Deja Vu - Morale in The U.S. Navy Is Fading Away

2014 Navy Retention Study Report - Full.pdf

Key Findings

Sailors are most likely to leave uniformed service because of a perception of increasingly high operational tempo, poor work/life balance, low service-wide morale, declining pay and compensation, waning desire to hold senior leadership positions, and a widespread distrust of senior leadership, all of which erodes loyalty to the institution.

• Operational Tempo - 41.9% of Sailors who responded report their last deployment was between 7-9 months in length and 47.4% expect their next deployment to last between 8-10 months, with a plurality believing deployments will be 9 months in length. This is significantly higher than the six month average deployment length of years past. !
• Poor Work Life Balance - 62.3% of Sailors believe work-life balance is not ideal, as compared to 21.6% who believe it is ideal. Comments collected by the survey indicate this negative response exacerbates the “grass is greener on the outside” mentality.
• Low service-wide Morale - While 59.0% of Sailors believe they are making a difference, only 17.7% of Sailors consider morale to be “excellent” or “good.” 42.2% believe morale is “marginal” or “poor.”
• Declining Pay and Compensation - 80.4% rank the current retirement system, and 73.9% rank pay and compensation, as two of the most important reasons to remain in uniform. Unfortunately, recent calls to reduce pay and benefits reduce a Sailor’s desire to remain in uniform, especially when 62.7% of Sailors believe it would be easy to get hired if they left the Navy today.
• Waning Desire for Senior Leadership Positions - 49.4% of responding Sailors do not want their boss’s job. Comments indicate an increasing belief that positions of senior leadership, specifically operational command, is less desirable because of increasing risk aversion (68.7%), high administrative burden (56.4%), and, in some cases, a pay inversion where commanding officers are paid up to 10% less than the mid-career officers they lead.
• Widespread Distrust of Senior Leadership - Most troubling is the perception Sailors hold of senior leadership. 37.2% regard senior leadership as “marginal” or “poor”, a plurality state they do not trust senior leaders, 51.3% don’t believe senior leaders care what they think, and 50.1% of Sailors do not believe senior leaders hold themselves accountable.

Moving Forward

Retaining quality individuals is critical to the continued success of the U.S. Navy, as we cannot directly hire into positions of responsibility — we must promote from within. Reassuringly, active duty Sailors have already begun to step forward and claim ownership, offering solutions to help improve retention. Please visit www.dodoretention.org to access the full report, proposed recommendations, and survey data.

Morale: The U.S. Navy Is Fading Away

A major reason for low morale is the growing talk in Congress for reducing pay and benefits. In particular many sailors feared the long-standing custom of retirement (at half pay) after twenty years’ service was in danger. Most (63 percent) were certain they could get a good job if they left the navy. Worse, nearly half the respondents did not want to get promoted because of the growing amount of paperwork and petty rules that had to be enforced. Over half the respondents had a low of opinion of senior leadership, believing the admirals did not pay attention of the problems of those they commanded and were not themselves held accountable for bad decisions.

I remember the post Vietnam Navy
I Like The Cut Of His Jib !!: Admiral Elmo Zumwalt - -
Navy Reformer Elmo Zumwalt Dies

The most serious challenge Zumwalt faced was morale, which had plummeted to abysmal levels throughout the Navy.
This was partly due to the wear and tear on men and equipment of long overseas deployments in a service with worldwide commitments. But much of it could be traced to the refusal of naval leaders to ease regulations involving dress, hairstyles, overnight shore leave for junior enlisted men, discipline and similar matters.
The result was a drop in the reenlistment rate, normally about 35 percent, to 9.5 percent. The question of whether there would be enough trained personnel to run the fleet became critical.
Zumwalt set about changing this with a series of "Z-grams," as his directives were called. The purpose was to bring the Navy closer to norms of behavior accepted by the country at large. For example, sailors were permitted to wear work clothes to and from their jobs to cut down on needless changes of uniform. Inspections were scheduled so as not to interfere with weekend liberty. Opportunities to choose assignments were expanded. Pay was increased. Recruiting ads portrayed the service as "cool." The admiral himself wore sideburns.