Recruit more and control less
It’s not often you get a glimpse into the beating black heart of a modern bureaucracy (or evil incarnate, as I like to think of this particular one), but that’s just what documents obtained by the National Post offer.
They are internal to the Canadian Forces as it prepared for the near-shutdown this month of three more recruiting centres across the country.
The news of the near-closures — in Oshawa, Sydney and Cornerbrook — was first reported, as things military so often are, earlier this week with his usual accuracy by the fine Ottawa Citizen reporter David Pugliese.
And the news is interesting enough: Three years ago, the CF closed 12 recruiting centres, and a year after that, sure as cats kick litter, a report on recruiting revealed just how appalling a job the military does at getting new soldiers into uniform.
Done for the research arm of the Defence Department by the Defence Science Advisory Board (a private-sector group), the report showed the recruiting system was so inept it took an average 166 days for a newbie to be processed.
And now, here we go again, with what were full-time recruiting detachments being turned into “remote processing offices,” which, at least for the next year, will be open only between two and four days a month.
Now, applying online and via social media — the ration- alization for these latest changes is modernization and a move away from bricks and mortar — very likely will be the future for the military.
Online has changed the rules for everything for almost everybody, and there’s no reason to imagine the CF is immune.
The problem is that the CF was so bad at recruiting in the old-school way that it’s difficult to make the leap of faith that it will be any better at it on social media. It is not enough, as newspapers and countless other organizations have learned, simply to open a website, plop up some “content” and wait for the money or people to come rolling in.
What’s more, what the documents reveal is an unhealthy, almost prime ministerial, obsession with controlling the message, soft-pedal- ling the facts, and spinning the press.
There are “media response lines” that emphasize that what the CF Recruiting Group is doing is “consolidating manpower” and “redistributing resources.”
Again and again, the documents say “the detachments will not be closed; rather, they will be intermittently staffed.”
As one puts it, “A key element is clearly communicating that the detachments are not being closed. The strategy must focus on clearly communicating that the detachments will not be closing …”
Don’t kid a kidder: Going from permanently open fulltime recruiting offices to remote processing centres open a couple of days a month (at least until the lease runs out) is a hell of a lot closer to “closing” than to “intermittently staffed.”
The “media lines” say that despite reports the CF isn’t reaching its recruiting objectives, it is “on track” to do so — but the few stats in the documents themselves suggest none of the reserve units in the three targeted cities has yet achieved its quota for 2015 and some aren’ t even close (as of Feb. 25, for instance, the Cape Breton Highlanders had six of the 34 new members it’s allowed).
Since it’s reservists who give the military the biggest bang for the buck, and build the bridges with civilian Canada (sometimes literally), the difficulty so many reserve units are having meeting their quotas is surely an issue worth somebody’s attention.
A “communications approach” document says the issue is merely about “changing the hours of operation.”
It notes, “There is an external perception that a relationship exists between the permanent physical presence of a recruiting detachment and the number of enrollees from the area.” The lack of a permanent physical presence, goes this notion, suggests “less engagement with the local community” and a potential drop in the number of recruits.
“Although there is some anecdotal information to suggest this is true,” the document says, “there is no evidence to confirm this.”
Translated, that means what people in Oshawa, Cornerbrook and Sydney may believe is true — that a local recruiting centre where recruiters know the history of and have ties to actual local regiments can do a better job — is probably true, but to hell with that anyway.
Part of the message control is that only those with the recruiting group or public affairs are allowed to talk about the closures.
All the effort and manpower spent to produce communication plans, response lines and media response lines — all of it unmitigated horse manure, of course — would have been far better used to keep the doors in Cornerbrook and the other towns open more than a few hours a month, buying bullets or paying for training exercises for, you know, actual soldiers.
Three years ago, the CF closed 12 recruiting centres