Our white papers, issue briefs, and articles spotlight areas of improvement for social policies and programs, changing the way we see the world a little bit at a time.
Our white papers, issue briefs, and articles spotlight areas of improvement for social policies and programs, changing the way we see the world a little bit at a time.
Recognizing how youth perceive different types of careers may provide a valuable foundation for understanding how to best promote military career opportunities. Insight’s military and veteran support team conducted this literature review for the Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Services (known as DACOWITS) on perceptions of careers and early career aspirations among the nation’s youth. The review explores youth career perceptions and development, career influences, and strategies and best practices for influencing youth career decisions, both in general and within the context of military service.
Download
Voluntary turnover in the United States is estimated to have cost organizations approximately $536 billion in 2016. Given the costs associated with hiring and training new employees, companies unable to retain key staff fight an uphill battle to remain competitive. This literature review, authored by Insight’s military and veteran support team, describes employee retention trends in the United States and summarizes strategies civilian industry uses to measure and better understand factors that influence retention and employee engagement. It presents an overview of best practices used by civilian industrial organizations to improve retention, including a special focus on caregiver leave and sabbaticals. The report concludes with a synthesis of lessons learned and implications for the military.
Download
As part of their ongoing effort to recruit and retain women into the military service, the Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Services (known as DACOWITS) requested a literature review to identify the gender distribution in selected civilian career field and summarize the strategies, if any, used to recruit and retain women in these fields. This literature review, authored by Insight’s military and veteran support team, reviews the retention efforts for women in the military and provides a detailed discussion of male-dominated civilian career fields and strategies that have been used to recruit and retain women. The report concludes by identifying the pattern of challenges for women in male-dominated career fields and the strategies that have been used successfully to attract and keep women in these industries.
Download
Although all units and positions were officially opened to women as of December 3, 2015, gender diversity in the military remains nominal, especially at the highest echelons of Department of Defense leadership. Some branches have introduced or are considering several diversity initiatives, including efforts to increase diversity in key military development positions. Insight conducted this literature review for the Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Services (known as DACOWITS) to summarize how the Rooney Rule—a National Football League (NFL) policy that requires teams to interview minority candidates for senior coaching and management positions—is being used in the civilian sector to improve diversity in higher level jobs. This report provides an overview of diversity in the military and the civilian sector, describes the Rooney Rule and its effectiveness in the NFL, presents applications in the civilian sector, and identifies ways to increase diversity within organizations moving forward.
Download
While evaluation evidence is the best evidence for identifying “what works,” it is still imperfect. In evidence-based policymaking, the imperfections create a significant risk we will implement programs that do not work, and we will suffocate programs that do—or at least can—work. Numerous factors, including limitations of external validity, an overreliance on p-values and hypothesis testing, underpowered research, and even our intolerance for false positives can lead to incorrect conclusions. This paper discusses various ways evidence-based decisions can still be bad decisions. The paper identifies two trends that can address these shortcomings: the use of Bayesian statistical methods and continuous quality improvement. The paper concludes with six recommendations for strengthening evidence-based policymaking.
Download