According to recent studies, many private firms are struggling to find and keep valued employees. The decrease in the number of 25- to 34-year-olds and downsizing trends of recent years have led employers to search desperately for answers to recruiting and retaining talented people in the 21st century. The studies indicate that, while employees tend to leave jobs because of a lack of professional development opportunities and job satisfaction, they often list "better compensation" in their resignation letters for fear of retribution.
Low retention and high attrition, compounded by lack of leadership focus, are affecting private industry's bottom line drastically. Managers divert tens of thousands of dollars from operational funds to pay for training and recruitment of new hires-yet the average cost of retaining employees is dramatically lower than the cost of recruiting. Ironically, civilian managers reportedly are uninterested in finding solutions to attrition and retention problems until after employees deliver their resignation letters.
The Navy has taken a different approach to solving retention and attrition problems. "We know that how we manage our sailors' careers, from the way we initially select and classify them to the career opportunities we provide throughout their career, have a profound impact on retention," said Rear Admiral G. L. Hoewing, Commander of the Navy Personnel Command (NPC). "Our transformation is based on innovative new technologies, significant business process changes, and a clear focus on providing both sailors and the fleet real choices."
Leading the Navy's drive is Sailor Advocacy through Interactive Leadership (Project SAIL), which concentrates on the relationship between detailers and sailors and is designed specifically to give more choices to sailors. The project includes major initiatives to modernize and improve the personnel distribution system:
The Rating Identification Engine and Jobs and Occupational Interest in the Navy programs strive to match sailors to skills so as to optimize training success and increase job satisfaction.
The Accelerating Sailors Achievements Program brings sailors to active duty for 36 months and establishes their periodic rotation date at 24 months, thereby giving them the options of leaving their command for "A" school, doing a split tour in the same area, or remaining at their command for another year.
The Dynamic Incentives project intends fundamentally to change the way the Navy attracts sailors to hard-to-fill locations by using market-based, tested, and responsive motivators such as assignment incentive pay.
Exploitation of Web-based interactive software is crucial to the success of Project Sail. The NPC and Oracle Corporation have developed software to provide a Web-based marketplace for detailers to use in matching the right job with the right sailor at the right time.
The SkillsNet Web site now in planning will provide comprehensive reviews of job descriptions and the knowledge and skills required for assignments.
Career-path certifications and personal attributes derive from Task Force for Excellence through Commitment to Education and Learning (TF EXCEL), which combines five major concentration areas to create a single approach to developing sailors professionally and personally. The TF EXCEL model consists of professional development, personal development, professional military education and leadership, certifications and qualifications, and performance. (More information about this Commander Naval Education and Training program can be found at www.excel. navy.mil.)
Career Management Specialists at NPC monitor personnel-to-job matches for quality and efficiency, and intervene only in special cases. A key feature of Project SAIL is team detailing, which integrates detailers with each command's retention team. This gives sailors comprehensive pictures of realistic assignment expectations and career-enhancing options long before the start of negotiations over orders. An NPC command team coordinator—the single point of contact between NPC and command retention teams—is assigned to all commands.
The process uses a spreadsheet of all sailors in the Navy who are transferring within one year. It lists sailors' preferences, special competencies, family and career considerations, and additional comments from the command's career development board. Information is exchanged early in the detailing process by importing spreadsheet information to the Job Assignment and Selection System, which is the first in a series of planned upgrades to the system.
Adapting to the changing needs and professional goals of sailors requires Navy human resources specialists at NPC to use the latest customer service tools. Thus, the command has implemented a customer relationship management program that features the Oracle CRM li application suite. This software will be issued to detailers' desktop computer systems in October so they will have a complete professional and personal snapshot of their constituents. (It is an important tool for traveling detailers as well.)
Customer service applications will give sailors and officers a much greater level of access to NPC program knowledge, allow them to reach NPC customer service agents at 1-866-U-ASK-NPC 12 hours a day, Monday through Friday, or via the Internet (www.staynavy.navy.mil) 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. The management system will enable the NPC to build and maintain a convenient customer information database that provides more focused service, highlights specific areas of interest to the fleet, and—ultimately—improves personnel retention through improved customer satisfaction.
In concert with technological solutions, the NPC Career Information Team uses personal contact to reach sailors one-on-one. Since joining forces with NPC's Center for Career Development in April 2000, this travel team has contacted more than 50 commands and 50,000 sailors and family members. After attending the career information workshops, more than 700 sailors and officers who intended to leave the Navy at the end of their commitments decided to continue their service. By promoting the importance of people, identifying professional and personal needs, and giving sailors and spouses what is needed to make informed career decisions, more people are choosing to stay in the Navy.
The NPC guides future leaders in carrying the retention message up and down the chain of command by delivering a series of "best practices" briefings to prospective commanding officers and executive officers and to the senior enlisted leaders. While informing leaders and providing them with career information is a challenge for many private-sector organizations, the NPC has overcome the obstacles by using information technology and marketing to its advantage. The popular Stay Navy Web site cited previously has registered more than 2.2 million visits, at an average of more than 5,500 visitors per day. The average time sailors, officers, spouses, and retirees spend at the site is an exceptional 17 minutes.
Sailors and officers within their 12-, 9-, and 6-month window of end of active service or rotation date receive direct mailers encouraging them to stay Navy. The Naval Media Center and NPC produce televised public service announcements that cover various pay and benefit topics. Each commercial encourages sailors to talk to their career counselors or visit the Stay Navy web site. More than 180 ship and shore units have access to the ads, and the daily viewing audience is estimated to be more than 200,000.
Rear Admiral Hoewing has clearly summed up Navy Personnel Command's demanding mission: "Never for a moment do we forget that the primary goal of the personnel organization is fleet readiness-combat effectiveness... you achieve mission success by having the best people, well trained and motivated, and properly assigned."
Lieutenant Junior Grade Danzi is a public affairs officer at the Naval Personnel Command in Millington, Tennessee.