Research for Personnel Retention

This paper examines the effectiveness of Voluntary Education (VOLED) Program, which provides off-duty educational opportunities integrating a variety of continuing education programs to Sailors seeking to enhance their professional and personal growth. VOLED comprises three major instructional elements: Tuition Assistance, the Program for Afloat College Education (PACE) and the Academic Skills Learning Centers (ASLCs). The analyses finds that college education through VOLED improves promotion prospects, helps Sailors retake the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB) to qualify for Navy ratings for which they were not eligible, has a significant positive impact on retention, and that all elements are cost-effective. The report recommends maintaining full support for VOLED and accelerating academic skills investments. It also recommends modifying the ASLC contract to promote greater participation and establishing an academic transcript system. Finally, it recommends encouraging a more supportive command climate and limiting the enrollment of E1s and E2s.

In recent years, the maximum bonus paid to Navy aviators has not yielded the desired increase in continuation in some aviation subcommunities. Furthermore, Navy planners anticipate future shortfalls as the small, drawdown-era year groups approach the ends of their obligations. In response to these past and projected shortfalls, BURPERS has recommended increasing the current maximum annual award. N1 tasked CNA to analyze the effectiveness of the current legislated maximum bonus award under the Navy's Aviation Continuation Pay (ACP) program and to estimate bonus levels needed to induce adequate continuation of Navy aviators in the near future. The program's purpose is to ensure sufficient continuation to meet squadron department head requirements.

In October of 1992, the Tidewater area of Virginia was designated as a demonstration site for Tricare. The demonstration project makes fundamental changes in the financing and delivery of health care to military beneficiaries currently served by Naval Hospital, Portsmouth; McDonald Army Hospital, Ft. Eustis; and 1st Medical Group (TAC), Langley Air Force Base. Tricare Tidewater is a triservice managed-care initiative, designed to enhance military beneficiaries' access to care, improve mechanisms for quality assurance, control rising costs, and increase coordination between military and civilian components of the Military Health Services Systems (MHSS). Although increasing physician satisfaction was not a direct goal of the program, many of the changes implemented may affect the way that military physicians practice medicine in the Tidewater region and their attitudes regarding their role in the MHSS. Certainly, any positive effects would be welcomed, but a decline in physician satisfaction could lead to lower retention rates for military physicians, as well as lower levels of physician performance, patient satisfaction, and quality of care. In this research memorandum, we measure the impact of the first two years of the Tricare program on physician satisfaction.

CNA has studied the relationship between various dimensions of time at sea and retention over many years. In general, we have found that more time at sea produces lower retention, but the magnitude of the effects is more modest than many Navy officers expected. We have also found that higher pay (military relative to civilian) increases retention. Given the relative magnitudes of the sea duty and pay effects, we have concluded that modest increases in pay could be cost effective in offsetting the negative effects of increased sea duty. As the Navy has considered the implications of our past studies and has wrestled with difficult downsizing choices, three questions remained about the applicability of the results of our previous studies for Navy planning: (1) Does quality of life during turnarounds affect retention? (2) What is the cost to maintain retention if time at sea is increased? and (3) Are Navy Retention/Separation Surveys consistent with previous CNA analyses? This briefing addresses these questions. We start by summarizing our answers to the three questions. Explanations of how we reached the conclusions follow.