CNO, CNP Talk Personnel on Conversation with a Shipmate

WASHINGTON (NNS) -- The Navy's top admiral and personnel chief released another installment March 2 of the Internet video series, "Conversation with a Shipmate."

Lt. Caroline Hutcheson and Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Elliott Fabrizio interviewed Chief of Naval Operations (CNO) Adm. Jonathan Greenert and Chief of Naval Personnel (CNP) Vice Adm. Bill Moran last week.

Deep in the belly of the Pentagon, CNO and CNP answered questions regarding Navy personnel. Together they tackled salient manning issues: modernizing Navy's outdated personnel system, maximizing career-long technical training, moving away from year-group management, and reassessing the Body Composition Assessment (BCA) standards for the biannual Physical Fitness Assessment (PFA).

Greenert began the conversation by saying that taking care of Sailors is both a short and long term issue. Today, the Navy is focused on improving manning and manpower by filling gapped billets at sea, stabilizing promotion opportunities, and working to make deployment lengths shorter and more predictable. In the future, CNO said the focus will be on recruiting, training and retaining the right force to meet tomorrow's challenges.

"People are our asymmetric advantage," Greenert said. "We ask them to do so much and we need to take care of them in the here and now."

Meanwhile Moran addressed opportunities he views now to update and invest in how the Navy manages its people. He noted that the current personnel system requires a major overhaul, having not been appreciably changed since the 1940's.

"We want motivated, smart people to stay in our Navy," said Moran.

Moran went on to say specifically that the year-group system for officers and enlisted is a "fundamental flaw" in the Navy's system for managing its people.

"We've upgraded our ships, our computers and our weapons systems," said Greenert. "It's time to upgrade our personnel system. We're going to pull together and make this right."

Despite both leaders' desire to modernize the systems in place, both enthusiastically praised those Sailors working in and around the Navy that diligently manage the Navy's human resources.

"We've got phenomenal people working in Millington; community managers, and detailers," said Moran. I look forward to the coming months where we can create tools they can use to make the Navy even better, Moran said also.

Greenert too had a message of gratitude to Sailors who enable the Navy to sail smoothly on a daily basis.

"Our people are getting it done," said Greenert. "We're going to bring our personnel system to the 21st century."

For the full-length interview, tune into Conversation with a Shipmate on your Direct-to-Sailor network or go to this link: http://www.navy.mil/viewLdrVideo.asp?id=130&v=20251.

For more news from Chief of Naval Operations, visit www.navy.mil/local/cno/.