The Chief of Naval Personnel visited Navy Personnel Command Oct. 24-25 and spoke about his vision for the future of what he calls the Navy's "most valuable weapon system” - its Sailors.
Vice Adm. Rick Cheeseman described the MyNavy HR Strategic Design to audiences during two All Hands Calls at the Naval Support Activity Mid-South Conference Center.
At its core, he said, is the mission.
“What are we about? It comes down to two words: personnel readiness,” he said.
Cheeseman said with personnel readiness as the mission, all efforts across the MyNavy HR enterprise lead to his vision of what he calls “mission-focused Sailors.”
This vision, he said, has as its foundation:
- Steady, effective recruitment and training
- An inclusive Navy culture that supports adaptive and resilient Sailors and families
- Sailor-informed, transparent, data-driven talent management
The pillars themselves are focused on very specific initiatives:
I. Deliver Billet-Based Advancement
Cheeseman said closing gaps at sea is a priority. At the same time, he acknowledges the challenges of matching Sailors to billets appropriate to their paygrades. That’s where billet-based advancement comes in.
“This is the complete merging of our distribution and our advancement system,” he said.
Initiatives such as the Detailing Marketplace Assignment Policy, Command Advance-to-Position, Advance-to-Position programs, and the Senior Enlisted Advancement to Position pilot, along with coming changes to the Senior Enlisted Marketplace, are expected to correct systemic misalignment between the Navy’s enlisted advancement and personnel distribution processes.
Annually, the Navy advances thousands of Sailors but does not immediately move those Sailors into positions that match their new paygrade due to impacts to losing commands.
Billet-based advancements are expected to reduce inefficiencies and eliminate critical gaps, while offering both monetary and non-monetary incentives to Sailors. It also gives Sailors more control over their careers and permanent change of station moves to include increased flexibility, transparency, and geographic stability in career decisions.
Cheeseman envisions a future where billet-based advancement becomes the standard mechanism for all enlisted Sailors through journeyman and supervisory paybands (E5-E9) to attain the next higher paygrade.
“Transforming the Navy enlisted advancement and distribution processes into a robust, billet-based marketplace decreases billet gaps and increases Fleet readiness to ensure the right Sailor, with the right skills, is in the right billet to meet the mission,” he said.
II. Deliver Ready Relevant Learning
The Navy is in a war for talent, Cheeseman noted.
“We are focused on how we recruit, train, and educate our Nation’s best,” he said. “We must have Sailors who are skilled combat-ready warfighters, both disciplined and tough.”
The answer: Ready Relevant Learning.
“It’s a career-long learning continuum for every Sailor in our Navy,” Cheeseman said. “Think officer career paths; every officer can tell you exactly what their career path is. We’re trying to do the same thing for enlisted ratings. If we do that…then you’re delivering that training to the point of need. We also want to deliver this content faster and make sure it’s relevant to the Fleet so they are at peak performance.”
Modern challenges call for modern solutions, he noted.
“At its core, RRL is about creating more proficient and technically capable Sailors as they head to operational fleet units,” Cheeseman said.
III. Advance Navy Culture
Cheeseman pointed out that culture is both a foundational element and a pillar.
“In order for our Navy to win, we must have a culture that can,” he said. “In order to achieve success, we all need to take ownership together and create the Navy Culture that is necessary for our Sailors, their families, and our country.”
Cheeseman pointed out that, like no time since the Cold War, the Navy faces the possibility of conflict at sea with a peer competitor. With so much at stake, the Navy has to define desired cultural characteristics; set standards and measures for how to develop great people, teams, and leaders; and then train, reinforce, incentivize, reward, and measure to the cultural standard.
This will be task of the Integrated Culture Framework and supporting Playbook that simplifies, streamlines, and aligns existing terms, programs, and policies, providing leaders with the an executable plan to develop great people, leaders and teams.
“This will illustrate what right looks like, with tools you can use to advance the culture we want,” he said.
Cheeseman urged leaders and Sailors to act transparently and call out issues as they see them to avoid the “checklist culture” of the past.
“Together we own our culture and I know everyone here is on board to creating the culture that we need,” Cheeseman said.
IV. Provide Modern HR Service Delivery
Cheeseman said the vision here is to, “create a system that works for the 90% of us who require routine transactions that are almost automatic so the workforce can focus on the 10% that are truly unique, helping those people who need the direct touchpoints.”
The transformation that has been in work since 2016 continues, albeit the pace has not been where the fleet believed it would be by now, Cheeseman acknowledged.
“But what we have done to date has been epic,” he said. “We just need to understand what we are driving towards and how we’ll get there.”
Cheeseman said the efforts between enterprise management and enterprise support to create the solutions have greatly impressed him.
The My Navy Career Center personnel, he said, are, “working hard to provide a modern HR Service Delivery solution, with 24/7 contact support, to resolve personnel and pay issues at increased speed, improved accuracy and reduced cost.”
Cheeseman thanked the NPC and MNCC teams for strengthening programs and providing direct and honest feedback to developers.
“Thank you for all that you are doing and keep at it, because we owe it our Sailors to get this right so everyone can focus on warfighting readiness.”
V. Deliver and Sustain Modern HR IT Solutions
“The one thing that touches each of our pillars – Billet Based Advancement, Ready Relevant Learning, Advancing Culture and HR service delivery – are delivering modern IT systems,” he said.
Moving forward, Cheeseman said, our IT Transformation team is laser-focused on modernizing our processes, removing barriers, fixing glitches and delivering world-class technology.
That’s why enterprise support has been stood up as an OPNAV code — OPNAV N16 — to allow them the flexibility to deliver effective MyNavy HR digital transformation solutions.
Just as importantly, Cheeseman said, increased communication between enterprise support and the rest of the MyNavy HR enterprise has improved tremendously, allowing for the technical requirement to meet the needs of the functional requirements.
“This is so important and underpins everything we’re trying to do,” he said.
Cheeseman expressed optimism in getting the Strategic Design operational and making an effective impact on the Fleet.
“As we have always done in the past, our people will step up and rise to the occasion,” he said. “These five things will get us into the future where we want to be. As a MyNavy HR team, we’ll get the basics right so Sailors can be the mission-focused professionals our Nation deserves.
“I know we are up to the task.”