One danger facing the Navy today is the prospect of neither attracting nor keeping enough people to man the pulling oars. To prepare to counter such an exigency, we must answer one key question: What is the allure of service in the military?
Generally, the services' recruiting and retention efforts have reflected a marketplace philosophy, focusing on educational opportunities and redressing compensation shortfalls. This is an effective start, but now we must identify new tools for attracting and keeping the right people and, most important, expand our strategy beyond monetary inducements to articulate the real, vibrant allure to service in the Navy.
Complementing the Current Strategy
The Navy today is working to make military service more attractive. The Secretaries of Defense and the Navy, along with the Chief of Naval Operations, are leading the charge, with programs to improve the way we live, work, and fight. Early reports suggest that this strategy is working—the Navy met its recruiting quota throughout 1999, a significant improvement over 1998.
In February 1999, the Senate overwhelmingly approved the Soldiers', Sailors, Airmen's, and Marines' Bill of Rights. The bill authorizes a 4.8% pay raise in 2000, allots bonuses of up to 10.3%, and improves pension benefits. It also adds more educational aid under the Montgomery GI Bill, creates 401(k)-style savings accounts, and provides $180 per month to as many as 10,000 low-ranking service members who are eligible for food stamps.
Our service leaders, both civilian and military, are acting boldly and delivering on their promises. But improved compensation alone will not get us past the daunting challenge we face. Money is important. but it is not the most important element in a winning strategy, Tailored to a new era, our recruiting initiatives must be expanded to:
- Get the right stimuli in the right format to the right people
- Localize our heritage through community recruiting
- Transform our work paradigms
- Communicate that values add value
These complementary efforts must be geared to the ethics of the emerging millennial generation. We will need new tools to engage and educate this audience, to bridge
These complementary efforts must be geared to the ethics of the emerging millennial generation. We will need new tools to engage and educate this audience, to bridge the gap between today's youth and a noble military heritage that can lead them to a life of consequence.
Who Are the "Millennials"?
According to a recent UCLA and American Council on Education survey of 250,000 college students, there is reason to believe that military service will appeal to today's young Americans. This study suggests that high school seniors and college freshmen are more conservative than is generally believed. They seem to want politics to matter; they embrace volunteerism, drink less than their contemporaries in the 1970s and 1980s, and are less inclined to engage in casual sex. Bill Strauss, author of Generations, believes that these kids "are developing a sense of personal responsibility. They believe that character matters in leadership. They'll come to resemble the GI generation (1901-24), who were raised in the 1920s, which is similar to the 90s in the sense of moral decay." All of these trends indicate a mind-set and a degree of self-discipline that are compatible with military service.
Social forces are influencing these service-- eligible age groups in ways that should make our task easier. But we can miss the boat if we fail to adapt to the emerging work ethic that also characterizes the millennials. An ongoing on-line survey of 3,500 young technical workers sponsored by The Washington Post offers some interesting insights. In a ranking of perk preferences, hard cash came in seventh. As seen in Table 1, flexibility, training, and other benefits are seen as more important than money.
Bruce Tulgan, founder of a company that researches the working lives of the emerging generation, concludes that the top nonmonetary rewards include:
- Control over work schedule
- Training opportunities
- Exposure to decision makers
- Credit for projects
- Increased responsibility
From this profile, we can begin to tailor our strategy to two distinct objectives—recruiting and retention.
Right Stimuli, Right Format, Right People
Today, all the armed services' recruiting efforts are aimed at the population's 37 million 17-27 year olds. We are shooting at the wrong target.
Our efforts should start with junior high school students, the 12-14 year olds. We are not talking just about Junior ROTC. although this is one underutilized program to reach this important segment. What is needed is an educational thrust that stresses the value of a life of consequence—an endeavor that enriches the human condition at the local, regional, or national level.
The primary themes for recruiting should be:
- Stressing national service
- Encouraging volunteerism
- Achieving personal goals and ambitions
New tools can assist in advancing this approach. Technology and the internet are transforming many aspects of our culture; they can be used to enhance recruiting, too. Imagine, for example, an electronic "gameboy" or an e-comic book that would help to educate seventh graders on the virtues of national service and volunteerism as they begin to form opinions about college or military service. Imagine a recruiting kiosk built around an inexpensive internet-based bulletin board in the nation's 36,000 high schools, colleges, and universities that links those unique communities to real people who have served and excelled in military service to their country. Finally, imagine linking some of these new tools with traditional methods of recruiting to reinforce a value-based philosophy as opposed to a market-based one. It is an affordable and logical expansion of our existing initiatives.
On the retention side, a refined message is needed. Building on recruiting themes, a strategy for this group should emphasize:
- Educational opportunities
- A transition from "looking back at our heritage" to "pulling up the next generation"
- Significantly increased responsibilities
Community Recruiting
The Navy needs to recruit about 56,000 young men and women annually for the next several years. In the United States, there are approximately 26,000 high schools, 6,000 community colleges, and 4,000 colleges and universities. The obvious question is how to reach out to these 36,000 separate talent pools. More recruiters and bigger advertising budgets are not the sole answers.
We can attract people from each of these talent pools if we can show them that military service is an attractive option, and the best way to do that is to localize our heritage. We are quiet heroes and competent leaders. We embody important values. We inculcate high standards. That is our heritage, and students need to see that someone just like them—from their hometown, their school, their community—chose this path and succeeded. We need community recruiting that involves present and former service members, as well as the more traditional methods.
Community recruiting is a multifaceted endeavor involving a wide variety of organizations and individuals who see military service as an admired and respected form of national volunteerism. The scope of this approach should vary by community to reflect local heritage and aspirations.
Transforming Our Work Paradigms
Military "infotechies" share many of the same inclinations and desires as their counterparts in industry (see Table 1). Our expanded retention strategy could embrace many of the perks that have appeal in the civilian businesses that compete with us for our talent, including:
- Telecommuting one day a week to the ship in port or shore-based headquarters
- Collaborative organizations with greater access to decision makers and more creative problem solving
- Expanded education and training opportunities
- One-year sabbatical at half-pay to get recharged and revitalized
Aside from the tangible perks the military might offer, there are other factors that motivate service members to stay in:
- The chance to lead at a young age
- Accountability and responsibility
- Tradition
- A sense of accomplishment and pride
- Teamwork
- A sense of belonging
- Equal opportunity
- Growth
- Adventure
- Fun
We must never lose sight of these enduring qualities of military service that help to keep the allure alive. They must continue to be essential elements in our expanded strategy to retain our best and brightest people. Combined with new workplace perks adapted from the civilian businesses with which we compete, they will be key to keeping the pulling oars fully manned.
Values Add Value
Values, moral accountability, and personal honor have become increasingly important to young Americans. In this area, no other institution can compete with the military. Ours is a life of consequence, guided by the core values of honor, courage, and commitment. We in the Department of the Navy are heirs to 219 years of proud history in which sailors, chiefs, and officers held to our principles of patriotic duty, often at great cost. In return, we shoulder a sacred responsibility. We are obliged to give to each succeeding generation of sailors the gift of character that has been bestowed on us.
Many young Americans want the gift we have to give. The challenge is to expand the way we communicate the allure of service. to make a compelling case that honor, courage, and commitment still matter and that a life of exploring, belonging, and dedication is a life of consequence.
Admiral Morgan is a surface warfare officer assigned to the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization. Colonel McGinty is now the president of Cambridge Scientific Abstracts, scientific data base and journal publishers in Bethesda, Maryland.