The Coast Guard has been around since 1790 and is part of the Armed Forces in the United States but falls under the Department of Homeland Security instead of the Department of Defense. The Coast Guard is unique in that it is the only service that has both military and civil authority and balances the eleven missions defined in Title 6 of the United States Code -468 (Title 5 U.S.C., 2014)):
• Ports, waterways, and coastal security
• Drug interdiction
• Aids to navigation
• Search and rescue
• Living marine resources
• Marine safety
• Defense readiness
• Migrant interdiction
• Marine environmental protection
• Ice operations
• Other Law Enforcement (fisheries, etc)
It is made up of over 40,000 men and women, active and reserve members that …show more content…
There is continues push to improve our services and products by improving our members that most organization consider the back bone of their institutions. A large part of an organizations budget is made up of personnel costs. The military is not different, one-fourth of the military’s budget is made up of personnel compensation (Always Read, 2014). With such a large part of an organizations budget and the driving force behind each organization you can see why senior leadership places a large emphasis on growing its people to be better leaders and employees. In fact “U.S. spending on corporate training grew by 15% last year (the highest growth rate in seven years) to over $70 Billion in the US and over $130 Billion worldwide (Bersin, 2014). Figure 2 from Josh Bersin’s February 2014 article at Forbes.com, shows a substantial increase of spending for training in the corporate world from 2010 to …show more content…
As new developments occur, the Coast Guard senior leadership must decide in a shrinking budget environment, what will be the highest priority and adjust the focus on that missions at hand. In 1996, there was a Workforce Cultural Audit completed and the Coast Guard Commandant addressed the need to improve its leader’s skills in the officer corp. Following that report a Junior Officers Needs Assessment working group was formed in order to determine the baseline needed to develop our leaders using the Human Performance Technology methodology by looking at the desired outcomes, actual state, gaps, root causes and solutions. The instruments used included surveys of the Coast Guard junior officers and their supervisors, review/analysis of documentation (statutory, industry, policy), one-to-one interviews with senior leadership and personnel of each level in the service. At the end of their work, the Junior Officers Needs Assessment working group identified 150 Knowledge, Skills, Attitude and Abilities that junior officers must have in order to succeed in their job. They then identified the gaps and causes, recommending 38 interventions in order to close the gap. Of these recommendations a more robust