A more flexible, imaginative approach to manning the Royal Navy and supporting sailors’ families is the key to solving the retention problem, according to Second Sea Lord Vice Admiral James Burnell-Nugent.

And the Second Sea Lord (2SL) believes the basic mechanisms to develop these new personnel policies are in place, with the Royal navy’s traditional Divisional system being the bedrock on which they can be built.

When the Admiral took up his post early this year he said he wanted to be seen as the “ultimate Divisional Officer”, and would focus on listening to and improving the lot of the individual.

One of his first actions was to appoint Warrant Officer Eddie Seaborne as the Command Warrant Officer – the “ultimate Divisional Senior Rate” – and the Admiral said that since then they have both been struck by the importance of the Divisional system in terms of the “professional care and social care of our people and their families,” which he said is “key to retention – still the number one challenge we face in the personnel area.”

Flexible working, improved conditions, the profile of remuneration and bonuses throughout an individual’s career, improved pension arrangements for families and partners, and the reduction of tedious non-core duties are all in the melting pot as Navy planners seek to stem the flow of sailors who are handing in their notice early.

The Second Sea Lord is overseeing a major overhaul of the Divisional system, and investigating how his Personnel Liaison Team can support Divisional Officers, and help junior rates understand what their DO should be doing for them.

But WO Seaborne said there was no intention to take over the system: “It’s about a network. We are trying to help enhance it.”

Eddie said he takes between 30 to 50 emails a week on the subject of Service conditions alone, and follows each one up by email, telephone or a personal visit to sort out the problem.

The Admiral said that such a hands-on approach confirmed the fact he was determined to make a difference, whether across the Navy as a whole or for an individual within the organisation.

“At policy level it takes time and resources, but we can also make a difference at local level,” he said.

“People who are unhappy with something in their married quarters – perhaps a wife with a defective cooker, or a sailor whose career has hit a snag because of a problem with bureaucracy, perhaps.”

The Admiral said major changes could be made without spending large sums of money.

“The strong emphasis is revolving around treating people as individuals – not just people in the Royal Navy, but families as well,” he said.

“I have been struck by the differences between the sort of facilities we provide for families as compared with what we provide for the front line.”

He said this might be as simple as ensuring that grassy play areas for children on married quarters estates are mown regularly and fenced off to prevent dogs straying on to them.

“We have got to do far better in spending what might be quite small sums of money to make very significant improvements in the lives of Service families, particularly while their spouses are deployed,” said Admiral Burnell-Nugent.

He added that the Rebalancing Lives initiative championed by Capt Simon Ancona was “extremely important; it’s very close to my own heart.”

And the focus on the individual went beyond retention – the working environment was also an issue for the individual as well as on a global level, and the Admiral reiterated the Navy’s hard line on the problem; there was zero tolerance to bullying and harassment in the RN, and any such allegation would be investigated and action taken where there was sufficient and reliable evidence.

The net was being cast wide to ensure that no good ideas were allowed to escape, and the Admiral said that the Navy Board had put in lengthy sessions on the subject.

“I haven’t had a stopwatch running on it, but I would estimate that the Navy Board spends about 60 per cent of our time discussing personnel matters, as well as money, future platforms and the way the Navy is going from a capability point of view,’ he said.

“We do realise as we unveil new policies for personnel that not everybody is a winner – there are always some winners and some losers as new policies unfold – but the Navy Board is absolutely committed to doing the best for the Navy overall.

“That has always been the spirit of the Navy – teamwork. And the litmus test of the Board’s enthusiasm for a particular topic is always if they are prepared to pay for it.

“Take for example the MOD Guard Service; employing them on guarding duties has liberated a lot of people from one of the most unpopular jobs in the Navy, and we are hoping to do the same for the Royal Marines shortly.

“It has taken drudgery out of people’s lives, and the Navy Board is determined to find the money to make sure that the amount sailors and Marines have to do is significantly reduced, – though I’m not saying it will go away forever.”

Some benefits were already being seen, said the Admiral.

“A lot of work is going on in naval bases to improve conditions there, and for example, we have now got hard-wired TV in all the jetties in Portsmouth.

“And there are other simple things like getting lap-tops in mess decks so that people can write emails off watch instead of having to go to a working space.

“Some ships are beginning to work even more flexible hours – already the Navy has got a good reputation for flexible working hours; some ships, depending on where they are in the training operation cycle do extend those principles.

“So a ship in maintenance might work a three-and-a-half day week on the basis that you still put in the same number of hours but you crack the hours in between Monday lunch-time and Thursday evening, so that, in modern business language, you get the same output and people get better quality of life in harbour, particularly the travellers, and more time with their families.

“This is all part of trying to separate the tempo of the individual from the tempo of the ship – what we call op tempo and pers tempo, and during this month Commodore Neil Morisetti, Director of Topmast, will be going round naval bases and air stations briefing people on the further evolution of Topmast in this area.”

Overseas navies were being studied to see if there were any initiatives which can be adapted for the Royal Navy.

For example, the US Navy made extensive use of information technology to target allowances to individuals when a particular shortfall needed to be addressed, such as overseas service – although Admiral Burnell-Nugent stressed that that was not necessarily a path he would seek to follow.

But it was a two-way process, he added: “There is a huge amount of interest from other Navies in what we are doing, for example with squadding.

“All navies have got this issue, albeit maybe at different levels of activity, of freeing up the relationship between op tempo and pers tempo.

“With the modern sailor, and the modern family man in particular, we mustn’t burn up separated time for limited operational gain.

“Every day of separated service we want to try to focus on delivering operational capability, not hanging around guarding, for example or doing boring duty watches.”

With the 60-40 base port rule still in existence – where planners aimed to have a ship deployed for 60 per cent of the time – and the high intensity of activity while they were away meant there must be compensations in improved time in harbour, barracks or on the air station, he said.

And as conditions such as accommodation at sea and operational welfare packages had been overhauled for the benefit of sailors on deployment, attention was now turning towards improving the 40 per cent base-port time.

As some of that time was spent on leave or in training, the efforts must be that much greater to make an appreciable difference.

“The bottom line is that I hope people do feel genuinely we are working very hard both at Navy Board level and my own staff to look after people, to make their job worthwhile and their job prospects appealing and make sure they live up to their expectations of a really good career in the Royal Navy,” said Admiral Burnell-Nugent.