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The U.S. Army and the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) collaborated to further the goals of the Army Unemployment Compensation for Ex-Service Members (UCX) Claimants’ Initiative; these goals were to (1) create strong collaborative partnerships among the unemployment insurance (UI) system, the public workforce system, and the three components of the Army (active, Reserve, and National Guard) to support the rapid reemployment of UCX claimants; (2) improve data sharing to better understand UCX claimants and their outreach and service needs; and (3) increase outreach, exposure to jobs, and reemployment strategies for UCX claimants that combine existing resources with innovative service delivery approaches. Each of the four states that received pilot grants from DOL—Georgia, Illinois, North Carolina, and Texas—formed a team of partners from various agencies and proposed pilot projects and data sharing improvements to be implemented between July 2012 and June 2015 with $750,000 in federal grant funding.

To broadly inform efforts to expand reemployment strategies for veterans, Mathematica Policy Research (Mathematica) evaluated the implementation and outcomes of the initiative to identify lessons learned and promising practices among the grantees’ exploratory strategies. The final evaluation design included (1) an implementation analysis, (2) an outcomes analysis for the Georgia grantee, and (3) an analysis of the feasibility of data linking based on an innovative data-sharing project between Georgia and the Army. DOL selected the combination of analyses to provide a multifaceted assessment of lessons learned and promising practices, goals achieved, and the extent of participation and endorsement by relevant partners, and to describe other topics of interest, such as how veterans receive services and how the veterans’ priority of service (POS) requirement is applied in local American Job Centers (AJCs). The implementation analysis is the focus of the report.

In this report, Mathematica used qualitative methods to address research questions related to implementation, identify factors that shaped states’ implementation experiences, and draw lessons that the grantee states and others can use to inform future approaches. This report describes each state’s UI and workforce program operations, contextual factors that influence those operations, data-collection and data-sharing practices, services and outreach to UCX claimants and other veterans, and partnerships and procedures developed in implementing grant activities. Also detailed are challenges that states encountered during implementation and the methods they used to overcome those challenges to convey lessons learned and promising practices. The main body of this report contains a cross-state analysis capturing both the diversity of efforts and outputs and common experiences across states. Appendices document in detail each state’s activities and experiences.

Research Questions

• What collaborations and partnerships among the UI system, the public workforce system, the three components of the Army, and other organizations that serve UCX claimants have been established through this initiative?
• What aspects of these partnerships seem to have been particularly successful?
• What challenges have been encountered in these partnerships?
• What data-sharing strategies have been implemented across federal, state, and local programs as a result of the initiative?
• To what extent can administrative data be consistently and effectively linked across multiple workforce systems and to Army data?
• What are the challenges to and opportunities for implementing future data-sharing initiatives?
• How are transitioning service members brought into the workforce system?
• What challenges do transitioning and ex-service members face in understanding UCX eligibility and filing procedures? What outreach strategies appear to address these challenges?
• To what extent are state grantees evaluating implementation of their grant strategies and objectives?

Key Takeaways

• The social media campaign developed by Illinois covered multiple platforms, directed targeted viewers to well-designed resources, and incorporated tracking metrics to measure results.
• Military skills translation and resume development are two areas widely recognized as being of critical importance to the reemployment of veterans. Texas, Georgia, and Illinois have adopted or developed software and tools for use in these areas which allow veterans to work independently or with staff to better connect with civilian employers, both on paper and in person. In addition, the skills translation software may be used by employers to create job postings that are tailored to veterans with particular skill sets by using military terminology.
• Some grantees are connecting staff with transitioning service members on post or through Warrior Transition Units early in their transition in an attempt to ease that process, provide personalized services, and minimize any periods of unemployment. Grantees widely agreed on the importance of reinstituting some form of integration with the transition assistance program (TAP). For now, staff on post in Texas position themselves near the TAP classroom so they can connect with attendees and offer their services. In Georgia, another pilot program has allowed staff to present in TAP sessions.
• Both North Carolina and Georgia observed benefits of their reemployment eligibility assessment (REA) programs for UI recipients who participated, and used grant funds to refer all UCX claimants to REA.
• Georgia and the Army are sharing data to create a merged file of unemployment compensation, wages, workforce services, and military data to answer research questions related to veterans’ employment and service experiences over time. Texas has created an image database of DD-214s, the certificate of release from active duty, to use in outreach and service delivery.
• Finally, Georgia, Illinois, and Texas have all enhanced intake forms, triage tools, signage, processes, and/or policies in response to the refocusing guidelines in Training and Employment Guidance Letters 19-13 (DOL 2014b) and 20-13 (DOL 2014a) to improve services to veterans in AJCs. These enhancements are intended to ensure that veterans with significant barriers to employment are correctly identified and routed to services and that veterans and others eligible for priority of service continue to be properly identified and served.

Research Gaps

• A number of promising practices arose from the strategies and activities described that are particularly promising or most actionable for further piloting and evaluation for improving veterans’ reemployment approaches. They were: 1. Social media, 2. Military skills translation tools, 3. Resume development software, 4. On-site staff, 5. Reemployment Eligibility Assessment program, 6. Integration with TAP, 7. Data sharing and use of DD-214 data ,and 8. Form and process creation and revision. (page 23)

Citation

Boraas, S., Roemer, G. (2016). Mathematica. Exploring Reemployment Strategies for Army Veterans: Implementation of State Pilots. Chief Evaluation Office, U.S. Department of Labor.

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The Department of Labor’s (DOL) Chief Evaluation Office (CEO) sponsors independent evaluations and research, primarily conducted by external, third-party contractors in accordance with the Department of Labor Evaluation Policy and CEO’s research development process.