New Crane Army Ammunition Activity initiative aims to increase diversity, equity and inclusion in hiring

By: Matt Craig, Director of Crane Community Support for Radius Indiana

 

You’ve seen Crane Army Ammunition Activity proudly share its modernization efforts as it prepares to open two new state-of-the-art facilities, and upgrade the way that it keeps the Crane Army family safe on the installation. However, these initiatives are only a part of creating an optimal work environment for its employees. 

Crane Army has also been considering another critical question: How do leaders ensure that the workforce reflects and is prepared for the modernizing landscape of talent management? 

The United States Army’s recent initiative, Project Inclusion, is helping to identify answers. The initiative aims to improve diversity, equity, and inclusion across the force and build cohesive teams. Through this effort, Army leaders have listened to soldiers, Army civilians and family members to identify practices that inadvertently discriminate. 

The Army is pursuing an approach that maximizes every Soldier’s and Civilian’s potential through data-driven talent management approaches and initiatives, such as Project Inclusion, which will help cultivate a culture that infuses diversity across the leadership, provides individuals with promotion opportunities and maximizes the talents of everyone at every level.

While hosted at NSA Crane, southern Indiana’s military base, Crane Army produces and provides essential munitions for American soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines. Crane Army’s  leaders have been holding a series of listening sessions with supervisors to learn how they can improve talent management. 

Over the recent weeks, supervisors have gathered to speak about recruiting, hiring, training, and retention with the ultimate goal of refining the ways that it hires the right people into the right positions. Workforce planning requires effective communication, and the belief that these listening sessions can be a springboard for many new candidates to start a career at Crane Army.

President Joe Biden’s fiscal year 2022 budget anticipates an increase of more than 50,000 full-time-equivalent employees to the federal payrolls next year. This increase is part of concerted efforts to attract young and expert workers to federal service. 

Most of this budget’s push for increasing the labor force across the government is likely to come from programs that target recent graduates and highly-skilled workers in areas like information technology (IT) and cybersecurity. Almost 30 percent of federal employees are older than 55, and 8.1 percent of employees are younger than 30, according to the budget proposal’s analytical perspectives. 

Radius recognizes the value of a workforce with diverse ages, backgrounds, and races. Bringing in new talent to our bases, especially citizens with expertise in rapidly developing fields like IT and cybersecurity, is an essential part of creating the best workforce to serve our warfighters and protect our country.