Review of Quality as a Factor in Sailor Selection of Monetary and Non-Monetary Incentives

Abstract

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: Today's Navy is faced with a number of challenges in attracting and retaining the officers and enlisted personnel required to operate and maintain the technical equipment required to achieve mission success. Investment of time and dollars in training and qualifying individuals to drive ships, operate and maintain weapons systems, fly aircraft, operate nuclear power plants, and manage people can average several hundred thousand dollars by the completion of an initial four-year tour of duty. In some cases, it is not unusual to exceed a million dollar investment in training and development of a Sailor with very specialized skills. It is clearly in the Navy’s best interest to retain the skills and capabilities of the highly trained individuals for a career rather than invest in retraining personnel every four to six years. The research focused on the issue of quality of the officer or enlisted service member as determined by their fitness report rating of Early Promote (EP = 5), Must Promote (MP = 4) or Promotable (P = 3) and related that data to their selection of a monetary or non-monetary incentive at significant career decision points. The goal was to determine if the quality of the individual was related to whether they selected a monetary incentive or a non-monetary incentive. A limited number of these incentives were looked at in the research, specifically the Surface Warfare Officer Continuation Pay (SWOCP or “SWO bonus”) monetary incentive for officers, the Selective Reenlistment Bonus (SRB) monetary incentive for enlisted personnel, and the No-Cost Geographic Stability Permanent Change of Station (PCS) move non-monetary incentive for both officers and enlisted. While data was collected for each of these incentive programs, the data obtained for the enlisted personnel was inconsistent, and in thorough analysis. Based on the limited time available to complete this initial project, the research focused on the officer data related to the SRB and PCS moves is available and may be useable with some minor additional refinement of data structure but a future Capstone group, thesis student, or faculty researcher. Along the way, a new methodology was created to obtain personnel data without the Personal Identifiable Information (PII) being compromised. In addition, this new methodology provided a process to include officer and Sailor performances as it relations to the quality of individuals who take monetary and non-monetary incentives. Both of these new concepts proved valuable information to the project and can be used for future work that uses PII or quality as part of the required data set. Based on analysis of the officer data obtained, the key findings revealed: • The data covered 1,453 officers that executed a no-cost PCS during the time period. There does not appear to be a relationship between quality and these types of moves. • For the officers receiving a SWO bonus and ratings in the range of P, MP, and EP, over 75 percent of recipients received a most recent score of EP. • Even though a majority of SWO data revealed a quality component being applied to a bonus award, Navy still spent $3 million on 36 officers being evaluated as P and $0.4 million on 8 officers who no longer have a SWO designator over the three fiscal years reviewed. The project team recommends the following actions based on the outcome of this project: • Conduct further studies on other monetary incentives such as Aviator Continuation Pay, Nuclear Continuation Bonus and Tuition Assistance. Additionally, obtain more non- monetary incentive data such as base housing information and child development center enrollment. Compare the monetary and non-monetary data to the quality of the officers and Sailors receiving the incentive. • Analyze SRB and enlisted no-cost PCS move data to identify any similarities and differences in comparison to the SWO analysis conducted in this report. • Review SWO bonus policy to ensure that SWOs that apply for lateral transfer are currently not executing a SWO bonus contract.