It is refreshing to see the eager, aggressive ensign reporting to his first destroyer. He aspires to qualify as officer of the deck, to fill a primary billet, and to be assigned as a division officer. He also soon develops an overriding interest: he wants to be recognized as a “destroyerman.” To accomplish these things, he needs to acquire the time-honored qualities of “speed, dash, and accuracy.” Smartness in radio telephone procedure, speed and accuracy in maneuvering board solutions, prompt decoding of tactical signals, self confidence in ship control and conning, good judgment in emergencies—these are foremost in the mind of our new ensign. He practices and studies hard until that proud day when the commanding officer writes “fully qualified in all respects as officer of the deck underway for task force, type, and independent operations.” Certainly no destroyer captain would want less in his junior officers.
In the meantime, our ambitious ensign has also earned detailing to one of the ship’s primary billets and more than likely he will have been assigned collateral duty as division officer of the corresponding division. Unfortunately, most ensigns do not respond nearly so enthusiastically to their duties as division officers as they do to the challenges and demands of operating the ship. What may have seemed initially to be an exalted position wherein the ensign needed occasionally only to acknowledge “very well,” or sagaciously reply “permission granted,” later turns out to be an unglamorous paper mill with dozens of personal problems for which, to his embarrassment, answers are hard to find. This, he is told, is personnel administration.
It is no wonder that this 22-year-old ensign, newly commissioned and recently graduated from 16 years of “paper work,” is going to be far more interested in operations, navigation, gunnery, and engineering. If left alone, he would devote as little time as possible to administration and be content to investigate every inch of his ship, her armament, equipment, and capabilities, so as to become conversant in matters of naval science and warfare and to develop a “salty” vocabulary in the least possible time.
Furthermore, his training for commissioned service did not prepare him for personnel administration functions. For many years, training programs for prospective officers have concentrated on operations, navigation, engineering, and gunnery, and touched only lightly on administration. The rationale, our prospective ensign was told, was that the ever- changing complexion of personnel administration makes it inadvisable to devote to it a great deal of classroom time, inasmuch as it would more than likely be changed by the time he reached the Fleet. He also “learned” that because there were ample expert personnel officers and personnelmen who would always be available in the Fleet, personnel administration was something he could pick up as he went along.
It is understandable, then, that the average ensign places his emphasis on his primary billet and neglects the administrative functions associated with divisional duties. He often becomes deeply involved in some relatively unimportant operational facet of his primary billet—one which could, and should, be taken care of by a competent petty officer technician—while the divisional administrative matters get “pending basket” treatment. Gradually, however, if he’s worth his salt, this situation begins to bother him.
He senses a shortcoming on his part in his dealings with his subordinates. During precommissioning training, and even now, he hears a lot about naval leadership. Much was said concerning ideals, morals, discipline, and his future role as an example to his men. Now, as a division officer, more than ever he wants to be a successful leader. It is very annoying to him that he feels he is not.
His predicament is one of insecurity, brought about by lack of knowledge of personnel administration. Such knowledge is basic to effective leadership. Just as a man does not become a good mechanic without a knowledge of the design and care of machines, an officer cannot become a successful leader without a familiarity with the men under him. To lead men requires that the leader be responsive to their needs, be familiar with the frame of reference in which they face their problems, and be aware of the responsibilities, rights, and benefits accruing to them. For the destroyer division officer this means a working knowledge of advancement, pay and allowances, performance criteria, sea and shore rotation, leave, terms of enlistment, and special programs and qualifications.
The petty officer technician does not expect his newly commissioned division officer to be able to plug a ruptured boiler tube or to be able to “bake in” a new magnetron. But he would derive considerable satisfaction from the knowledge that his division officer could find an error in his leave record and see to it that it was corrected. To perform in such a manner, the division officer requires a knowledge of administrative procedures. Further, the division officer who has failed to follow the necessary administrative steps to qualify a man for advancement, or who has failed to submit a SEAVEY rotation data card for a man eligible for shore duty, will lose the respect of that man and will never be effective in counselling him on moral or disciplinary subjects. Conversely, the division officer who is alert to the administrative needs of his men will find his words falling upon receptive ears.
It is fundamental that officers must receive additional formal training in personnel administration. Officer training programs need revision to provide for the basic administrative requirements of the division officer. Personnel administration is now too large a subject area to be “picked up” as an officer proceeds along. The phenomenal pace with which weapons and weapons systems evolve and become obsolete strongly indicates that personnel administration has become more stable than naval warfare. Exclusion of personnel administration from training curricula for reasons of its fluctuating nature, is no longer valid. The time has come to train the prospective naval officer in basic personnel administration as well as in the arts and sciences and then let him “pick up” and keep abreast of tactics and warfare as they change. In this way he would be far better equipped from the beginning to perform well as the leader of his men as he strove for proficiency in fighting the ship. As it stands now, an ensign must scramble to learn both.
Meanwhile, until officers report to the Fleet schooled in personnel administration, we must continue to produce our own administrators. The personnel experts that ensigns expected to find generously supplied throughout the Fleet unfortunately were not to be found. Except in larger ships, personnel officers are not assigned except in a collateral duty capacity. And frequently destroyers must make do with only a third class personnelman. If we must rely exclusively on that personnelman and an overburdened executive officer to produce accurate records and effective personnel administration, we shall founder.
Some destroyers have appointed a junior officer as personnel officer under the executive officer. This solution generally produced only mediocre results. The officer is usually either too inexperienced to be reliable, or too busy with his primary billet to be thorough. The division officer therefore is the logical choice to augment the executive officer’s “personnel staff.” When provided with the necessary management tools he can assist in narrowing this administrative gap. Furthermore, the byproducts of high morale, good discipline, and loyalty are likely to appear as if by magic. Under improved leadership his division will excel militarily and its professional performance will improve. What are these tools the division officer requires? First, we must ascertain the nature of the job to be done. The term “personnel administration” in the shipboard sense, and as used throughout this essay, encompasses generally the following matters:
a. Advancement in rate.
b. Performance evaluation.
c. Personal requests (school, transfers, leave, etc.).
d. Information and Education (USAFl).
e. Correspondence courses.
f. Navy special programs.
g. Officer procurement programs.
h. Voting, savings bonds, charities, Medicare, insurance, etc.
i. Financial matters, allotments, pay and allowances.
j. Maintenance of personnel records.
The reader is absolutely correct if he observes that this is a “traditional” list of subjects that falls into the field of personnel administration, and • that they are generally delegated to the several wardroom officers as collateral duties. But the writer advocates a different system whereby the division officer will perform most of these functions himself. To delegate these matters to petty officers, to “farm them out” to collateral duty officers, or to allow them to get into the basket of the department head or executive officer serves no purpose and is completely wrong. The petty officer should be performing his rating specialty, the department heads and the executive officer are busy running the ship, and the division officer will never have a greater opportunity to become familiar with the Navy directives system, filing, preparation of correspondence, personnel records, and personnel administration in general. He will have to master these sooner or later, certainly, if he aspires to command.
Motivation to acquire skills in personnel administration requires the provision of strong incentives. The division officer must be firmly reminded that his commission as a naval officer came not because of his potential for mastery of machinery repair, speed of sending code, or operation of countermeasures equipment, but mainly because of his potential to develop sound judgment and supervisory and administrative ability. He must realize that to become a destroyerman requires that he become both an “operating” seaman and an “administering” leader. Only then will he apportion his time willingly between the operation of his destroyer and the administration of her crew.
The ensign will meet little difficulty in preparing and perfecting himself in the technical and professional aspects of a particular departmental billet. He will find fine books written on how to be a knowledgeable communications officer or navigator. By digesting one good technical manual he can learn all he needs to know about a bathythermograph or a main feed pump. Instructions are readily available on every technical aspect of how to perform the primary billets. Not so with personnel administration. Here there are no empirical formulas.
An officer cannot help but learn much concerning maneuvering, operating, and fighting his destroyer merely by virtue of serving aboard her and qualifying as officer of the deck. But conversely, he could serve in his ship up the chain through department head and not be well “exposed” to such items as lost time, NESEP, TEMADDHOSP, etc. These he must deliberately ferret out for himself, and he will find an increasing need to do so in each successive billet.
Once the division officer can be convinced of his need for skills in personnel administration, the magic of transforming him into an administrator is reduced to providing him the necessary tools and know-how.
The remainder of this essay will concern itself with suggesting procedures whereby destroyer division officers can assume active and rewarding roles in personnel administration. Establishing such a system in a destroyer takes deliberate steps. Three steps are required, the first of which is to define procedures. Clear delineation of the matters in which the division officers are expected to exercise administration is required. Secondly, there must be provided a rapid means of locating the information the officers may require in each responsible area of administration. Thirdly, they are assigned certain specific functions in the maintenance of the ship’s personnel records.
In defining procedures, the executive officer must set forth his policies on key issues such as performance evaluation, proficiency pay, and advancement. He must dispel at once any prevailing opinions such as: the I&E officer is the only one qualified to procure correspondence courses—the housing officer is to insure that everyone obtains adequate housing—the voting officer sees to it that all hands vote— the public information officer submits all news releases—the legal officer is the ship’s sole source of legal advice, and so on. Collateral duty officers should be restricted in their duties to providing forms to division officers, maintaining central files pertaining to their collateral functions, keeping their programs alive in the ship through appropriate and timely publicity, and providing advice and liaison services to the division officers. In turn, the division officers can personally advise their men. As far as the enlisted man is concerned, he should be able to look to his division officer as his housing officer, voting officer, and public information officer. There is no room for the pillar-to-post treatment in a division officer’s relationship with his men. In the event a certain legal or financial matter is intensely involved, then it may be prudent to schedule a joint interview between the man, his division officer, and the collateral duty officer concerned.
Consider the occasion of an enlisted man’s request for information on self-study. A flippant response, such as “see the I&E officer,” is detrimental to good administration and to good leadership, and has no place in a division officer’s vocabulary. No one knows, or should know, better than his division officer what correspondence course the man needs. Certainly the I&E officer does not know and is not specially motivated to learn. The man, possibly new on board, may not even know who the I&E officer is. If he does locate that officer he should find him occupied with his own divisional business. He may be told to return later, to report to the I&E yeoman (who may be on watch), or to report to the ship’s office. Frustrated, the man may give up, not being really sold on the idea of a correspondence course in the first place. If he eventually does manage to find the I&E officer available and in a receptive mood, odds are good that he may order the wrong course, or perhaps even the right one but too late for advancement purposes. On the other hand, the division officer is in a position to capitalize on the slightest interest exhibited by a man assigned, kindle the spark, sit down, fill out the application form, and personally ensure that it is signed and forwarded.
This matter of correspondence course administration offers a good example of the several areas where the executive officer will find it necessary to define procedures. Probably the most direct and satisfactory method of promulgating and standardizing the “ground rules” would be through the medium of a short shipboard directive in which responsibilities of the division officers, the I&E officer, and the executive officer are spelled out. The directive should be meticulous in reserving for the division officer primary responsibility for executing the program—from initial submission of the course application form to the preparation of the completion certificate. The role of the I&E officer should be restricted to maintaining the ship’s record of courses ordered and received, providing forms and publications to division officers, and other impersonal services common to the needs of all division officers.
Such “ground rules,” when established by the executive officer for this and other phases of administration, will get the division officer back into the business of divisional personnel administration. An atmosphere can thereby be generated wherein the collateral duty officer becomes the ship’s liaison expert in a particular capacity, and not as assistant or substitute division officer.
Additional ground rule directives should include as a minimum the following:
a. Division officers prepare replies to all letters of indebtedness, and prepare all letter requests for schools, exchange of duty, and other personal requests within a specified number of days subsequent to executive officer action on the request.
b. Division officers prepare the NAVPERS 624W (Worksheet for Advancement in Rating) by 1 December and 1 June semi-annually.
c. Division officers prepare SEAVEY Rotation data cards for their men upon promulgation of cut-off dates.
d. Division officers prepare and submit in the rough, miscellaneous administrative remarks (page 13 entries) such as audiometer tests, successful completion of performance tests, and commendations for the men in their divisions.
e. Division officers initiate requests in proper format on security clearances.
f. Division officers interview each man to determine his eligibility to operate an automobile in the particular state, sight checking driver’s licenses for validity, and advising men on insurance requirements.
g. Division officers show and explain individually, to each man, his performance evaluation marks within a prescribed number of days following approval by the commanding officer.
The main purpose of each of the above is to provide and jealously preserve a division officer’s sole right to interference-free administration of his men. It is of paramount importance to impress on each division officer the great value of his being the one to provide the answers to the questions posed by his men. Referral of one’s men to another officer or petty officer should be assiduously avoided. Even performing seemingly insignificant services such as acting as the exclusive approving authority for property passes or source for obtaining camera passes for division personnel should not be overlooked as good leadership techniques. Such arrangements provide the division officer with more contact hours with his men, the type of contact necessary to develop high morale, rapport, mutual trust, and good discipline.
Moreover, the division officer will soon find himself familiar with, among other subjects, the Navy’s quarters allotment procedures. He will become conversant with the performance criteria for honorable discharge and re-enlistments. He will have eliminated the “mystery” of preparing a letter request for a class “C” school or of obtaining a Navy driver’s license. In this manner, he will indelibly learn personnel administration and will practice naval leadership par excellence.
It has been suggested previously, however, that the new division officer’s paucity of training in personnel administration will render him inept in these functions. He has little knowledge as to how to locate the answers to the questions asked of him. Surely if we expect him to function as an administrator, and to act as counsellor and advisor to his men, we must insure that he has means to obtain necessary data without undue and discouraging delay. When asked- a question such as, “can I qualify for the NAVCAD program?” the division officer should not be required to waste 30 minutes locating the governing directive. As an essential first step, he must maintain a division officer’s notebook which includes the personal data he has excerpted and accumulated in the case of each man assigned, and informative briefs on each of the more common programs and benefits offered by the Navy.
But even so equipped the apprentice administrator is not prepared to face any but the most basic personnel problems. True, when a question arises, he can be reasonably sure of one thing—that the answer is available somewhere on board among the thousands of directives, manuals, and pamphlets. A familiarization with the Navy Directives system is a good and necessary place to start. But even if each officer could be provided with a personal copy of the Consolidated Index this would lead him only to Navy Department Directives. Excluded would be data from such sources as the BUPERS Manual; Navy, Fleet, and Type Regulations; and Fleet, Type, and Squadron directives. Further, even if by chance he happened upon the appropriate Bureau Directive, how can he be sure that it isn’t greatly amplified by a Type or PAMI Directive?
For several years, the writer has noted the many questions most frequently asked him as a destroyer division officer, department head, and executive officer. As the answers were located, sometimes with agonizing delays, the subject, with its reference, was jotted down alphabetically in a memorandum pocket notebook. That notebook has become invaluable as a lost motion eliminator when returning to the less frequently called upon information sources. As the notebook served progressively the needs of division officer, department head, and executive officer, it expanded.
Doubtless there are thousands of little green or black notebooks containing lists of valuable references—created to meet the personal needs of many individual destroyer executive officers. But when the arduous tour comes to an end and the Exec turns the ship’s office and the administration of the crew over to his relief, he places the little notebook in his cruise box and takes his departure. And there the process stops; the new executive officer must start from scratch, the division officers are still in the dark, and no one, save perhaps the former executive officer, has really profited from the long hours of “trial and error” and “muddling through” to find the answers.
It is the division officer who should be permitted to avail himself of the contents of the notebook. If he is able to find answers in five minutes that before might have taken hours, he will be more inclined to give his men the advice they might seek. Further, it is not necessarily the time spent in locating source material that provides the training value so much as it is the time spent in digesting the material and applying its contents.
On examination it will be noted that the revision letter designations have been omitted to give longevity to the index. Thus, COM- CRUDESPAC Instruction 3500.7A or 3500.7B is simply listed as 3500.7. But even so, to maintain current such an index requires that the administrator be on the routing for incoming directives and manuals. It is well known that occasionally a directive such as a BUPERS Instruction may be incorporated into the BUPERS Manual or Transfer Manual and cancelled.
It is far more simple and rewarding to maintain such an index current while utilizing it to great advantage as a division officer, than suddenly to be forced by trial and error to learn personnel administration as a newly assigned executive officer. In such a plight the executive officer will find himself too busy trying to learn procedure to spend the appropriate amount of time training his subordinates in administrative procedures. Giving the division officer such a tool as a reference index, however, is one more step in arresting this vicious circle.
So equipped, the division officer is primed to assume an exceptionally useful task in shipboard administration. Few tasks assigned to the destroyer executive officer can be so time consuming as properly conducting enlisted service record verifications. Few administrative tasks, however, are more gratifying than that of showing an enlisted man a serious error or omission discovered in his record, and then preparing with him the correspondence necessary to correct that error. A scrutinizing review of a service record reveals information and facts not always apparent from other sources, which can contribute greatly to an understanding of an individual and to the improvement of personal relationship, orientation, and discipline. These responsibilities and attendant benefits should be inalienably reserved for the division officer.
It is difficult, however, to envision an inexperienced division officer performing a fruitful service record verification merely by thumbing through its pages at random. Here again he needs tools. The executive officer will probably want to prepare locally an “enlisted service record review and verification check list” enlarging upon the basic requirements contained in the BUPERS Manual. Use of a carefully prepared check list makes the division officer’s review and verification systematic, thorough, and productive, not only for the enlisted man, but for the reviewing officer himself, and for the command. He will find the first ten or 20 records he verifies a tedious process. He may be required to make frequent references to source material, particularly that section of the Bureau of Naval Personnel Manual dealing with the maintenance of enlisted service records (Articles B-2307 through B-2326). Soon, however, he will be able to perform a thorough verification in an average of 20 minutes, and produce a list of discrepancies and omissions upon which to initiate appropriate action. On an as-occurring basis, the division officer will verify the records of men reporting aboard and of those to be transferred. Verification of records in this fashion can be programmed throughout the year, culminating in September to satisfy annual requirements.
As the division officer gains proficiency in verification, he will be astounded at the errors he discovers, both in nature and in quantity. The need for this type of careful verification soon becomes apparent to him. The writer personally verified 350 enlisted service records, noting his impressions and tabulating the frequency of discrepancies. Not one service record in this group was error free. Some records had only one or two minor errors or omissions, but records of several men reporting aboard were found to be chaotic. One such record contained not one single page without discrepancies. A few errors were noted which were of great magnitude. If not corrected immediately they would have certainly deterred any inclination the man may have had toward a naval career out of sheer disgust or indignation at the injustice received. Other errors were found which would adversely affect the member every remaining day of his life.
While it will not be attempted to itemize all errors, let us list here a few of the more serious and more common errors to illustrate the need for more careful verification.
a. Performance Evaluation. In 24 records examined, substandard enlisted performance marks were assigned without the required substantiation. One record contained a mark of 1.0 in Military Behavior with a memorandum entry of a court-martial in justification. Verification disclosed that the man had never had a court-martial. This mark would have lowered his average to 2.93 upon discharge, unmistakably disqualifying him for an honorable discharge. (In a concurrent case the Chief of Naval Personnel denied a request for a waiver in the case of a man who needed only three hundredths of a point to qualify for an honorable discharge.)
b. Enlistment. One individual was received on board requesting to re-enlist. He had been advised inexpertly to wait until transferred to do so. By the time he reported to his new duty station, his voluntary agreement to extend his enlistment had become operative, revoking his eligibility to re-enlist.
c. Advancement. In ten cases men were received for whom entries indicating completion of naval training courses were missing; all were courses required for advancement to the next pay grade. Similarly, 13 cases occurred wherein men claimed completion of practical factors for advancement to the next pay grade; there was no page 4, page 13, or practical factors sheet to corroborate their claim. In 31 cases, men were received on board recommended for advancement with no examination on order. In five cases, men reporting aboard for whom exams were received had no service record entries indicating their recommendation or eligibility for advancement. Of the 131 men reporting aboard during the period of this survey, only 45 records contained the Record of Practical Factors as required.
d. Leave. The opening sentences of this essay related the most severe error noted. Other errors were found in the leave balances of 160 additional records.
e. Seavey. Sea Duty Commencement Date (SDCD) is the key to a man’s rotation ashore. One man missed rotation ashore and had his shore duty delayed a full year due to an inexcusable typographical error of one year in the SDCD and entered on his page 13. Thirty-four records were noted with no SDCD entry.
f. Navy Enlisted Code. One petty officer, a qualified Navy instructor, would have been rotated ashore under SEAVEY a year sooner had his instructor NEC been entered in his record. Trainee Codes were still listed as the most recent NEC in the cases of 21 men long since promoted to petty officer status.
g. Medals. Considerable time had elapsed beyond eligibility dates for first or subsequent Good Conduct Medals in the cases of 16 men reporting; recommendations had not been submitted.
h. Proficiency Pay. A chief petty officer reported aboard drawing pro-pay P-1. Although entered in the pay record, no service record entry or other document existed confirming entitlement or effective date thereof.
i. Lost Time. This appeared to be the least understood of all administrative functions. Thirty-seven records inspected were involved in some aspect of lost time. Only one of these 37 records was complete with all the appropriate entries. Failure properly to adjust Pay Entry Base Date (PEBD), Active Duty Base Date (ADBD), and Expiration of Active Obligated Service (EAOS) seemed almost universal. Second in popularity was failure to deduct lost time in computing leave credit on 30 June and in computing longevity for advancement purposes. In three cases, men soon to be discharged were bid the unwelcome and unexpected tidings that they still faced varying amounts of time to make up. No adjustment of EAOS for time lost several years previously had been entered. One man had already made arrangements for travel home.
j. Service Record Pages and Documents. Seven records were missing sequentially numbered pages. Nine were noted improperly numbered. Common violations of the BUPERS Manual and directives included use of blue ink, use of locally produced service record pages for “mass production” administrative entries, and failure to submit duplicate pages on time. Left-hand-side documents frequently found missing were Allotment Requests (NAVPERS 668), Security Questionnaire (DD-98), and Record of Discharge from previous enlistments (DD-214). Over three-fourths of all of the records which were verified contained what proved to be unnecessary documents.
k. Dependency. The most common discrepancy (noted in over 75 per cent of all cases) was the presence of an outdated page 2 (Record of Emergency Data). In 12 cases, the information contained in NAVPERS 668 (Allotment Request) and DD-1172 (Dependents ID Card Request) contained information inconsistent with that entered on the page 2.
Errors, discrepancies, or omissions in an enlisted service record, whether of the above or of different varieties, can result in hardships, anxieties, or inconveniences of varying degrees, all deleterious to morale. The personal, conscientious attention applied through a careful division officer review and verification proves effective as a countermeasure.
In the administration of today’s complex Navy, opportunity to commit errors is great. To prevent them requires nothing short of meticulous effort. In a destroyer, where the administrative workload is large and the staff small, the division officer must double as personnel administrator to impart the stabilizing factor. In so doing he will better equip himself for his future role as executive officer and concurrently develop for himself strong leadership traits.
Performing well in these collateral and administrative functions requires initiative and resourcefulness to a greater degree than in performing primary billets wherein procedures are well defined. Level of performance as a division officer is a most reliable herald of a naval officer’s future capabilities. Herein is found the real “path of advancement” to command. The path is largely administrative—from division officer to department head, thence to executive officer, and to command—regardless of departments served in. Consequently, the billet in which he should strive for perfection is that billet common to the backgrounds of all destroyer commanding officers, that of division officer.