Fearing what his boss would do if she found out he was crazy, he did everything he could to hide his diagnosis. In the end, though, this became his career undoing. When his boss started asking about his unexplained absences to attend treatment, he gave her a vague response about needing some time off and just walked out of the meeting. Fearing he would have to tell everyone at work about his diagnosis, he resigned that afternoon. One month later, when his condition had stabilized, he wished things would've gone differently. He ended up leaving a job he was actually very good at and his employer ended up losing an employee who would be hard to replace. For this veteran, and for many others like him, having a disability-inclusive workplace isn't just about pity or even about simple legal compliance. It's about being able to fully contribute their talents in the workplace, it's about their healing and it's about the employers' ability to tap into a valuable source of talent. And, for the rest of us, it's about not repeating the mistakes of the Vietnam era, when veterans with disabilities were largely shunned from work and community life, with all too many sinking into addiction, suicide and homelessness. Is Goodwill Enough? Recently, there has been a surge of goodwill among employers to do the right thing in employing veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. While this goodwill is laudable, we must pose a question: Will it be enough? To a large degree, veterans' workplace issues are disability-workplace issues. A look at some statistics on veterans in the workforce paints the picture: According to the U.S. Census Bureau, there were 9.8 million veterans in the workplace in 2009. More than half of these veterans, or 5.5 million veterans, had a diagnosed disability. Yet, the real rate of disability among veterans is likely substantially higher when the many veterans with under- or undiagnosed disabilities are considered. The Signature Disabilities Two types of disabilities have been widely seen as being signature disabilities for service members returning from Iraq and Afghanistan: traumatic brain injury (TBI) and post-traumatic-stress disorder (PTSD). According to a 2008 RAND study, nearly

20 percent of recently returned veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan screened positive for depression or PTSD. The findings are similar for TBI. The 2008 RAND study found that about

19 percent of soldiers received a probable TBI during their deployment, with more subtle (and more difficult to diagnose) close-head blast-related injuries being the most common. In addition, many veterans have more than one disability, further complicating the picture of veterans' disabilities. Overall, the 2008 RAND study found that 30 percent of returning veterans screened positive for PTSD, TBI and/or major depression. Why are these signature disabilities so prevalent among recently-returned veterans? According to the Invisible Wounds study by V. Williamson and E. Mulhall, published in the IAVA Issue Report in January 2009, several features of the engagements in Iraq and Afghanistan make the situation for these returning veterans unique. Veterans from these engagements are more likely than other veterans to have extended tours of duty and to be deployed more than once. They are also less likely to have the full recommended rest time between deployments. These troops are more likely to be in the National Guard or Reserves, which tend to lack the social safety net of active-duty military life. Also, because of the nature of weaponry used in these engagements, these veterans are more vulnerable to blast injuries, closed-head injuries caused by mortar attacks and roadside bombs -- injuries that are more subtle, more difficult to diagnose and less well-understood than other types of brain injury. HR's Take on the Issue A survey of HR professionals conducted by Society for Human Resource Management in 2009 showed that employers generally had a great deal of goodwill around employing veterans, but had some concerns when considering veterans with disabilities. To build upon this study, the Northeast ADA Center at Cornell University (where we are based) collaborated in the fall of 2010 with the National ADA Network of Centers and SHRM to survey 10,000 HR professionals about their readiness to employ veterans with disabilities. Survey responses from 1,083 HR professionals suggest, overall, that they are largely willing to hire veterans with disabilities and that they see some benefits of having veterans in their workforce. Yet, they are struggling to turn this goodwill into solid HR practices to find, hire and manage the talents of these veterans. Generally, respondents agreed that there were benefits to employing veterans with disabilities, but they also believed there were costs: * 73 percent of respondents agreed that hiring veterans with disabilities would benefit their business;

24 percent were unsure. * 72 percent agreed that these veterans perform as well as other employers;

26 percent were unsure. * Yet, 62 percent agreed that employing workers with PTSD or TBI would require more effort on the part of the employer. * 61 percent of respondents agreed or were unsure whether workers with PTSD posed a threat to others in the workplace. HR Practices and Processes Our findings indicate that, though respondents were making some effort to include veterans with disabilities in their staffing practices, they were largely not using resources specific to recruiting veterans with disabilities. Likewise, though respondents did, for the most part, have in place diversity plans that included disability and veterans, they were less likely to have in place other disability-related or veteran-support practices. Finally, few respondents had direct experience in accommodating workers with either PTSD or TBI. Among the findings: * 38 percent used recruitment sources that targeted veterans;

27 percent used recruitment sources targeting people with disabilities. * Yet, this number dropped precipitously when respondents were asked to indicate whether they had used specific resources, with, at most, 3 percent using any of the recruitment resources named. *

17 percent had hired a veteran with a disability; 83 percent had not or were unsure. * 74 percent had an employee-assistance plan, but only 38 percent reported their EAP had expertise in veterans' issues. * 6 percent had accommodated a worker with PTSD; 2 percent had accommodated a worker with TBI. HR Knowledge on the Issue Though respondents were largely aware of basic issues around disability in the workforce, they reported some knowledge gaps specific to veterans with disabilities. They were largely unaware of recruitment and accommodation resources related to veterans with disabilities and lacked knowledge of how to support workers with