Better communication with the Army’s youngest soldiers has helped guide improvements in barracks life, the senior enlisted leader of Army Installation Management Command said.

The way barracks are designed and outfitted today is better than how they were built in the past because the Army includes input from soldiers. “We have effective communication now,” said Command Sgt. Maj. Jason Copeland.

“Not that we didn’t have that [communication] before, but we’re meeting soldiers where they are, we understand soldiers a lot more, so it’s less dictating, ‘Hey, this is what you’re going to do,’ and more of, ‘Hey, we’re going to provide this,’ ” Copeland said during a panel discussion April 17 at an Association of the U.S. Army Hot Topic on transforming Army installations.

Soldiers also are receiving more education on how to take care of the barracks and services they are being provided, and they are being given more information on the Army’s strategy, what the future looks like and how much the Army can afford to give them with the resources available, Copeland said.

“No one ever does not want to provide a quality of life commensurate to what [soldiers] would have on the outside,” Copeland said. But because it’s the Army, and the mission is warfighting, readiness and lethality, barracks life also is about building cohesive teams, “so they have roommates.”

Modern barracks need to meet soldiers’ needs with services such as high-speed Wi-Fi, said Copeland, who pointed out that soldiers are educated, many are working on college degrees and “it’s not all about gaming, but we have options if they’re into gaming.”

To complement combat training, Copeland said, the Army is providing “adulting and life skills” such as cooking classes that will help with personal advancement, and soldiers receive training in how to spot and report barracks maintenance problems before they become costly repairs.

“It is really and truly phenomenal to see where we were, where we are, and then what the future is going to be, and that's directly linked to retention, that's directly linked to quality of life, to see how the soldiers are grasped into that, and they're learning at the same time,” Copeland said.

David Dentino, acting principal deputy assistant secretary of the Army for installations, energy and environment, said during the panel that the Army is “doing a good job” with blending the old with the new by giving soldiers privacy while keeping them together.

Reassuring soldiers that “this isn’t your grandfather’s two soldiers per room,” Dentino said barracks have no bunkbeds or partitions made of bedsheets. Rather, beds are separated by a partition wall that gives “a modicum of privacy.”

“You can still do your homework, or you can still talk to your girlfriend or boyfriend or whatever you want to do with that modicum of privacy, but you always have that battle buddy there with you,” Dentino said.