It doesn't matter if we're the best paid military in the world or the worst. We're not competing for people against other militaries.
What matters is how well we're paid relative to the other employers in Canada. You know, those ones that oh so many of our personnel are leaving us for because they pay better? If we want to stop the bleed, we should have been adjusting compensation so that people getting out would be taking a pay cut, not getting a pay raise if they were to take the training that we provided them and used it elsewhere.
Unfortunately, TB's attitude towards our compensation was the complete opposite, primarily because they don't really care about our retention crisis.
Pay has little to do with the CAFs ills as compared to most Industries, your paid pretty well.
There are other factors at play here which some have alluded to:
I'd like to see this too and you would think the CAF would have this...... I think in some trades pay is a problem, in some trades pay is absolutely not a problem in fact for many many people it's the only reason they stay.
Knowing the difference between the two is a lot more effective than providing a modest pay increase across the board that isn't enough for the guy that is already underpaid by comparison to civie jobs, and isn't the reason the overpaid guy wanted to leave.
The idea that there is this panacea of high paying jobs outside the CAF for members to fall in to is a myth.
Vast majority will make less initially when they leave the service. From what I've seen, most members need to go back to School and get some upgrading/new education and it takes a long time to get established.
Myself, I was living out of a Motel surviving on around $1200.00 pay every two weeks while I was doing my apprenticeship for my new trade.
What got me to the next level was I worked hard and put out high quality work, the right people noticed me and then my background as a Military Officer allowed me to advance in to leadership roles.
It's taken off from there but I had to eat a lot of crap to get there though.
I see a lot of people looking to leave the service make some pretty common mistakes:
1. They overvalue their initial earning potential (especially true for Officers)
2. They bring over a lot of bad habits from the Military:
A. Being too humble - we generally aren't very good at selling our skills, underestimate ourselves and are overly subservient to hierarchy.
B. Lack of personal initiative - we generally are used to being told what to do as opposed to just simply taking action.
C. Being overly subservient to rank - There is no such thing really as a rigid career progression model in the Civilian World. Respect doesn't come with rank, you take respect
3. Living off our past experiences - nobody gives a crap that you were Tommy Gunslinger, there is nothing more cringe than an ex-service member who won't let go of the past.
Military people are also generally terrible at things like writing resumes, CVs, etc.
Can only speak for myself but I took a 50% pay cut to leave. Obviously I hoped/palnned for this to be a short-term thing and had things in place so that my pay could exponentially surpass my CAF pay, but it's still not an easy thing to do (a lot of that stuff was done while serving) and I would have much preferred the CAF not be such a shitty place so I could continue making the money I was making as opposed to having take the financial risk of leaving and having it backfire. Losing confidence in leadership is a lot more powerful than money.
I point this out because there's quite a few things the CAF can fix that doesn't cost any money that would offer people more qualitative value than money can buy.
Agreed 100%. The work environment in the CAF is pretty toxic and thankless tbh. I personally think all the damage control is just plastering over the black mold lurking under the surface
