Why should we expect sailors to stay in the Navy when we don't give them enough opportunity to advance?
I recently attended a Windows NT familiarization class, provided by a commercial vendor. The instructor was a former first-class interior communications electrician who separated from the Navy after 12 years of service. After her separation, she picked up a copy of Computers for Dummies and now (three years later) has earned her certification as a Microsoft-certified systems engineer—earning twice her Navy pay. What was the advancement opportunity into the paygrade she vacated? It was less than 1%. And according to her, that was a significant factor in her decision to leave the Navy.
Can we build a professional career force on abysmal opportunity such as this? The answer, of course, is no. The hard news that goes along with this truth is that we also no longer can sustain the force that we built when advancement opportunity was much better. Anyone who observes retention statistics can attest to the steady, creeping realization that whatever the solution is, we still have not put together all the pieces to solve the retention puzzle. Better advancement opportunity is a missing piece that is essential to sustaining the retention picture we both desire and require.
It's the Opportunity, Stupid
Enlisted advancement opportunity is near a 25-year low, and although there are signs of aggregate opportunity edging upward slightly, the forecast for the foreseeable future also is dim. For example, Navy-wide advancement opportunity from second-class petty officer to first-class petty officer has been below 10% only 14 times in the last 25 years--and that was the 14 of the 15 most recent advancement cycles. Only recently has opportunity edged marginally upward to around 11%.
I am not so naïve to think that stunted advancement opportunity is the whole ball of wax—or that fixing it would usher in a naval nirvana for our sailors. There are other factors, widely discussed, that also have a bearing on the matter. For example, I am optimistic that landing our largest pay raise in 17 years may help increase retention (provided, of course, that Congress follows through on its promises). Other less-expensive practical steps, like increasing the number of in-port duty sections, promise to be significant steps in the right direction. Going from three-section duty in port to ten-section duty means going from ten duty days per month to two, maybe three. That is a tangible quality-of-life improvement, a true satisfier for officers and sailors alike.
But what is the number-one reason that sailors—talented sailors, the ones we want to keep—cite as their greatest dissatisfier? It is not pay or even family separation. Those issues always are near the top, but the number one reason sailors give for separating from the service is lack of advancement opportunity.
What's in the Way?
There are three basic reasons for our slowness in addressing stagnated enlisted advancement opportunity:
- It is virtually impossible for officers and senior enlisted to fathom what it means to experience low, often single-digit advancement opportunity over a period of many years. Although the majority of our junior sailors (who represent about one-half of the force) have spent their entire careers facing poor advancement opportunity, that experience is simply someone else's sea story for a majority of our leadership. If slow advancement is not something we have experienced ourselves, it is hard for the story to have the same impact.
- We are beholden to a misdirected focus when we speak about “keeping the faith” with the troops. We must shift our allegiance from a preoccupation about the welfare of enlisted khakis to one of ensuring the next generation of petty officers also is offered a reasonable opportunity to become chiefs on the basis of their performance.
- The Navy, like many other large institutions, generally is change resistant. We have a long, superb history of far-sighted technical innovation with our gadgets and an equally long and spectacular history of begrudging and reactionary change where our people are concerned.
The evidence is intuitive and irrefutable that we cannot build a force of professionals if we afford them virtually zero advancement opportunity. It is really that simple. I remember remarking to one of my commanding officers that if officers experienced for a few years the advancement opportunity enlisted sailors are expected to live with for a 20-year career we would not have any more officers left. We can spin it anyway we want, but the fact remains that today's sailors are smart enough to grasp that promises of better opportunity made through almost ten years of draw down simply are not likely to materialize in any meaningful way in a “steady-state” Navy. This generation of young sailors and junior officers believes it has stupendous opportunities outside the Navy. Real or imagined, that siren's call is beckoning to them—imploring them to leave us. At the same time, many of them, particularly our mid-grade, second-term enlisted technicians, have qualities that make them highly marketable on the outside.
What Should We Do?
I recommend that we work to give sailors an advancement opportunity that is near the historic norms of the 50 most recent advancement cycles, stretching back beyond the 1970s. The average opportunity for advancement cycles over the last 25 years is 65% from seaman to petty officer third class; 35% from petty officer third class to second class; and 25% from second class to first class. That includes both the feast years of the 1970s-1980s and the lean years of the 1990s.
Here is an admittedly unpopular idea that, nonetheless, has real merit: Each year, when our master chief/senior chief selection boards convene, they should select the best-qualified candidates for advancement as usual—then move to the bottom of the list and pick our certified worst performers who already have put in a 20-year career, and send them home.
There are several reasons why this proposal should be adopted:
- By building merit-based vacancies into each year's selection boards in this way, we perpetually replenish our system with opportunity for our best performing sailors. It should work for officers, who—by comparison with enlisted standards—have absolutely fantastic advancement opportunity.
- The merit/performance-based system that we use to pick our leaders is upheld and strengthened with this innovation. This is an improvement over relying solely upon attrition at high-year tenure to create vacancies. That, clearly, is not getting the job done.
- Only advancement, rather than bonuses or incentive pay, offers the increased responsibility and opportunity that appeals to our most talented sailors. Only advancement to a higher pay grade enables sailors to improve their quality of life by promoting out of working parties, berthing petty officer duty, pier sentry watches, scullery duty, and a whole myriad of duties we assign by rank.
- Each record screened gets precisely the same treatment as any other record. All of the safeguards currently in use to select our best-qualified candidates also apply here. These include reviewing each record twice (or more), and justifying picks on both ends of the spectrum. If the process is good enough to use for promotion from the top, it seems good enough to use for creating opportunities from the bottom.
- This proposal costs no additional money to administer. In fact, it saves money.
- It does not require the convening of an additional board or panel. There are minimal additional administrative requirements. This idea fits perfectly within the framework of our current advancement system, albeit with an additional administrative twist.
- All candidates would be allowed to appear before at least two selection boards and no one with less than 20 years service would be considered for anything except promotion. This way every one gets at least a 20-year career.
Think Out of the Box
If the structure of our personnel management systems cannot support this type of opportunity, then we need to change the structure of those systems. The best minds in our country have been put to use developing more responsive, accurate, and effective munitions, weapon systems, communications systems, and the like—because they are needed to make our Navy better. Of all the services, the Navy never has allowed the status quo to prevent it from making innovative technical change. We just need to shift some of that attitude from the gadget-hardware side of the house to the technician-operator side of the house.
The Secretary of the Navy has expressed his desire for another round of base closings, because the size and composition of our infrastructure has not kept pace with the size and composition of our forces. In fact, the infrastructure that served us well in an earlier time now is an impediment to us in many ways. The same can be said of our personnel systems. If they are so burdensome, unwieldy, and binding that they suffocate our ability to offer better advancement opportunity to our deserving sailors, then the system must be overhauled. Administrative systems, however, are not our greatest impediments.
The most significant change that must occur is in our collective brain-housing group. The exponentially heightened professionalism now expected of sailors must be married to a much better opportunity for advancement. Do we need the same fantastic opportunity that characterized the late 1970s or roaring 1980s? Perhaps not. But we now require our sailors to be drug-free, sober, technically savvy, physically fit, and well behaved in a way that was unimaginable just 15 or 20 years ago—so is it realistic to expect sailors serving with us in the 21st century to continue tolerating abysmal advancement opportunity?
Like it or not, they won't. If we want to make real headway retaining sailors, then we must make the restoration of advancement opportunity a readiness imperative.
Senior Chief Pierce is the force career counselor on the staff of Commander Naval Surface Forces, U.S. Atlantic Fleet.