Beyond Buzzwords and Bystanders: A Framework for Systematically Developing a Diverse, Mission Ready, and Innovative Coast Guard Workforce

Abstract

The U.S. Coast Guard is one the most premiere law enforcement and lifesaving organizations in the world. As one of the smallest branches of the Armed Forces, the Coast Guard often delivers well above its relative workforce size. To effectively execute the multiple missions of the Coast Guard, the performance of every member of the organization counts. Optimizing its workforce, including the personnel composition, is therefore vital to national security. Historically, the Coast Guard has been challenged by a lack of racial and ethnic diversity, relative to its sister branches of the Armed Services. This paper proposes a framework for systematically developing a diverse, mission ready, and innovative Coast Guard workforce. In 2017, Category 4 Hurricane Harvey made landfall and challenged the Coast Guard workforce in how it responded to one of the largest storms ever recorded in history. Using the framework presented in this paper, more than 100 diverse students and faculty at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy - in a ground-breaking innovative first for the service - directly supported Coast Guard hurricane response operations. This paper defines the key elements of the framework, operationalizes the framework in practice, presents a Coast Guard case study, and states implications for applying the framework for the front lines of Coast Guard operations, which the authors believe are scalable. Furthermore, the authors of this paper serve in a unique position, not only as civilian and active duty members of the Coast Guard, but they are also full-time educators at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy charged with developing 50% of the entire future officer workforce in New London, Connecticut.