After years of “right-sizing” – and all the unintended attitudes that can go with it – Navy is again waking up to the realization that highly trained and motivated people are our most precious resource. Young “millenials” today are not motivated by the same sorts of things that brought their predecessors to the recruiter’s office – many join the Navy for educational benefits, for example. While we are meeting recruiting and attrition goals, the combination of high operating tempo, career uncertainty and – especially here in San Diego – a high cost of living is exerting pressure on retention numbers.
As has been pointed out elsewhere, much of our national income growth in the last generation has come through a transition of spouses who in years past might have stayed at home to the professional, full-time workforce. We lead vastly richer lives (in a material sense, anyway) than did our parent’s generation, but much of that has come at the expense of traditional household roles and relationships.
“Ownership” can seem very important to millenials and that fact is that many young military families can face unique disadvantages in that seeming competion: Deploying spouses make full-time employment for those left behind stressful even as frequent moves make career-building a challenge. Which is why this is such a dazzlingly brilliant idea:
In its latest bid to recruit and retain service members by focusing on their families’ needs, the Pentagon yesterday announced a program to help military spouses train for high-growth, portable careers.
Almost every base in San Diego is included in the first round of the project, which will start next month. Seventeen other military installations in eight states were chosen.
The Pentagon, with help from the U.S. Department of Labor, will pay up to $6,000 over two years to help each participant pursue career-oriented education and training. Targeted fields include teaching, health care, information technology, financial services and construction.
Navy has stated that it wants to be an “employer of preferrence.” This could be a significant step in realizing that vision, and if it helps retain our expensively trained “best and brightest,” cheap at twice the price.
I always figured that if I got married while in the military, it would be helpful if she were also a nurse or teacher, those being two of the most portable professions I know of.
What I can’t figure out is why the military, with bases all over the landscape, can’t figure out a way to let folks commute a bit, letting spouses take advantage of cheaper living and smaller schools while the service member works, say, 14 days on and 7 days off. It’s not at all uncommon for a flight attendant for a commercial airline to be based out of New York and live in Kansas City or Chicago or Houston, commuting to New York and living in a shared apartment with other crews for three days a week. It would seem our military men and women are used to cozy quarters in the field, it would save on base housing, and we’re flying supplies around all the time anyway…
Not that education isn’t an excellent option, but having a house in Nevada or Wyoming sure beats an enlisted man’s wage renting a two-room apartment for his family in San Diego.
That’s a great idea. Now, they need to go one step further, and start weaning our senior enlisted and officers off of military housing, and come up with some plan/incentive/program to help them purchase homes, build equity, and ensure success at sales time if a distant PCS is due. I was lucky, spent my whole career in San Diego with my overseas tour in Long Beach, so, I was able to gain home ownership, some of my shipmates were not so lucky…
Be careful for what you ask; you may receive it. From this past Sunday’s “60 Minutes:”
http://www.cbsnews.com/sections/i_video/main500251.shtml?id=3486473n
The Navy is all about commuting. Why they helped me commute all the way from NAS Alameda to the Persian Gulf.
And to top it off, they were kind enough to bring me back 6 months and a wog day later. Door to door (or pier to pier I guess would be more accurate). Who could want more than that?
I’ll believe it when I see it. I swore that I’d never get married while I was in the Navy and I still havent seen anything that would make me change my mind, if I was still in. I believe that some of these circumstances were purposly created to discourage junior enlisted from marrying and having families in the first place. Where is the funding for these programs going to come from? Six thousand dollars won’t pay for a year at most colleges and tech schools. Congress, right now is playing fast and loose with the DOD’s funding. When they have to make a choice between this program and a new ship or aircraft, what do you think that choice is going to be? Remember these are the same people who brought us VEAP.
I concur with Jim Collins-the Navy will screw it up in execution. Not to mention that we now have “incentives” that are working at cross purposes now.
We want spouses to get help with education. But we discourage homesteading.
We want people to have stable home time when they come up for shore duty. But we pack the one spouse off for a year to do another services job on an IA.
We have placed caps on tution assistance for service members-while hoping to help spouses be more prepared for the work force.
We want a more sea centric Navy, while we want spouses to have time to have hubby take care of the kids so they can go to school.
I could go on and on on this subject but remember in the end:
“She’ll just divorce you and take all your money.”