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Junior Officer Retention “Why Is It a Problem?"
The problem of declining junior officer retention in today's peacetime force has been addressed in several recent articles and messages. Unfortunately, these articles consistently miss the major reasons why most junior officers are submitting their resignations. (Although specific conditions in the aviation community are addressed below, many of the points apply to other designators.)
To begin with, I divide junior officers into three groups, defined as follows:
Group 1: Those who do not like
their basic work/living conditions (i.e., shipboard flying, deployments, social obligations, bureaucracy, etc.) and have no career goals.
Group II: Those who are basically satisfied with the Navy and who contemplate career goals.
Group III: Those who are undecided as to career goals and who have mixed emotions concerning their basic work/ living conditions.
Junior officer retention efforts should be aimed at Group III, since those in Group II are already positively motivated and those in Group I are not likely to be retained at any cost. If I’m right that the great majority of junior officers fall into Group III, efforts made in positively motivating those in this group will reap the greatest reward.
Why are junior officers leaving the Navy after their first tour? The majority of messages and articles cite reasons such as erosion of benefits, lack of pay, shipboard habitability, and single basic allowance for quarters. Certainly, the complaints raised are legitimate, but they are not critical.
Money, or the lack of it, is not the primary reason for the exodus of junior officers from the commissioned ranks.
The reason why junior officers are turning their backs on Navy careers is because they are becoming increasingly dissatisfied with their jobs. The factors relating to and influencing . “job satisfaction” include
► Perceived lack of DoD/ congressional/public support
► Crisis management
► Poorly developed career patterns
► Unrealistic training
► Erosion of benefits
Lack of Support: The declining budget reflects the increasing apathy of the public and Congress toward the Navy. The lack of funds is directly reflected in the Navy Supply/Material System, which is unsatisfactory. Millions of dollars worth of equipment sits idle because of a lack of parts support. Thousands of manhours are expended cannibalizing equipment, an effort that succeeds in doubling the time and effort required to complete a job. At the operational level, this means decreased flying, flying in non-full systems capable aircraft, and greatly degraded training.
In addition to the lack of financial support, the absence of public moral support is having a detrimental effect upon junior officer retention. One of the great traditional assets of the Navy is the tremendous sense of pride and professionalism developed in the service of the country. In the recent past, this author has seen a decrease in public awareness, dedication, and patriotism, which directly impacts on the serviceman’s view of his position. It is difficult to serve a country that doesn’t seem to care.
Finally, there has been a noted lack of support by senior commanders in the Navy, who seem more concerned about their personal welfare than that of the service. As a result, very few commanders seem willing to fight for
their convictions or report situations as they are. As an example, it is much more attractive to report a 70% op- ready or full systems capability rate than 30%, even though the latter may be closer to the truth. The instinct for self-preservation, however, causes commanders to slightly exaggerate conditions. Unfortunately, when this exaggeration occurs at each level, the final impact may be devastating as well as untrue.
Crisis Management: Periodically (at' tually, with alarming regularity), a new program is initiated in response to a specific problem area without regard to all of the implications of the new program. As a result, DoD or BuPers sets in motion a series of events requiring immediate reaction- This, then, is the key. Instead of careful planning and responsible action, crisis programs demand a reaction, which perpetuates the cycle. Take, f°r example, the recent decision to man the aviation training command at an increased level. The "solution” to this crisis was to rotate 100 or more junior officers six months early to fill the desired billets. (For some strange reason, those personnel already due to rotate were not considered.) This caused an incredible amount of personal and fi' nancial problems among junior officers, with no satisfactory explanation provided.
All aviators rotating in the six- month period from August through December were faced with orders to the training command regardless of their desires, thus ensuring a breed o> dissatisfied naval officers with a negative view of the service. This action may help solve the problem of an undermanned training command, bn1 what will happen to this group of junior officers in one or two years? I1 is my guess that another crisis program will be devised to fill the biHetS vacated by these aviators when they resign.
Proceedings / February
Career Pattern: The most obvious Mismanagement of personnel that the lunior officers observe is the handling °f senior officers after a command tour. Following this tour, the ex-CO is faced with an inordinate amount of sea ‘ffty . . . continuous sea duty with little or no relief. His only consolation *s that such duty is “career enhancIng.” The problem here is two-fold:
(1) the desire for normal shore duty totation by senior officers is ignored; ancl (2) senior officers are being burned out’’ by the constant tempo °f their jobs. Ironically, those officers ^ho do not screen for command are punished” with rigorous shore duty assignments. If the Navy treats its above average senior commanders with such disregard, then something is Wr°ng with the system.
’Training: Much of the present train- ‘ng appears to be unrealistic, and un- °ttunately, the bureaucratic pendulum is still moving in the wrong direction. The conflict between uuget constraints and the need for flight hours to maintain pilot proficiency has led to a great sacrifice in training. Out of a typical two-hour sortie, probably half is unrealistic as far as actual training. Over 90% of practice bombing is done on a raked target which is in the middle of a void. Little or no training is done in the area of target recognition. So much emphasis is placed upon this phase of training (23% of the Battle Efficiency “E” competition) that attempts to operate realistically tend to punish squadrons. So, the cycle serves only to perpetuate itself. The ever- increasing amount of positive control imposed by the Federal Aviation Agency greatly limits pilot initiative.
Additionally, the lack of parts support has had a notable detrimental effect on all phases of training, from flying aircraft with degraded systems to a lack of flyable aircraft. And finally, some of the training conducted is ludicrous to the point of being dangerous. On numerous occasions, Naval Air Training and Operating
Procedures Standardization pilot proficiency and weather minima are waived because of “operational necessity," in the name of training.
Erosion of Benefits: The continuous decrease in such benefits as the GI Bill, health care, and retirement plans is a visible indicator or the lack of public/congressional support which hits at the heart of perhaps the Navy’s greatest asset: financial security. Though not entirely related to job satisfaction, the trend of decreasing benefits or changes to established programs is having a detrimental effect upon junior officer retention.
Coupled with this increased level of dissatisfaction, the job market outside the Navy is wide open for young men with the managerial and technical experience possessed by most junior officers. At present, it appears that the Navy is losing to its competitors in the job market.
How, then, can the junior officer be retained?
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The obvious answer is positive motivation. As previously intimated, money is not the overriding consideration so long as the junior officer can adequately support his needs. The present scale of pay, with the exception of cost of living increases, is probably in the ballpark. The answer lies in the level of job satisfaction and goal orientation of the individual junior officer. Trade-offs will naturally be present.
If a young officer is unsure of career goals, yet satisfied, he will probably be retained. Similarly, if he has career goals in mind such as command, he may be temporarily willing to sacrifice present job satisfaction, but only to a limited extent.
The attitude that young men should be willing to sacrifice personal and family desires in the name of dedication to the service or the country with the obvious demonstrated lack of support at all levels is presumptuous. That is not to say that the values of dedication and patriotism have declined in the minds of today’s young officers. On the contrary, most possess the same strong emotions that have historically characterized professional service in the U.S. Navy through the years. However, these emotions should not demand unquestioning obedience.
In the past decade, training of naval officers at the Naval Academy and ROTC units has greatly broadened, because today’s Navy demands a mature individual with a wide intellectual base. It would be incongruous to assume that men so trained would shut their eyes to such staggering bureaucratic mismanagement and lack of public support.
Each naval officer faces a decision: whether to remain in the system with the hope of ameliorating conditions, or to return to civilian life. True, the civilian job may be less rewarding in the intangible sense, but the former naval officer may not find himself constantly facing a whirlwind of apathy °r self-perpetuating cycles of mismanagement. He may even find that someone somewhere cares.
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Proceedings
February