It is time to revamp the Navy pay system so that it sends the right message: go Navy, stay Navy, and we'll take care of you and your family!
Sailors do what they are trained to do. And everything they do is training. This is my own personal mantra. I use it to plan ahead, analyze successes, and deconstruct failures. Usually, it's an infallible tool. The key is to realize that everything a sailor sees, does, or otherwise experiences constitutes training. This includes—subtly but powerfully—how the Navy compensates sailors for their efforts and sacrifices. How are we "training" our sailors with our compensation system? What messages are we sending? What messages are they receiving? And do these messages make sense when we are engaged in what the Chief of Naval Personnel calls "a war for personnel"?
I would like to point out a few elements of the Navy's "Compensation Training Plan" that strike me as having what may be charitably called "negative training value."
DJMS Doesn't Make Sense
I know the acronym for the Navy pay system is broken (DJMS really stands for Defense Joint Military System), but then again the system it stands for is broken, too. In my view, the implementation of DJMS in the Navy is a singular failure.
I'm sure everyone has his or her own horror story of mangled pay because of DJMS. On my ship this past year, several sailors received no pay for two pay periods because DJMS considered them to be in an overpaid status because of their selective reenlistment bonus (SRB) payments. When I dug into this, I found that the increased SRB limits weren't factored into DJMS, resulting in the overpaid determination. Heroic bureaucratic efforts (it's an oxymoron, I know, but it almost applies here) by the local personnel support detachment eventually corrected the record, and the sailors were savvy enough to save their SRB payments until they decided how to invest their windfalls. Nevertheless, these sailors still received no regular pay for a month!
So, what the Navy gives with one hand (increased SRB because we need you), it takes away with the other (no pay for a month because we can't be bothered to fix our system.) What other company in the nation would treat their employees this way?
Sea Pay for Everyone
If you asked every one of your shipmates to name the one thing they would change in the Navy if they could, what would be their number one answer? Well, I asked, and the survey says: "Sea pay for everyone!" Initially, I was surprised at the strength of feeling on this issue. But when asked to explain the Navy's rationale for disbursing sea pay only to petty officers and to officers with more than three years afloat, I couldn't. I'm sure an answer exists in a Bureau of Personnel PowerPoint Warfare file somewhere, but the logic is not self-evident to me. Junior sailors and junior officers often work the hardest at the toughest jobs on our ships, yet they can't get sea pay. Regardless of their qualification levels, or their contributions to the crew, they must wait the requisite probationary period that no one can explain to them.
Recruit a Single Sailor Reward a Married Sailor
For reasons lost in the mists of Navy history, married sailors get paid more than single sailors, through a typically Byzantine set of pay and allowances. Married sailors get basic allowance for housing (BAH), no questions asked, regardless of rank. Single sailors need to meet certain rate requirements, and then ask permission in some cases to get BAR And then they don't get as much. In all other cases, barracks rooms are considered the equivalent of increased pay, which may be true from a Pentagon programmer's spreadsheet worldview but not from the deckplate perspective.
It is not clear that this difference in pay is the result of performance or qualification or value to the Navy. In fact, it could be argued that the single sailor's costs to the Navy are significantly lower than the married sailor's, even discounting BAR Yet, he is paid less.
Get Out to Go to College
Many of my shipmates joined the Navy to take advantage of the college benefits promised to them in return for their faithful service. Here's the deal: Join the Navy, serve out your enlistment, then get out to go to school.
So why are we surprised when our sailors do just that, rather than making the Navy a career? In a basic sense, we have trained them to get out of the Navy so they can meet their fundamental personal goals for their own self-improvement and advancement in life.
Perverse incentives create perverse results. These elements of the Navy pay system are a set of perverse incentives that make waging the "war for personnel" even harder than it needs to be.
Suggestions for Improvement
- Make one person in the Navy Secretariat responsible for fixing the DJMS system. If you can't point to one person who's responsible, then no one is responsible. Task one person to fix this mess, give him or her the tools needed, and then give his or her e-mail address to the Fleet. It works on the ship—it should work in the Pentagon.
- Tie sea pay to shipboard accomplishment rather than to rank or time served. Why not give authority to commanding officers to award sea pay, based on their judgment of the contribution of the sailor or officer in question? On my ship, I'd give sea pay to everyone who qualified in submarines, whether officer or enlisted. I can explain my rationale and I could tie pay to performance in a direct manner. What a concept!
- Pay everyone the same, regardless of marital status. In effect, this will probably result in a pay increase for single sailors. Then, sailors will make decisions about marriage based on the traditional irrational basis of love and romance, uninfluenced by irrelevant economic considerations such as an increase in pay.
- Find a way to build a college education into the enlisted career path.
- Make the GI Bill benefits usable during enlisted service, or make tuition assistance comparable.
- In the near term, build "sabbatical" time into enlistments. Why not let each commanding officer designate a certain number of "Ship Scholars" from the crew who could take a year off to go to school? Let crew members compete for a "scholarship" based on their scholastic aptitude (Scholastic Aptitude Test [SAT] scores, College Level Examination Program [CLEP] results, Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery [ASVAB] results, performance in Navy schools, etc.) and their ability to put together a plan for their year away from daily shipboard duties to advance their college educations. Then let the commanding officers award as many scholarships as they think they can afford and still operate the ship. On my ship, it probably would be only one or two sailors a year. But what a great opportunity! I know of at least ten sailors on my ship who, using local educational institutions and tuition assistance, could finish their bachelor's degrees with an aggressive educational plan. Plus, many others would see the value of pursuing the Navy's other educational programs such as Smart Transcripts and distance learning while on active duty to make them competitive for a ship scholarship. There are lots of details to iron out, but none is insurmountable and the incentive for the crew is huge.
- Over the longer term, design enlisted career paths that clearly result in a bachelor's degree by the 20-year retirement point. So, the new deal will be: Join the Navy, see the world, stay in for 20 years, and we'll guarantee you a retirement and a bachelor's degree. Now I really have a compelling weapon to deploy in my "war for personnel," not to mention a great training aid for the recruiting force.
I'm sure there are other elements in our compensation system that need to be revised. Now is the time to strike, when we can reform the pay system in parallel with initiatives to increase military pay, allowing the Navy to smooth out inequities amid a rising tide of pay reform, rather than managing a zero-sum game. It's time for a new Compensation Training Plan that sends the right message—go Navy, stay Navy, and we'll take care of you and your family!
Commander Gorenflo is the commanding officer of the USS Parche (SSN-683).