When it comes to successfully hiring and retaining veterans within your company, there are two phrases you should get familiar with: “military friendly” and “veteran ready.” Being “military friendly” is fairly common–companies make blanket statements about the importance of hiring people with a service background. Being “veteran ready,” however, is a different ballgame. It means integrating the needs of vets from recruitment to promotion and weaving that work into deeper diversity, equity and inclusion efforts.

“Companies that take the time to create a veteran-ready culture are the ones that are able to retain more people and show them there’s a career path,” said Brad Bentley, president of Fastport, a company building partnerships and digital products to accelerate businesses and launch careers, with a focus on veterans. Bentley and Fastport executive Dave Harrison joined From Day One for a webinar I moderated about the most effective ways for employers to hire veterans, as well as retain them.

Harrison has long been invested in ensuring workplaces are welcoming to vets. He and Bentley pointed out that the push for hiring people with military backgrounds came about a decade ago, when unemployment rates for vets were high. “When I first engaged in a robust effort of veteran hiring–this was about 2014–a lot of organizations were doing good things but not working in concert with each other: silos everywhere,” Harrison said. “As things have changed in the modern workforce, and it’s less about education components and more about the soft skill sets, veterans’ value has risen dramatically for a lot of reasons.”

Some companies have misconceptions about hiring veterans: that their skills don’t translate to business applications, or that they necessarily have trouble with adapting to civilian life.  But Bentley and Harrison emphasized that veterans, with the right support from employers, are typically outstanding employees. This workforce, he said, “can be trained, are very adaptable, and will be extremely loyal if you’re loyal to them.”

So what does the right support system look like? Companies should start with basics, like their web presence. “Your web presence will often tell people if you’re veteran-ready or not. If you’re putting up pictures in a military uniform, find someone to vet that, who knows what the hell they should be wearing,” Harrison said.

Once they’ve hired vets, employers need to regularly check in with them, which can be aided with a military-hiring platform that identifies the vets in the workforce. Early engagement is important. “The first six months, they’ll get disenfranchised if the employer didn’t bother to mentor them through that window,” Harrison said. “But if you keep them past six months, the retention rate is insanely high.” Employee resource groups (ERGs) for vets that include a mix of vets and non-vets are also a crucial tool.

Both Harrison and Bentley stressed the importance of apprenticeship, as Fastport helps companies develop apprenticeship programs with veteran support in mind. “Apprenticeship is nothing more than an earn-while-you-learn model that serves recruitment and retention needs as well as performance and safety means,” Harrison said. “It’s about creating a culture and training people in the way you want them to be trained.”

Engagement and retention data is often high for apprenticeship grads. “For people that go through a registered apprenticeship program, the retention numbers are much higher than the general workforce,” Bentley said, adding that 91% of employees that go through such a program are still with the same organization.

If a program is designed well, it can easily expand. “Apprenticeship gives you a vehicle for a whole lot of things you’re not getting and it can usually be scaled very quickly, with little oversight and without re-inventing the wheels you already have,” Harrison noted.

Apprenticeship is drawing significant investment by the federal government, with a recent commitment by the Biden administration. “The number has now hit $1 billion,” said Bentley, “And regardless of what you’re in, the great news is that there are resources out there for you and there are intermediaries for your particular industry.”

After apprenticeship, there’s still an important role to play for leaders in guiding their veteran employees. Managers should have regular check-ins with their employees to understand the support they need, and also be aware that vets are often accustomed to different leadership styles than what’s in the workforce. For example, military members are often given significant autonomy and responsibility, compared with the micro-managing that can occur in some workplaces. Another important component is highlighting career paths and opportunities to grow.

“People may have to come into an entry level job and this is tough for people coming out of the military, especially if they’ve been in for several years,” Bentley said. “It’s important to highlight the career paths and what they can do–it will definitely affect retention.”

Editor’s note: From Day One thanks our partner who sponsored this webinar, Fastport. Read here for more stories on Fastport’s initiatives.

Emily Nonko is a freelance journalist based in Brooklyn, New York. In addition to writing for From Day One, her work has been published in Next City, The Wall Street Journal, The Guardian and other publications.