Ask a Polaris sailor what the Navy could do to make his career more attractive and he might reply, “Treat me like one of my spare parts.” Have we come full cycle to the feudal policy of treating people as chattel? No, because the archaic, inconsiderate treatment of serfs as inchoate beings of no more importance than other stock of the estate would not produce volunteers. But treating our enlisted men as if they were valuable Polaris spare parts could result in notable improvement in re-enlistment rates.
The Navy continues its search for more equitable ways of rewarding its personnel for value received, and for more effective means of competing for the bright young men who pass through its commands at such a rapid rate. One such possibility is to treat sailors like Polaris spare parts. Surely it must be practicable to handle our priceless human assets as efficiently as our repair parts. No one wants to be a number on an IBM card, but the ready response and positive control which characterize our modern supply system have attractive parallels when applied to people.* “Supply,” it may be argued, is over organized, over controlled, and undergoes massive changes too frequently to be translatable into a people-managing system. On the other hand, the fact that it functions so competently, confronted as it always is with considerable obstacles, speaks well for its management control. If it were to be emulated its imperfections need not be copied.
Every enlisted man has a serial number, a Navy enlisted classification code and other definitive characteristics which identify him as unique in the personnel system and also as interchangeable. BuPers has computers, a machine accounting system, quality control indices, and inventory control points such as the Enlisted Personnel Distribution Office, Pacific (EPDOPAC) and Atlantic (EPDO-LANT). Why go beyond this degree of identifying automation and organization and treat a man any more like a file card than he is now? Don’t these features of the personnel system, with all the supporting staffs, directives and documentation incorporate the management methods for handling spare parts which are desirable for handling people too? The answer is no, not nearly as much as they might. Although spare parts management is a highly automated business, automatic data processing enables the supply managers to use human judgment and to enter into repair parts distribution in a very lively, personal way. Each “critical” or “hot” spare part requisition, of which there may be from 30 to 100 during a Polaris submarine refit, receives the personal attention of one to four captains, and a number of lesser ranking officers and enlisted men. Daily follow-up messages keep the requisitioning command abreast of procurement and delivery status of the part; long distance telephone calls from the Polaris Material Office locate and process the item, high priority air transportation, occasionally extending to a specially chartered flight, hurry it to its destination. When necessary the part is “met” by a supply activity representative and transferred from a civil airline flight to a MAC flight to speed it overseas. The dollar value of the part does not influence the attention bestowed on it. A 50- cent gasket and a 30,000-dollar inertial navigation gyro get the same treatment by the supply activities, the highly personalized handling is based on need rather than on intrinsic value. One procurement feature which, unfortunately, is common to both spare parts and people is cannibalization to fill the requirement of a deployed ship. The man in the critical rating ordered on short notice to pack his sea bag, to leave his ship in overhaul, and to catch the next MAC flight to Guam, may ponder whether he will be content to continue as a part of what seems to him an improvident organization.
As often happens in our technological society, personnel management policy changes lag behind the advances made in research, design, engineering, production, and accounting. We approach a new problem or an old problem with different variables by treating people as a constant. That is a fallacious assumption, and as good an example as any of this fallacy is the case of the American man- o’-war’s man. He has changed markedly from the relatively uneducated, frugally reared lad who enlisted in the 1930s and to whom job security was an ever-present incentive. He is no more a constant than are other elements of weapons systems. He is different from the war- nurtured petty officers of the 1940s whose rapid advancement during the war years provided an attractive prospect of long service as a chief petty officer.
General John J. Pershing said in 1918, “Send me men who can shoot and salute.” Admirable as these qualities are, it takes much more than guts and discipline to man either the army or the Navy today. The bluejacket of the 1960s is of a different breed than his illustrious predecessors. It is likely that he enlisted to fulfill his obligated service to the nation. He chose the Navy for what it had to offer him in education or the romantic appeal of seeing the world. Patriotic motives may have influenced his choice. Regardless of what directed him to the Navy recruiter, he has a good probability of finding himself in a classroom rather than on the deck of a destroyer bound for the Mediterranean. The Navy will educate him beyond his expectations in order to fulfill the ever-increasing demand for technically trained men to operate shipboard equipment.
As the young man gains the skills of an artificer or a technician and becomes of increasing value to the Navy, he also becomes a target of civilian industry in the job mart. The Navy fights a battle against big odds to keep its trained men in the service. It has many weapons in its “shipping over” arsenal, some loaded with effective ammunition such as NESEP, SCORE, STAR or B-School; some loaded with expedient ammunition such as proficiency pay and the variable re-enlistment bonus. The latter two retention schemes apparently are necessary, but they are not good. They create unnatural barriers between men where cohesiveness is essential. The trustworthy, efficient yeoman and the capable, cheerful commissaryman are as essential to the proper functioning of the ship over the long term as is the skilled electronics technician who repairs the radar. The qualities of solidarity and singleness of purpose of the whole ship’s company contribute mightily in the making of an effective man-o’-war. There is mutual respect among all hands for their shipmate’s abilities. Proficiency pay weakens this unity in its attempt to bridge the gap in the going rate on the job mart between the yeoman and the ET. The variable re-enlistment bonus undermines crew unity even further. Men of equal skill, of equal value to the ship receive disparate pay because they are not of equal value to the Navy—a difficult circumstance to explain to the young man who finds himself in the rating which will be critical next year, or never.
Over-all quality of enlisted personnel in the Navy by any yardstick probably has never been as high as it is now. Moral character, dedication, willingness to fight or to work, previous education, receptiveness to technical training are all satisfactory. Even the performance level in the non-technical ratings, where the education level is lower, has improved over what it used to be simply by personal association and environment. The problem today is how to maintain the readiness of the Fleet with given personnel and financial ceilings. Technical training requirements are on a steady increase, which means more men in school instead of aboard ship. It means more competition with industry, which is appreciative of the better training provided by the Navy to its neophytes. On both counts, cost per man rises and productive work falls, an unsatisfactory situation in the given framework of fixed cost and numbers of personnel. The obvious way of correcting the situation, known to all, is to improve the re-enlistment rate.
Polaris enlisted personnel are more fortunate than most. They, as individuals, have a voice in their command’s plan as to how long they will remain on board. The command decides what men will receive additional technical schooling and when. Six months prior to the anticipated date of transfer of personnel, the command submits a “loss letter,” in which the proposed transfer of roughly one sixth of the crew is documented by name, rate and NEC, and the rate and NEC of the replacement desired. Personnel to be transferred list four duty assignment preferences. EPDOPAC or EPDOLANT provides the ship with replacements for each man lost, and the new man has the proper NEC. The ship goes to sea with 100 per cent of its allowance on board. The EPDO staff and the personnel officer on the submarine squadron staff make this excellent system work. There are no more personnel involved than in any other staff organization. Planning and personal attention make the difference. When a man is assigned to a duty station other than one of his apparently reasonable choices, the ship’s executive officer or commanding officer and a more senior officer on the squadron staff step in with telephone call, message, or speedletter to plead the case of the individual. This is the modern way of treating sailors like spare parts. It is one of the strong selling points of the Polaris program and is a boon to a command in providing for the orderly rotation of personnel. It requires no more people and little more money; in the main, it requires good planning by the ship, harder work by the personnel staffs at all levels, and the firm policy support of the type command.
The officer or chief petty officer of the old Navy will storm “spoonfeeding,” “letting him get the Navy over a barrel,” or “I go where the Navy sends me,” but this is not 1936 or 1946. It is 1966 and the Navy is in stiff competition for the services of its well trained men. It is “over a barrel,” put there by the civilian labor market, not by soft sailors who drive hard bargains. That type of man is in such small minority that he need not be considered. Having had such pressure applied by forces beyond its control, it behooves the Navy to conform to the posture necessitated by circumstances, rather than to stand ramrod straight and inflexible in its personnel policies.
It is improbable that pay ever will be sufficient to sway a man to a Navy career; hence other inducements assume large proportions. Many of the men who leave the Navy after their first cruise do so because of their wives; probably most who leave after their second enlistment do so for that reason. A well-content Navy wife is the best recruiter the Navy can find, yet no great effort is made to recruit her. She cannot be won through her pocket book—the country cannot afford it—nor by fringe benefits, although she can be lost by complete disregard of these factors. She can be tempted by decent and adequate housing. Because she probably cares more about where her husband is stationed than he does, for such reasons as housing availability and cost, proximity to family at critical times, climate, and just plain personal preference she can be encouraged by the Navy’s responsiveness to her husband’s choice of duty station. She can be completely won by the knowledge that her husband is happy, that he has prestige, that his special talents are finding use, and that he is being challenged to perform at his best in the work he is doing. These latter phrases may sound old-fashioned and high flown, foreign to the reality of the labor unions’ 30- hour week, but people, both men and women, still respond to them. These ideas, with slight re-emphasis, apply to the single man, too, because self-respect and the feeling of service are important to him also.
In an analogy to spare parts the “career designated” man is a high value asset control (HIVAC) item. He certainly is worth more than 1,000 dollars and he is repairable. Some facts and figures on personnel costs for the man who enlists for four years, goes to Electronics Technician Class A School, submarine school, and Polaris navigation school are startling: This man will report on board his first ship with not less than one year 11 months service. During that period, he has cost the government about 4,000 dollars in pay, subsistence, and travel. Prorating the cost of his education at the three schools he has attended probably would quadruple that figure. Having reported on board a Polaris submarine, this expensive young man will make four Polaris patrols before his four- year enlistment expires. At that time he may elect to leave the Navy and apply his extensive training as a technician with one of the industrial companies whose technical journals he has read, or with whose engineers he has worked. He has served the Navy well and faithfully for four years of which less than two years was actually productive work aboard ship. His pay and allowances and the cost to subsist him have totalled over 14,000 dollars, in addition to the cost of his education which at least equals that figure. If he was married, the bill goes up considerably. Sufficient argument to prove that he is, in truth, a HIVAC item, worthy of the best management techniques that can be devised to protect the nation’s expensive investment and to amortize it over a period of 20 years rather than four years.
Consider the proposal that each “career designated” man in the Navy be treated as a HIVAC item, that the inventory and procurement of each HIVAC man be monitored by the appropriate Enlisted Personnel Distribution Office, and that each transfer of a HIVAC man be reported to the inventory manager, BuPers. This procedure in personnel management would cost money and require additional personnel, but it would result in an over-all saving to the Navy if only a few per cent of the first and second cruise sailors who now leave the Navy made it their career. As stated earlier, there are various rewards to the sailor who contracts with the Navy and becomes “career designated.” Once the sailor is “shipped over” and has lost his bargaining position the magnanimity of the Navy suffers a sudden change. Yet, here is one of the most valuable assets the Navy possesses—a young man with enthusiasm who has just decided to make a career in the service of his country. Treat him as an operating space item of value, not as a consigned cargo item which, once shipped on board, can be thrown in the hold and forgotten. Make of him a salesman, a recruiter for the Navy way, rather than a disillusioned grouser. Consider the effect if an officer in authority (commanding officer, executive officer or head of department depending on size and organization of the unit) could confront each of his potential dischargees with the sincere and believable statement to the effect: “I can assure you that for the remainder of your career in the Navy your desires for next assignment will be given personal attention by a senior naval officer. His primary task is to assign personnel to the duty of their choice whenever possible, even at additional expense to the government.”
If the man is married, a letter to his wife containing a similar statement and emphasizing the worth of her husband to his country should have considerable impact upon the family decision. We. live in an era where recognition of and concern for the individual are of great importance. A statement such as this hypothetical one, demonstrating the interest of the government in the personal preference of John and Jane Seaman, and especially the concern of the individual’s superior officer, might ship over one out of 20 of the men who now leave the Navy. Only a part of the attractiveness of such a statement is the offer of duty preference; of perhaps equal importance is the idea transmitted to the man that his efforts are recognized and that the Navy is interested in him as an individual. Let our men really believe that “the Navy takes care of its own.” It should not be necessary to turn to Navy Relief to prove this statement. It should be made clear officially, professionally. Certainly, provisos would be part of any such declaration, but people accept the “weasel words” when they know that the basic statement is made in good faith. Past performance could be the key factor in the provisos. Naturally there would be more requests than vacancies for choice billets. The semi-annual enlisted performance evaluation marks and citations or awards should figure into assignments much as they do for officers. With this known factor, one more incentive toward top-notch performance is added. Men respond to challenge whether or not personal reward is involved. And with desirable assignment tied to merit, the complaints of the dissatisfied become less plausible. The recent BuPers policy of reassignment of personnel who have served in Vietnam to duty of their choice is an excellent example of recognition for valuable service. Surely the Navy is not “over the barrel” in reassigning these men. On the contrary, it is always a privilege to reward meritorious service.
Various modern management techniques for system management, for spare parts inventory and control, and for shipboard equipment maintenance have burgeoned in the Navy recently, among which are: the PERT system, the HIVAC accounting system, the Selected Item Management (SIM) system, the 3-M system, the Trouble and Failure Report system (expanded and personalized by the Special Projects Office). Although BuPers has turned to computers and automtic data processing in its manifold tasks of personnel control, nothing so progressive as these systems just referred to has appeared for enlisted personnel. Personnel management is an unstable, cyclic business at best because of changing budget and personnel ceiling, expansion or contraction of the national defense establishment and the lengthening lead time for personnel trained to man the increasingly complex shipboard and aircraft equipment. Because of this, are not dollars spent in longterm, stabilizing, across-the-board programs a better investment than proficiency pay and variable re-enlistment bonus dollars? If so, then treating sailors like HIVAC spare parts would pay dividends.
Any program to give people personal management attention on a large scale such as is devoted to spare parts will incur additional expense. This would have to be more than offset by an increased retention rate for such a policy to have more than philanthropic merit. Still, a quite small percentage increase in reenlistments should make the larger number of administrative personnel at BuPers and the EPDOs a profitable investment. There are other expenditures which could be balanced out by the good faith they purchase. It only takes two or three examples per command every year or so to have the whole crew recognize that they are in a fine organization that truly looks after its own. The men who make the Navy a career are not scheming to “make out” and to get something for nothing; if they were, they would go where the fields are greener. Here are several of the fallow fields which could be plowed and then cultivated for greater long-term productivity:
(1) Waive the obligated service requirement for B-School when it is guaranteed as a re-enlistment incentive. Often a man either cannot be released from a chain of duty assignments or has personal reasons for desiring B-School later in his enlistment. He should not be required to extend his enlistment in order to be eligible for the school guaranteed him. The Navy stands to lose hardly anything by this gesture, but it can engender much good will. At present, drastic command action sometimes is required to get the guaranteed schooling for a man who by no fault of his own has been delayed from attending B- School.
(2) Liberalize the rules on home port changes as related to moving dependents and household effects. Moving is a traumatic experience for many Navy wives, partially because of the rigamarole involved with effective date of home port change. A personal move often assumes the proportions of an operation order with its complexities of timing and logistics. Movement of dependents should not be tied so rigidly to the effective date of homeport change. It should be easier for the Navy man to plan his family’s move so that they may put their name on the housing list, share his short time in port, and have a chance of settling with his help. Are there really enough crooks in the Navy that the honest must be penalized so that the government will not suffer unnecessary financial loss as a result of people taking advantage of the rules on moving?
(3) Improvement in housing is a field of such magnitude that it will not be discussed. Suffice it to say that improperly stowed spare parts often become a dead loss financially. Treat sailors in the same way and similar results are obtained. Stow them inadequately and they will be lost; stow them with care and they will be available when needed. These are the kinds of fringe benefits that are important to men—recognition of good character, performance, and service, and concern for the individual. The fringe benefits of today are little more than apologies for poor pay or privileges that are available under many other employers. The Navy does not retain its personnel by the current fringe benefits nor does it want men who would ship over for such benefits. It wants self-respecting men who are dedicated to the service and who have expert technical knowledge.
A ship gets a new weapons system and with it gets a new technical manual, blueprints, and spare parts for its maintenance. Then why do we continue to use an electronics technician, who may be considered to be a part of the maintenance equipment for radio, radar and electronics countermeasures, for maintaining digital computers and inertial navigational components? We have changed his stock number (his NEC) much as we change the federal stock number of a repair part returned to the factory for major modification. However, when we put him into the tube tester (the examination room) to find out if he meets specifications, we test him with pins which are no longer used in his present configuration, and about all we prove is that he still has filament voltage. We do not prove that he is competent to perform the job for which he is being paid. And we waste his and the Navy’s time by having him use his study hours to become better versed in vacuum tubes and radio and radar circuitry when he should be studying binary circuits and accelerometers. This situation is analogous to demanding that a special duty officer pass an examination for officer of the deck before he can be promoted. In a Polaris submarine there are 17 ETs. One of these men works as an ET, the other 16 work on equipment foreign to their rate. The ET’s stock number (NEC) has been changed; the specifications to which he is bought and tested and possibly his packaging should be changed, too. Treat him like an important spare part; recognize his characteristics as unique. There will be less deterioration from careful stowage and identification than from bulk stowage and poor packaging. There are limits to this proposal. The Navy’s rating structure is and must remain fluid. Many NECs must remain subspecialties of a rating rather than serve as the basis for a new rating. The plight of the ET is discussed as an example of special concern, not as an indication of a widespread rating structure weakness.
If the electronics material officer were to leave in the radar an old magnetron with poor ring time, long-range target acquisition would become doubtful. Magnetrons are expensive, but he bakes in a new one to improve radar performance. Operators who are standing port and starboard watches because no replacement arrived for the radarman who was transferred on short notice to shore duty gradually become less alert after several days of port and starboard watches and reliability of radar contact acquisition drops off. Where is the spare? Prior to deployment, the Navy funded 100 per cent of the allowance of spare parts for the ship, but only 80 per cent of the personnel allowance was on board. Are repair parts more essential than people? A tired or inexperienced electronics technician in a Polaris submarine can ruin three 30,000- dollar inertial navigation system-gyros with a careless flick of a switch.
A Supply Corps officer has stated the personnel management problem well: “ ... It urgently requires utmost attention to the management of our single most precious resource—people. The same kind of intelligent effort that has been devoted to improving management of material and money must go into continually upgrading the management of our most valuable commodity—manpower.” Management, by definition, is the skilled handling of means or resources, the executive function of planning and organizing, the judicious use of means to accomplish an end.
The thesis of this article is that the Navy enlisted man should receive at least as much personal attention of “management” as do valuable or critical spare parts. This is not easy. It is safe and easy to issue general directives which apply to all hands and to take care of special cases as they are brought forth by individual commands. This is mediocrity at work, the plague of bigness. In a large organization such as the Navy, if rules are made, broken or waived for benefit of an individual, there is chance for abuse by the opportunist. But the majority of men who take the initial action to make the Navy their career are not opportunists; they are fine citizens with a budding devotion to service. May they be treated with fine judgment and good management as valued assets of the country.
* See also D. W. Whelan, “Polaris Logistics,” U. S. Naval Institute Proceedings, August 1966, p. 138.