Australian Maritime Issues 2007 - Royal Australian Navy

How Should Navies Adapt to the Changing Expectations of Generations X and Y?
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The navy has very high expectations of its members. Service in each of the navies
examined in this paper is voluntary, and so to join the Service, arguably, implies a
unilateral acceptance and integration of the heavy demands of the organisation and
its values. In the context of this paper’s subject, this scenario begs the question of
the congruence, or otherwise, of the navy’s values and expectations with those of
Generations X and Y. What adjustments, if any, might navies be prudent to make to
the demands they place on Generation X and Y members, who, after all, are the future
of the organisation? Before any consideration is given to making adjustments for the
two generations, a look at the key human resource (HR) challenges faced by navies
is important.
There are a number of HR challenges facing navies today. Among them are issues
such as leadership, career development, responding to the growing demand for work
and life balance, and flexible work initiatives. 14 However, key among navies’ current
challenges are the wider issues of attraction, recruitment and retention – the latter
being retention for lengths of time that enable key skills, experience and competencies
to be developed and used. 15
Generational Categories and Characteristics
The concept of generations was introduced into sociological theory during the 1950s by
Karl Mannheim. 16 A generation is commonly defined in the literature as an identifiable
group of people who share a band of birth years and key life experiences as they move
through life together. 17 As they do so they are exposed to, and influenced by, a range
of social, economic, and major events. 18 The result of their shared experiences are
certain generational characteristics. 19 These generational characteristics, which are,
necessarily, generalisations, act as a filter that influences the particular generation’s
attitudes to every aspect of their lives – from how they spend their money, attitudes
to work and family, attitudes to authority, to expectations concerning how they will
meet their various responsibilities. 20 As such, we can already begin to hypothesise that
generational values may have implications for navies, which have their own values
and expectations.
Many differing date ranges have been applied to the generations in the literature but
for the purpose of this paper the following, commonly agreed upon, birth years will
be used: Baby Boomers (1943-64), Generation X (1965-81), Generation Y (1982-95). 21
The Baby Boomer generation is included here because many of the senior leaders and
managers (and therefore policy-makers) in the navy today are from that generation.
Any consideration of adapting to the changing expectations of Generations X and Y
would, necessarily, be made by them – who of course are influenced by their own
generational filter.