Services Look to New Ways to Recruit, Retain Personnel

By Jim Garamone

DoD News, Defense Media Activity

WASHINGTON, Nov. 19, 2014 – All the services are looking at different ways to attract and retain the best recruits for the military, and that may include some form of interrupted service, the chief of naval personnel said here today.

Speaking with Defense One’s Stephanie Gaskell at the organization’s summit, Navy Vice Adm. Bill Moran said the millennial generation poses new recruiting and retention challenges.

“We’re dealing with a generation of folks who view the world differently than when I grew up,” Moran said. “The personnel system we have in place today is based, really, on a post-World War II model, with some adjustments along the way. I do think it is time we rethink how we manage our people.”

Current Generation Wants Varied Experiences

The way the current generation thinks about service and careers is different, and the Defense Department would make a mistake not recognizing those difference, the admiral said. “What we’ve learned from talking to a lot of men and women in this generation [is that] they want to see more experience both inside and outside service organizations.”

They want the experience of working in the military or the police or other service organizations, Moran said, but they also want to experience life in private enterprise as well. “Our system is pretty much an ‘up-or-out system,’” he added. “You join and you either join for a career or you join for a short tour and move on. I don’t think we can afford to do that in the future.”

Moran said he has had conversations with his Army and Air Force counterparts on changing the way the services manage their forces.

“If you have a generation of young men and women who aren’t ready to commit to a career at the five-year or eight-year point, we generally just say, ‘Thank you for your service’ and move on,” he said. “I’m not sure we can afford to do that in the future.”

Among Ideas: Off- and On-ramps for Service

Recruiting and training people costs a lot of money, the admiral noted. “I would like to see us to move toward a system that allows people to have an off-ramp from service -- to get a new job, start a family, see what the world is like on the other side -- and then have an on-ramp to come back,” he said.

The services would save a lot in training costs, the admiral said. “We would get a more mature, experienced sailor,” he added. “Those are the kinds of things we are looking at. Corporate America and other big businesses are also looking at this.”

Sailors doing their jobs at sea or at the front have excellent morale, the admiral said, but those farther back do not have the same esprit.

Making deployments more predictable would go a long way toward raising all sailors’ morale, he said. Sequestration spending cuts have played a role in this unpredictability, he said, but the service is working toward fixing that problem. Still, he added, it will take four or five years to build this into the fleet.