The 5 Questions You’re Asking About The Navy’s Big Personnel Changes

By U.S. Navy – May 28, 2015
Posted in: Career, Navy Life

From Chief of Naval Personnel Public Affairs

A major rollout of new personnel initiatives that provide greater choice, flexibility and transparency in everything from career path, promotions and advancements, to GMT and even body composition assessment (BCA) was announced by Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus on May 13.

As these initiatives move forward, the Office of the Chief of Naval Personnel has responsibility for fleet communication and implementation.

Vice Adm. Bill Moran, CNP, had the opportunity to discuss these initiatives with the Fleet last week, and answered Sailors’ questions about the changes.

Here are the top five questions you’re asking in all hands calls and on social media:

1. Why are we making all of these changes to the Navy’s personnel system?

“We’ve got a great Navy. Sailors today are high quality. Recruiting is successful and the quality of kids we’re bringing in today is wonderful.

The economy is always our biggest competitor for attracting good people, and keeping good people, so we want to put things in place today, get authority on the shelf that allows us to deal with any changes in the economic situation when the time comes.”

2. Are we really getting rid of mandatory Navy GMT?

“We are coming up with better ideas and better training over time … we are giving this back to CO’s to determine when they think their crew, their squadron, their unit, is in need of that kind of training.”



3. What do the Navy Fitness changes mean for Sailors?

“The PFA as we institute it today is really not measuring health or encouraging better health, it is simply a test. We’re partnering with BUMED to figure out what defines better health and then use the standards we have to get more people to take the test … really giving them more latitude to pay most attention to doing the right things to be healthier.”



4. Why is CAP changing to the Meritorious Advancement Program?

“Nobody knows their Sailors better than our CO’s in the fleet, the command master chief and the chief’s mess. We want to give them more opportunity to recognize the best of the best inside their units by expanding the opportunity to meritoriously advance Sailors. We’ve also heard from multiple units and CO’s around the Fleet that all of our great Sailors aren’t only at sea, we have some great Sailors ashore as well.”



5. How are you going to provide greater career path flexibility?

“I think we’re trying to find more than one path to milestone achievement and success for people who are talented. Today it’s defined as the golden career path because it’s pretty rigid. You don’t have opportunities to try something different or to maybe get off track for whatever reason, we want to be able to give people off ramps that have a great deal of talent and are very skilled and want to come back and serve.”