Just more than two years ago the Navy launched Sailor 2025—an evolving program of more than 45 initiatives. It was a long-overdue overhaul to the way we think about and execute career management: everything from promotion and advancement, evaluations and fitness reports (FitReps), selection boards, educational and other professional development opportunities, and even detailing. We knew we had to be smarter about training our increasingly technical force—using better ways to get practical knowledge into our Sailors’ hands, faster, and in a way that sticks. Finally, we knew we had to retool our system to be more like the business world: treat Sailors like adults, be transparent, give them realistic choices, and put market forces to work. We then initiated a top-to-bottom transformation of the Navy’s manpower and personnel enterprise to enable these programs and bring our Sailors the customer service they deserve and expect. Many of the programs already are delivering. More are about to be released.
Sailors are excited about the potential of these ideas. They jump in with ideas, and send more into the idea hotline—some of the best programs came from Sailors. They have received a taste of things to come with popular Sailor 2025 programs such as the Meritorious Advancement Program (MAP), and know we mean business. But some Sailors are still skeptical that the Navy may not deliver on these promises. After two years of foundational work, the Navy’s personnel system will be among the first in the Department of Defense (DOD) to move into the commercial cloud. The latter half of 2018 will see the start of the roll-out of our personal-mobile-device-accessible personnel services. By the end of 2019, Sailors will do most of their personnel business through smartphone ashore or desktop applications afloat. By 2023, they will have forgotten about today’s personnel system and many of its frequent frustrations.
To let the Navy know what is happening, we have been talking about these innovations in NavAdmin messages, Navy.mil articles, podcasts, videos and MyNavy Portal postings. To cast the net more widely, we are writing in Proceedings and using YouTube and other venues to let all know how to provide input to these Sailor-driven initiatives. Take this message to your shipmates: be part of the solution, send ideas directly to us, join one of the many fleet working groups tackling various issues, or take a shore assignment working in the personnel business. We need Sailors’ involvement, and we need Sailors’ ideas.
Naval personnel systems were built before most of our Sailors were born and operate on system hardware with software programs and patches that date back to the 1960s. Navy personnel’s organization, processes, and infrastructure are complex, outdated, and inefficient. These factors present challenges to sustain the enterprise’s future. The personnel system fundamentally has not transformed since the draft went away. In fact, the industrial-age, assembly-line model is unsustainable. The smartphone has more computing power, better software and update processes, and is more user friendly than any of the Navy’s personnel-related information technology systems. Detailers, community managers, and personnel with whom Sailors interact for personnel action work long hours and travel many miles to mitigate the significant personnel system deficiencies. Despite herculean efforts, we knew we must do better. That meant completely redesigning the entire process.
We need to change the way we do business in the personnel world and shift the focus from the business end to the customer, our Sailors. From a warfighting standpoint, the change is imperative: while we are in a good position today with respect to recruiting, retention, and manning, we need to conduct business for the Sailors of the future. What skill sets will they need? Will we be able to rapidly produce them in the required numbers? Will it be good enough to augment traditional forces for certain missions or periods of time?
Transformation will streamline processes and business models, making us more agile and responsive, and bring long overdue customer service to Sailors. We are shifting the focus to career readiness— not just for Sailors, but readiness for families as well. Focusing on Sailors and their families to better meet their needs as their career progresses makes sense—it is the right thing to do for those who routinely go into harm’s way. So, we are transforming how we recruit, how we advertise jobs and assign our personnel, and how we train. While the last few years largely have been spent on foundational work, 2018 will see the beginning of new and exciting customer service models for our Sailors.
When we started in 2015, we used the term “Sailor 2025” to challenge ourselves to think about what Sailors ten years in the future would expect and need, and to deliver those cutting-edge systems and policies now. Sailor 2025 is about empowering commanding officers and Sailors, updating policies, procedures, and operating systems, and providing the right training at the right time in the right way to ensure Sailors are ready for the Fleet. We are providing choices, flexibility, and transparency to our Sailors, and increasing the sustainability of our personnel system by enabling longer careers. Sailor 2025 also is about improving the “fit” of our Sailors with the jobs we need them to do by offering them more choices and providing relevant and timely training. This innovation is built on a framework of three pillars:
• A Modern Personnel System, a career learning continuum that we call
• A Career-learning Continuum called Ready, Relevant Learning (RRL)
• Career Readiness
Personnel System Modernization (PSM)
Our personnel system modernization initiatives are aimed at providing better tools to empower commanding officers and give Sailors more choices and ownership over their careers. We are modernizing personnel policies to increase flexibility and transparency, while allowing more capacity for the Navy to adapt to economic changes and corresponding effects on the recruiting market and retention. These programs are being launched as fast as we can deliver them, and modified as we learn—this is not Washington, D.C., business as usual. Many of these ideas originated in fleet all-hands calls.
Current initiatives include:
● The Meritorious Advancement Program (MAP) provides commanding officers with the ability to meritoriously advance talented, hard-working Sailors to pay grades E-6 and below.
● Fleet Scholar Education Program (FSEP) provides 30 annual fully funded, competitively awarded in-residence graduate degree opportunities at civilian institutions of choice to unrestricted line (URL) and information warfare community (IWC) officers.
· Tours with Industry (TWI) provides opportunities for 30 top-performing Sailors to work at high-performing corporations, including Amazon, Federal Express, Huntington Ingalls Industries, Oakridge National Laboratories, Microsoft, and many others.
Initiatives nearing implementation are:
● Rating Modernization is about bringing the Navy’s rating system into the 21st century, which is critical to increasing readiness and wholeness and improving sustainability and fit to meet the needs of the growing Navy. We are modernizing our rating system to redefine enlisted career fields, improve talent management and the detailing process, offer more career choices, and expand professional development opportunities.
● Detailing Marketplace is a system that will be the Navy’s version of LinkedIn, a one-stop shop for reenlistment and billet negotiation, where Sailors will be able to connect directly with open positions, communicate their desires, and negotiate orders. The vision is open and transparent job advertisement and opportunity. Every Sailor will see all the jobs on the slate—no filtering. Sailors will see all available billets, and the "market" will drive negotiations. Sailors will be able to negotiate longer-term deals for more than one tour that may include geographic stability, education opportunities, co-location with spouses, advancements for hard-to-fill locations, special pays, etc.
The combination of Rating Modernization and Detailing Marketplace, enabled by Ready, Relevant Learning, will ultimately make Career Waypoints (C-Way) and Career Management System–Interactive Detailing (CMS-ID) obsolete.
● Performance Evaluation System transformation, long overdue, seeks to correct inequities caused by the “forced distribution” system (i.e., early promote, must promote, promote [EP/MP/P]) of today’s system. Now in its third large-scale pilot, this vision features a standards-based scale where individuals are compared against a standard for their rank instead of their peers. The first two pilots showed excellent correlation with the overall grades of the old system, but also provided meaningful individual trait grades, which has significant potential. The new system is easy to use and efficient because it can be done on a smart phone in 6-8 minutes.
Ready, Relevant Learning (RRL)
RRL is a holistic approach to training the career enlisted force. This will accelerate the learning of every Sailor for faster response to rapidly changing warfighting requirements in increasingly dynamic operational environments. Today’s legacy training does not take full advantage of existing and emerging technology for knowledge-transfer. Oftentimes, the skills acquired during accession training atrophy because of delays between delivery of training and on-the-job performance, placing an added burden on the fleet and potentially compromising operational readiness. We are using the science of learning to transform the current training model to identify modern training solutions, delivered at the point of need, better preparing Sailors to operate and maintain their equipment at its technological limits and meet rapidly evolving warfighting requirements.
Versions of many of these training solutions are in use today, such as the Multipurpose Reconfigurable Training Systems (MRTS) 3D—a high-definition representation of system hardware and circuit/equipment displayed on a series of flat-panel touch screens driven by commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) gaming technology. Today, Navy is using MRTS 3D technology to train Sailors on submarine radio rooms, Virginia (SSN-774)-class torpedo rooms, emergency diesel generators, and an aircraft mobile electric power plant (MEPP). The data is clear—this method of training allows Sailors to get “reps and sets” needed and rapidly build watch team fundamentals. Sailors learn faster and retain more because we can simulate the hull number or type/model/series of aircraft they will be assigned. Using the littoral combat ship (LCS) trainer program as our prototype, we will produce Sailors who are qualified for their first watch station or first maintenance duties, which will unburden deckplate leaders. As important, the new Sailor reporting to the team is no longer the “non-qual” carrying a stack of qualification cards around for months and not able to contribute to the team effort. He or she is immediately on the watch bill, doing maintenance, and carrying a share of the load.
Finally, one of the key features of this new program will be the ability to provide detailed and meaningful individual and team training performance data, which will be available to commanders through the new Navy Pay and Personnel System–2 (NP2). When complete, this will allow commands to optimize watch team assignments and pre-deployment training plans based on an individual’s skills.
To ensure that fleet readiness is not impacted negatively, there are numerous decision points throughout the program to ensure RRL is performing at least as well as legacy training programs. This ensures no instructors will be removed from classrooms prematurely. In fact, this program will not rely on IT solutions alone – part of the calculus is the right mix of virtual reality and human instructional training. Therefore, the first decision to remove any instructors will not be made until FY–20.
Career Readiness (CR)
Career Readiness seeks to remove barriers to continued service and improve Sailors’ work-life balance, health, and wellness. The Navy is powerful and more lethal when we leverage and capitalize on the talents and strengths of the entire military and civilian workforce and instill an environment where everyone is valued and respected. To that end, we have incorporated the “ONE NAVY TEAM” concept into leader development efforts to make the force stronger, more resilient, and more competitive with the best public and private sector employers, equipped and ready to deter war and protect the nation. The goal is to enhance Sailors’ career readiness by better developing leaders and remove obstacles that negatively influence Sailors’ decisions to stay Navy. Several initiatives in progress in this area include:
● Leader Development. Navy leaders must think more clearly and learn more rapidly than our adversaries. They must commit to improving the competence and the character of themselves and their teams, and inspire their teams to achieve their best possible performance. These principles are being reinforced for leaders at all levels, through a rich combination of formal schools, structured on-the-job training and experience, and self-guided education—both at the general leadership level and with tailored specifics for each community. Developing leaders will remain a principal focus.
● Culture of Fitness. Two years ago, the Navy set out to establish a culture of life-long health and fitness, to include good nutritional habits and a regular exercise regimen which is reinforced at work so Sailors will be fit year-round. To support this goal, the Go for Green program was established; this effort exempted from participation in the following PRT test those who scored an “excellent-low” or better and were within body-fat standards. This change—intended to incentivize healthy behavior—had the intended effect: scores across the Navy improved by 6 percent in one cycle.
● Personal Readiness. Last October, the Navy merged the sea-duty and overseas-duty screening processes into the annual personal health assessment (PHA), so that each Sailor is screened for sea duty and overseas duty each year to provide a more up-to-date picture of the Navy’s personnel “deployability” status. The largest contributor to Navy’s lack of deployment readiness is routine dental screening and/or correction of issues identified in it. Sailors can expect big policy changes as soon as June making this a personal responsibility, documented on their evaluations or FitReps. Under the coming rules, remaining in a non-deployable status for greater than 12 months will be grounds for processing for administrative separation.
● Family Friendly Service. As part of the work-life balance, health, and wellness initiatives, we will have to get past the culture of not being able to look past the criticality of the “next underway,” and start taking the long view—letting people recharge occasionally, seeking the balance Sailors need. Ultimately, the Navy is a family business. More than 70 percent of our Sailors are married. The quality of family life drives the stay/leave decision for many. As important, family readiness drives Sailor readiness, which drives Fleet readiness. With those critical factors in mind, Sailor 2025 programs look to simplify the challenges with starting and raising a family while maintaining a Navy career. The hours and capacity at child development centers have increased and the last remaining caveats on the Career Intermission Program have been removed. We have expanded maternity leave and soon will expand paternity and adoption leave into what will be called primary- and secondary-caregiver leave. While more needs to be done, the recently released Family Framework seeks ideas on what to do next to have the greatest impact.
● Toughness. The toughness initiative is aimed at providing Sailors who are ready for the next phase of training when they enter the Fleet. Recruit Training Command (RTC) has been working a systematic overhaul of the entire curriculum at boot camp, emphasizing hands-on training in warfighting skills. These changes include imposing increased and sustained stress on watch teams and individuals throughout their entire time at RTC in repeated firefighting, damage control, seamanship and watch-standing scenarios, improving the realism and recruit performance in the Battlestations–21 pinnacle event. In addition, tougher physical fitness standards have been implemented, including entrance standards, tiered training groups, and a higher fitness score required for graduation.
This is Part I of a two-part article on the Navy's Sailor 2025. The second part will be published on 27 March.
Vice Admiral Burke is the Deputy Chief of Naval Operations for Manpower, Personnel, Training, and Education (N1) and the 58th Chief of Naval Personnel. He is a career submarine officer who commanded the USS Hampton (SSN-767) and Submarine Development Squadron 12. As a flag officer, he has served as deputy commander, U.S. Sixth Fleet; director of operations (N3), U.S. Naval Forces Europe-Africa; and commander, Submarine Group Eight.
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