Engineering - Royal Australian Navy

Naval Engineering Bulletin • June 2001
training. The consequence of this is that ships have a topheavy
technical manpower structure at sea. Put simply,
there are not enough junior sailor positions at sea to provide
the follow on requirements to the more senior positions.
RAN Technical Manpower Demographics. Last year the
RAN recruited about thirty percent of an MT and ET requirement
that was already too small to make up for existing
shortcomings. So far this year recruiting have done
better, but last month (April 2001) the ETs received 6 out of
18 and MTs received 27 out of 30. It is still too early to call
the long-term trend on the likelihood of recruiting the numbers
we want. Watch how recruiting goes. Fortunately, the
RAN has a couple of hundred SMN and AB MTs not in billets
but the spare ETs have now been used to fill positions.
Most of the MTs appear to have been placed at sea. However,
there are not enough bunks at sea to train people for
promotion to the higher ranks. Trainees are presumably in
the passageways and tiller-flats. However, these people
were recruited to grow the category and so we are likely to
have problems in the future.
What Will Happen? In the short term look forward to minimum
time for promotion for most sailors in the middle
ranks and anticipate more people of the next lowest rank
to the billet designated rank being posted in to billets. Probably,
personnel will see the provisions for acting rank being
increasingly used. If recruiting is successful these effects
will slowly dissipate. If shortfalls persist workforce personnel
will need to take other actions. Understand that improvements
will take several years. In the longer term,
anticipate more women in the work force because they are
becoming the largest under utilised recruitment pool.
managed. Due to this shortcoming, it is particularly important
that the junior sailors use their time at sea effectively.
This probably means that fairly intensive management of
engineering personnel is required as self management is
not likely to provide sufficient quality throughput to maintain
the workforce.
If you are ashore, help AB and SMN to progress competencies
and gain experience as much as possible. This will assist
those at sea in that phase of training. For those in more
senior positions keep abreast of how manpower management
is progressing, contact staff at Directorate of Naval
Personnel Requirements (Engineering & Logistic) and encourage
your juniors to do the same.
For all supervisors, keep in mind what is happening in the
wider population. Increased industry demand for technicians
will lead to increased pressures to leave the RAN whilst
making recruiting more difficult. Retention thus becomes
ever more important. Lack of respect for authority, higher
expectations and education mean that abuses of power and
position will be even less tolerable than now. While stopping
abuses might not help retention, continuing them will
make it worse. Check out your supervisory style. It might
be that you are over supervising and directing. Can you
increase the level of trust in your workplace? Are you willing
to ask your subordinates what you could do to improve
their working conditions and environment by changing
your behaviour? Doing this might increase your subordinates’
control of their circumstances. This has a major effect
on morale and stress and could help retention. While
you are at it, are you brave enough to ask your peers how
they see you could improve? Are you brave enough to return
the favour?
What the Policy Areas Have Done. Already, some
specialisations eg. Mk 92 and FFG MT (E) are critical. The
reasons for this are mostly outside the above issues but are
indicative of what the engineering community will have to
manage in the future. NAVSYSCOM personnel have discussed
restructuring crews so that they are more easily
sustained. This needs more development. In addition alternative
methods of management that will allow greater flexibility
are being developed. However, many of these
activities will take some time to produce an outcome.
What You Can Do? If you are at sea, look at your engineering
crew makeup. Roughly speaking if each rank is
not half the number of the one below it or less, then it may
be too difficult to sustain. That is, for each CPO, you need
two PO, four LS and eight AB/SMN. Some variation is allowed
but most ships are a long way from this structure.
Can you redistribute crew responsibilities to follow this ratio?
The lack of available bunk at sea is well known so supervisors
will need to look at how that is going to be
These personnel issues provide opportunities as well as
problems. The trick will be to find these chances while
managing the problems.
About the Author
LCDR Wheatland RANR used to be full time Navy. He has
worked on TTP92 but he promises that only half its problems
were his fault. He has a BE Mechanical and an MBA
from which he has nearly recovered. He left the RAN and
sailed around the Pacific on a yacht for eighteen months. He
has done some consulting with other organisations and is
reasonably sure the answer is not out there. Now he is working
in the category sponsors area because it is the biggest
puzzle of its type in Australia
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