Research for Benefits

Over the past several years, the military has faced mounting recruiting, reenlistment, and manning difficulties. One perceived reason for these difficulties is increased competition for skilled personnel from the private sector, particularly through its incentive pay and benefit offerings. Although the recent softening of the economy may help to ease some of these competitive pressures, other less cyclical trends -such as a smaller high-school graduate recruiting pool and lower propensity to enlist in the military-persist. These trends suggest that a careful survey of the private-sector incentive pay and benefits landscape is needed. In this paper, we compare and contrast the incentive pay and benefit offerings of large, private-sector firms to those of the military. In doing so, we assess whether these offerings differ significantly in their provision, scope, or structure. We also consider whether these offerings have played a role in the military's recent recruiting, reenlistment, and manning difficulties. Finally, we describe the offerings of several private-sector companies that are likely to compete with the military for skilled personnel. We find significant differences in military and private-sector incentive pay and benefit provision of incentive-based pay, health care and retirement benefits, education and training services, child care, workforce flexibility measures, and Morale, Welfare, and Recreation (MWR)/other quality-of-life programs. In most cases, military benefits are broader in scope, differ in structure, and involve less choice than those offered by the private-sector. Taken together, these trends suggest several recommendations that could help the military in its recruiting, retention, and manning efforts.

In this choice-based conjoint (CBC) study, CNRC tasked CNA to explore three questions: which attributes of an enlistment package do potential recruits consider most important; what are the tradeoffs among various elements of a possible enlistment package; and, what elements of an enlistment package are most likely to help the Navy in its efforts to expand beyond its traditional recruiting base? The relationship between enlistment propensity and recruitment incentives was analyzed. The data show that respondents with different enlistment propensities have different preferences for the various incentives in the survey. The results of this study indicate that CNRC must investigate ways, most specifically by focusing on college-related incentives such as the Navy College Fund (NCF) and college credit for Navy training, to make serving in the Navy competitive with the alternative path of attending college and seeking employment in the private sector after having spent some time in college.

The military health care system has two missions. The first is the readiness mission to provide care for U.S. forces who become sick or injured during military engagements. The second is the peacetime mission, which includes maintaining the health of U.S. military personnel and supporting the provision of the military health care benefit to active duty dependents, retirees and their dependents, and survivors. This paper focuses on the legislative and regulatory evolution of this second mission and the costs associated with program change.

CNA was tasked by the Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness to examine the DOD health care benefit. The basic idea is to examine what exactly the benefit provides and compare it to what other employers provide-especially the federal government through its health care plan and private employers through their plans. Our approach was to compare the benefits offered under the Defense Health Plan (DHP) to the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program (FEHBP) both from the point of view of the employer, who cares what it will cost and how attractive it will be relative to what other employers provide, and to the employee, who then places a "value" on the benefits provided. The cost of the program to DOD is examined with some simple comparisons of total cost and cost per user. The main focus, however, was to compare not only the health care benefit provided to active duty personnel, but all of the benefits provided with what the federal government and private employers provide to their workers. It's not just the absolute level of one specific benefit that matters, but how the total compensation that includes all benefits compare with what's offered elsewhere.