 Vets medallion program here in military in Hawaii. I'm Jay Fidel. This is Think Tech. And we have three guests today, Deb Nakashima from the state and Green Lee from the Fed and Charles Chai from private industry, all dedicated to encouraging the hire of vets, which is what it's about. Am I right? Am I right so far? Okay, welcome to the show all you guys. And let's start with you because, you know, you're the Fed and the Fed is very important in our time, you have federal preemption here on the show, you know what I mean? So, okay, so it's a federal program called the vets medallion award program. Can you tell us what that is and how it achieves, you know, the purpose of encouraging local communities to hire vets? Sure, the hire vets medallion award program, we call it HVMP. Yeah, we do too. My wife and me at dinner, we refer to it all the time. I would think so. Okay, thank you. It's common knowledge. It's the only actual award program of its kind. It's an annual award and it recognizes employers of all sizes who are committed to hiring, training and retaining veterans. Award honors employers investments in recruiting and employing veterans. So that's the basis. Okay, how do I get the award? What do I have to do? What do I have to study? What do I have to, what do I put on my resume that will make me get the award? Well, it's not that complicated. So the award was established by Congress in the Higher American Military Veterans Act of 2017. And so it was established by Congress as an annual award and applications are open every year from January through 30 April. So you have to apply in that timeframe. And then winners are announced every year in conjunction with Veterans Day. The law mandated that no federal tax money could be used for this award. And so there is a small application fee that employers pay when they do apply for the award. So how do you do it? Well, there are eligibility criteria at highervets.gov. Really important to remember, highervets.gov. So no matter your business size or your business type, there are set eligibility criteria. If you meet the criteria, if you apply, you get the award. No further competition. I mean, it can be a lot of them. Sure. Okay, all right. I like that. You can hardly lose. That's right, you can't. So if you meet the criteria, you get the award if you apply. So in general, well, what are the criteria, right? And they vary a little bit, but I'm gonna talk about in general, if you're a small business and you want the gold award, which is the base award, then a company has to have not less than 7% of the employees they hire be veterans or not less than 75% of veterans hired are retained for at least a year. And at least 7% of employees are veterans. So if we're talking about a very small company with 10 employees, we're talking one person is really the... Let me see if I got that right. It's A or B plus C. You got it. All right, okay. And then if there's a higher level award, a platinum award, and that has additional criteria and the bigger your business, the more measures you have to meet to be eligible for the award. But it's all set out at highervex.gov and employer can go look at that criteria and really know pretty much immediately whether or not they qualify for the award. Okay, do I get a check for a million billion? What happens? Oh, well, if you wish, right? But when you get the award, what you do is you get a medallion, you get the thanks of a grateful nation for hiring vets, and then you can use that medallion in your marketing, on your website. When transitioning military members are leaving the active duty service and looking for civilian careers, they go through something called the Transition Assistance Program on all the active duty bases, Department of Labor runs, and we tell them that higher vet medallion employers are veteran friendly employers. So when you're looking for a good employer, a good company to work for, check highervex.gov and see who those employers are because they really can make a difference. And then what else should I tell you about this? I have some questions for you. So yeah, so this was adopted by Congress and presumed signed into law in 2017. That's four years, five years ago already. Has it been successful? A, have people applied and have awards been given? And how many, if you know? And B, has it in fact been encouraged, actively encouraged the hiring of vets? Well, we would like to say yes to all of your questions. So while Congress passed the law in 2017, you know how the bureaucracy moves. So the first year that the award was actually available to apply for was 2019. And each year we've had more and more companies apply and more and more companies be recognized. So I think the first year there was, I'm gonna say around 200. Second year there were around 400. Last year there were around 800. We're just getting out and more and more employers are applying and being recognized. Now, does that improve veteran hiring? I think so. You know, as anything we can do as a nation to show that employers who hire veterans, it's a good thing is really a good thing. And for those federal contractors that might be listening in, one of the things federal contractors have to do is have an affirmative action plan that shows they proactively look to hire veterans. And certainly getting this award is one way that they can show the federal government that they are proactive in hiring. And that would be a point in their favor on federal contracting in general. Yes. An important point, yeah, yeah. It is, it's an important point. One logical thing strikes me though, Anne, you know, you wanna retain people in the military and here you are awarding employers to hire them out of the military. No, no, I misspoke if that was the impression. This has, we do not, no, we don't wanna do that. The award just recognizes employers to hire people who have been in the military who have left the military. Got it. Okay, very, very interesting. I hope you continue the program because there is, you know, I mean, would you say, Anne, honestly, is there a bias against veterans in the business community? Not from my experience. When I go and talk to employers about hiring veterans, at least in Hawaii and Guam, and that's really my area of expertise, employers want to hire veterans. They can't get enough of veterans because they know how to be great team members, but they also know how to lead. So they're followers, they're leaders, they're liable. When they say they're gonna do something, they're gonna do it through. I was telling you before that in my law firm, we always appreciated veterans for those exact reasons that you identified. That is a true statement for most, if not all, veterans. Cause the military does make those things, create those character points that are so important in the marketplace. Let me move to Deb. Is what Anne was saying, I mean, how much of it do you agree with? Oh, I agree with it. The program that I manage for the most part works with our Hawaii National Guard members. So not only are they military members, but they're also out in the community working as civilian employees. So I agree with a lot of what Anne says because they bring a very, very good skill set into any private business employer, whether it's gonna be a federal government employer, a state entity, a private business, the skill set that they bring is very important. And our National Guard members being our, what we call our citizen soldiers are basically military members who live in our community. They don't go anywhere. They stay here in Hawaii. Okay, the National Guard, the state National Guard, qualify, I suppose this is a question that Anne can answer easily, qualify for the award for the higher vets medallion award. Do they? Well, our Guard members, our National Guard members are considered to be veterans. They do serve combat tours of duty. They also serve other missions that will qualify them for veteran status. Such as just coming off these COVID orders. COVID orders was a federal mission. So they have veteran status by being on these COVID orders. So definitely they can benefit from companies and companies can benefit from hiring them. Oh, what about the National Guard itself? National Guard itself, no. They wouldn't apply to be a higher vets medallion program. Because they are the military. They are the military. Yeah, yeah. Well, that's great. So you have an interest in having the private sector hire from the National Guard and thus qualify for the vets medallion award. What do you do in that regard? Anything? Most definitely. So we look for companies that are here locally in Hawaii that are higher vets medallion award winners because we know they are going to be military friendly and our Guard members for the most part are still serving in the service with their one week and a month and two weeks out of the year. So we actively search for companies that are veteran and military friendly and having that higher vets medallion award tells us that they recognize the importance of veterans and the military. You know, Ann, that really sounds like to the extent as any resistance, you know, against hiring veterans, the National Guard here locally, most of the members of the National Guard are local to begin with. And so there would be no resistance whatsoever. I mean, everybody in the package would be delighted, right? To submit the applications and qualify for the award, seems like to me. Sure, if they have National Guard members as their employees, they qualify with those National Guard members. And yes, you know, for us, honestly, Jay, it's a matter of, it's a kind of new award. This is just the third year and getting the word out. It's slowly trickling down, but our... I mean, I think that's just it. Our, I'm gonna say issue and it's not an issue, but our opportunity is how do we best get the word out to Hawaii employers that there's this award, many can qualify, and then they can be recognized and honored for how they serve our nation's veterans. Sure, and they do. But question, you know, for some companies, the 7% rule was at the 70% rule, you know, would be achievable, attainable? For other companies, maybe not. Though, do you consider, or is it written into the law that these percentages will remain? Or will there come a time you think that they'll be adjusted either up or down? I don't know, I can't really speak to that, but it would be something that would be done in the law versus by policy, because the law laid out the criteria. Okay, Charles, let's go to you. You have a role in all of this from the business sector itself. And so what are you doing to advance either knowledge or applications under the Vets Medallion Award program? Are you publicizing it? Are you encouraging employers to apply for it? Are you taking affirmative steps to have them hire vets? Thank you, Jay. Actually, I'm not doing any of those things because... I really scored on that question. Yeah, we're right. Actually, I am doing all those things, but from the end result of what we're trying to do, I myself am a veteran. And so I know what veterans bring to the team. And so what I'm trying to do is trying to match out the skill sets that I know to be as very relevant and valuable on my team with those veterans who bring in their experience to it. For example, my program manager is a retired Marine. He's a logistician. One of the first things that we recently got to be able to do on the Red Hill water contamination pieces is that we were asked to provide bottled water for 80,000 affected family members of population, 25 different locations. And I would not think of anybody else but my program manager to be out there on the ground, figuring out a complex problem of distribution doing it safely and being able to get the resources and the labor to do what we needed to do. And so that is just an underground example of the value of veterans. And so what I typically do is I seek veterans. My default position is looking for veterans who could fill those positions first. And then the higher veteran medallion is really just an affirmation of where we think we are in having enough veterans on the team to do what we need to do. Have you applied for the award? Have you received it? Will you? We received a 2021 higher best medallion and we're reapplying for 2022 as well. And I'll tell you that the value of the medallion for me is that typically these federal programs, it takes about somewhere between six to eight years for it to really get absorbed into and become part of the policy and how it really is effective in the community. I retired back in 2011 and it's been business, small business for about 11 years. And my default position always is look for veterans to fill the positions I need to fill. But because I live here, what I wanted to do was is keep the talent who are either retiring or coming out of the military or, and I've been in partners with DEB on the Hawaiian National Guard piece. I know almost all the senior leaders there as friends and the first chance I get if there's an opportunity to hire a national guardsman and I would do it in heartbeat. And one of the reasons is to retain that talent here and do it locally because a lot of times if a veteran, retiring veteran has a place to work, he rather stops thinking about moving back home because they love this island anyway. And so I'm giving them a reason to stay and when the talent stay in our community becomes better. Oh, sure. There was an article in the paper a couple of days ago about how we lost 12,000 population in the past year. This is very troublesome. We want to offer veterans jobs because they're good employees. And of course we want to keep them here because it's obvious that if they can't get a job, they're gone, gone, gone, gone. That's only logical. So let me go back to you for a moment, and do you affirmatively help companies like Shell's company find veterans? I mean, if he knows somebody, fine, but if he doesn't know anybody, somebody could help him find them. Is there an employment service involved here? There certainly is. I'm so glad you asked. So from the, at the federal level, we provide grants to all states to employ staff specifically to hire veterans and to work with employers on hiring veterans. So each state has those people that we are paying for, we being the federal government, and they work with local employers. Here in Hawaii, the local management information system is called Hironet Hawaii. That's where job seekers can register when they want to find work. You said veterans, right? You talked about that. Not everybody, just veterans. No, everybody, everybody. But a veteran is flagged. A veteran, if they say they're a veteran, they're flagged. Employers register there and they put their job openings. And then there are staff on the ground, boots on the ground that talk between veterans and talk to employers and try to make the match. They're matchmakers, if you will. And then we also have a national program that where the same thing happens, but on a national level where people that we employ go out nationally to employers and help make those connections to state resources when an employer needs people. So usually two or three times a week an employer will be sending something to the national office who then comes to me because they're looking for an employee in Hawaii. And then I send it on to all of my contacts and say, hey, this company is looking to hire. And so it works that way. We also, with the transition assistance program when people are leaving the military, we have something called an employment navigator position. And those people specifically for transition, people that are leaving the military now and their spouses, no matter where they wanna go, they're matchmakers. They say, okay, I wanna go be work in disaster response, if you will, Chels. And I wanna do it in this state. And then they contact employers and try to make those matches for those service members as they're leaving the service. So Deb, are you also involved in the sort of placement process where you try to put people together with companies and so forth? Yes, so Work for Warriors Hawaii is a National Guard Bureau funded program. And we have other collaborative states throughout the United States mainland, but our whole goal is employment services. So think of us as your career counselor for National Guard members. So to that extent, we help them with everything from the beginning to the end. They could be a brand new National Guard member, just finished their basic and their advanced training, maybe just graduated from high school a year ago, looking for a civilian job. And then we will get them all the way up to where they're transitioning out of the National Guard and they still need to find a civilian job. And we help them with looking for a civilian job. So our goal is to make sure that our Hawaii National Guard members are able to support themselves and be financially and fiscally stable so that one, they can stay in the National Guard and two, that they can stay and live in Hawaii. So we are their employment and career counselors. We liaise on with businesses like CHELS. We also do a matching. Just follow up. You follow up, it's not just the hire. No, we follow up. We do check up with them later. And so we follow up with them. We see how they're doing by the same token. We may follow up with the employer to see how the employee is doing. For the Guard member, we are confidential. So their unit does not know maybe if they're unemployed. They come to us. We assist them with finding employment and then we provide follow up services to both them and the businesses that we work with. Well, that's very considerate of you. Well, let me ask you this though. I mean, it's my understanding that a lot of people in the National Guard and the Air National Guard, they're like reserves. In other words, they don't work in the National Guard all the time. They may have time to have a regular job too. I mean, a day job, if you will. So most... Are you going to help people find day jobs when they're already serving in the National Guard? That's what we do. That is my program in a nutshell. We are responsible for finding them civilian employment. That's going to be their 40 hour a week full-time job so that their traditional Guard member duty, their one week in a month and two weeks out of the year is considered their part-time employment. Okay, what about now, you're a state organization. What about, and referred to this, what about the people who are in, or were in military units elsewhere? She covers, what did you say it was, Hawaii and Guam, was it? Yeah, but there are people in the military all over the country, the world for that matter. Do they qualify for your services? Do you help them? Do you hear from them? They do qualify. They do qualify. So part of our mission is to support not only Hawaii National Guard members, but we also support our reserve component members of which Hawaii has a reserve component of every military branch in the state. We also support veterans and we support family members. We also, through our work that we do with the transition assistance programs throughout the state, liaised on a lot of times with active duty members that may be coming out of active duty service. They want to stay in Hawaii. We may need to localize, help them localize a search and we can help them with that also, but we can also provide- What about the homeless? You know, everybody knows there are a lot of veterans. This is so sad and tragic. A lot of veterans leave the service. They have various impediments and they ultimately wind up on the street. And suppose somebody like that walks into your office. Can you help that person? Get a job when that person is homeless? We can help that person. We also liaised on with a lot of the community resources that we have within the local community. So we have other agencies that we can work with. We work with the Veterans Administration a lot of times, but we can make referrals to other community agencies that they may need resources to. I'm really impressed. I'm impressed with what all you guys are doing. Yes, Ann. I just want to tell you about, again, the Federal Department of Labor. We provide competitive grants to organizations in each state that specifically work to provide employment services for homeless veterans. That's their whole goal, their whole mission. So here in Hawaii, we have three grants to do that. Two of the grants go to U.S. vets. One is in Barber's Point and one is in downtown Honolulu. And the third grant is with Catholic Charities. And they're up in Manila. That's great. Let me go to you, Charles. Have you hired? Would you hire? Do you contemplate hiring homeless vets? Your word, yes. But I want to go back and answer your question about the hire veterans and the dying board and how useful that could be. I really think that that will be useful in a future years simply because it really means that the leadership of that corporation or company, whether it's 15 employees like smallest mine or 500 or 1,000, so it will eventually become a mark of someone, a veteran who's looking for someone who appreciates and grateful for the talent that they bring in. I support as one of several of the companies and organizations, a Waimanalo houseless settlement that's out there. And of those, there is a handful of veterans that we used to tent out at Waimanalo Beach that are now in that settlement. There may be different ways that we can help support. Now, I have not yet. I think it's really good that there is a specific homeless veteran program. I have not yet have connected with them, but that's something that that will absolutely willing to do. And of course, what we're talking about here with Ann and Deb, this is the reason why we get connected so that we continue to have this dialogue about, who else can we support and help? Strikes me that companies have veterans in management like yours. Are having another benefit, you know? I mean, I'm a veteran too, you know? And I feel very strongly about taking care of them and making sure the VA takes care of them. Absolutely. Thank you. For me, it says thank you. So it's a psychic benefit. If I'm running a company and I have the ability to focus on veterans, it improves my life. As the manager, it improves my world because I'm, as somebody said, I'm doing national service by hiring veterans. I'm participating even though I'm not in the service anymore. So this is bringing the country together. Is this part of your motivation? Absolutely. I cannot do a few more. And also, I think at the end of the day, what we have is we're just bettering our community. And that's where we need to settle on is whatever that's good for the community, we're there for that. Well, it builds a better community to have a connection with the military. That's what this show is all about. We're trying to explain the relationship of the local community and the military going back to 1850 when the Navy brought its first ship into Pearl Harbor. In any event, you know, we're almost out of time and I wanna ask you guys to, you know, give your final message, takeaway message to the people who are listening, your message about the program, about the mission of the program, about the connection of the veteran community with the local Hawaii community, whatever, whatever you want. And again, you're the federal exemption. So you get to go first. Okay, and I'm just gonna keep it really short so that employers who are interested know. HireVets.gov, it's where the criteria are, the FAQs and the online applications are all there. HireVets.gov, you have to apply by 38 will. Every year. Every year. And the awards are announced when? Veterans Day. Oh, you mentioned November 11th, yeah. Coming soon actually. In my view. Okay, Deb, your words, your message, you wanna leave with people about what you do and about the relationship of what you do and what Anne does. We just wanna make sure that the community knows that we are out there, that we encourage you to empower yourselves by using resources such as ours, by doing research on looking up the HireVets medallion program and just, it makes everybody in the community that much better and stronger. Yeah, I just wonder what happens if the company squeezes under the wire with the 7% and the 70% and all that, and then you have one employee who says, I like this, but I think I'm going back in the service. Too late, already done. Oh, don't say that. Okay, that's good. You get credit anyway. It's a snapshot as of the time you file the application. I like that. There you go. Okay, so it doesn't matter. Okay, Charles, your thoughts to people, message you wanna leave with them about all of this? First, I wanna thank you, Jay, for highlighting some of the work that's going on with Anne and Deb because they're really a tremendous facilitator for helping the veterans. If you were to ask me, what else can we do? I would also add veteran spouses to the program and they'd be recognized because in the Army, we used to say we recruit a soldier, but we retain the family. And so having the spouses who are very selfless sacrifice, there will be pretty amazing. And the employers, especially when it comes to national guardsmen, we are committed to, because when they go and be there for a year, a year and a half for COVID response, that we have something that guaranteed that those valuable team members will come back and have a place to work in our team. And so with all of that, thank you so very much. You guys are great. You know what it's all about. Thank you so much, Anne and Deb and Charles. Really appreciate your time. Thank you, Jay. Aloha. Mahalo, aloha. Thank you so much for watching Think Tech Hawaii. If you like what we do, please like us and click the subscribe button on YouTube and the follow button on Vimeo. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn and donate to us at thinktechhawaii.com. Mahalo.