Military sabbaticals
I’m just going to leave this here for discussion. From the Associated Press;
Navy Cmdr. Valerie Overstreet wanted to start a family. But her job as a Navy pilot and the fact that she and her husband, also a naval officer, were stationed in different parts of the country made it complicated.
So she decided to take advantage of a fledgling Navy program that allowed her to take a year off and return to duty without risking her career or future commands.
Now, three years later, she’s got a 2-year-old daughter and a 9-month old son, she’s back at work at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md., and her promotion to captain has been confirmed.
For Overstreet, the year off gave her precious time to have her daughter and get started on her master’s degree. The Navy retains an officer it considers promising without requiring her to sacrifice her family life.
Across the military services, leaders are experimenting with programs that will give valued officers and enlisted troops, men and women, the incentive to stay. Also, as the Pentagon moves to bring women into more jobs closer to the combat zone, military officials believe it is crucial to keep midcareer female officers in the services so they can mentor those on the front lines.
Yeah, the best way to maintain a trained and ready force is to give them years off from their jobs.
Category: Military issues
I don’t agree with this at all. I can see it as another excuse for individuals to duck out of deployments. I agree that it doesn’t fit the well maintained and trained ready force.
Is this program available to males? Potential Dads should have that opportunity as well.
So does this mean you have to start holding extra officers in every paygrade just to be ready on standby to Cover someone who wants to take a year off? How are you supposed to build a cohesive fighting, if people are gone? It’s like they’re trying even harder to break down the military.
Might work in academia. But there’s a very good reason it doesn’t exist in the real world. It doesn’t work.
MAJMike: formally, it probably is. I’d guess it’s also informally well-known to be terminal for the career of any male who applies.
Whitey_wingnut, VTWoody: good points. They will be ignored. Gotta put gender
accomodationequality ahead of military necessity these days.In 2009, I was mobilized to WRAMC as a 66H (I was a 1LT at the time). I was selected as one of three representatives from WRAMC to attend the CJ Reddy Nursing Leadership Conferences. Only 100 officers were selected nationwide. Most of the attendees were 1LT and Captains, with the occasional 2LT and MAJ thrown in. The overall purpose of this conference was to get feedback from junior officers in the nurse corps on different issues facing Army Medicine, and particularly the Nurse Corps. The usual issues came up, career planning, comparability with civilian pay, increased duty station flexibility, ext, but one that came up over and over was retention. The Army had crunched numbers and found that O2-O3’s with 3-5 years of Army healthcare were burning out and leaving the service in droves. Now being that the ANC is like 60% female, a large part of that was that they wanted to start families and the training/deployment cycle wasn’t allowing them time for that, and many of them were choosing to leave instead. The junior officers were put into panels to brainstorm as to how to solve these issues and the concept of a sabbatical just like the one the AF is implementing above was proposed. The operating theory behind that being it’s easier and far more cost effective to bring an experienced soldier up to speed after a year off or in a reduced duty status than to get an entirely new officer in that place and start over. MG Horoho (ANC Chief) took the suggestions and complied them, and went to AMEDD’s command and to the congressional oversight panel for defense with them. Now, while I realize that this is AMEDD, and not universally applicable to the force structure at large, It does however raise the question: In a free society without compulsory service, what kind of incentives can you use to get the volunteers you need? Because lets face it: Every single nurse in the ANC can be elsewhere doing the same type of work, for much more money, so that’s not the issue with… Read more »
And one last thing: I did end up taking time out of the reserves (I’m in the IRR now) to complete graduate school. It simple wasn’t possible for me to accomplish my educational goals within the timeframe between mobilizations and maintain the quality that I feel that I need for my career. There are repercussions; I’me going to have two bad years, but in the end I made a judgement call. I don’t think I’ll be less of a soldier or AMEDD officer when I return; I’ll be better educated in what I do for the Army: I keep people alive. The baby thing, well that’s not my lane.
Here is the skinny on the program from “Navy Live [:] The Official Blog of the United States Navy.” It contains a number of resource links and provides Q/A regarding the “Career Intermission Pilot Program.”
http://navylive.dodlive.mil/2013/05/16/career-intermission-pilot-program-updated/
ANCCPT: tell any of your friends to check carefully before they get out thinking they’ll make “big bucks”, amigo. They could well be in for a huge – and unpleasant – surprise.
I checked the average salary for a RN in Washington DC. It’s $81,000 annually per http://www.indeed.com/salary/q-RN-l-Washington,-DC.html
Here’s what an O3 with > 6 years of service for pay purposes stationed in DC gets today (I assumed they’re married):
Base Pay: $64,983.60 ($5,415.30 x 12)
Quarters: $33,588.00 ($2,799 x 12)
Rations: $2,954.88 ($246.24 x 12)
Total Income: $101,526.48
For a realistic comparison, add about $10,000 to the “Total Income”, since the quarters allowance and Rations aren’t taxable. And that doesn’t count any RN accession bonuses, value of medical and dental provided gratis, etc . . . – the latter of which civilian RNs have to pay for out of their salary.
Military labor ain’t particularly cheap any more. And no one should expect it to be if they expect the US to retain a trained, professional force.
Especially on the officer side of the house, low pay compared to comparable civilian specialties is not the issue it once was when
Don’t pilots need to keep their flight hours up to date? And then the article said she’s working at USNA.
Something is not adding up.
Partial pay (though not much), full medical/dental benefits, and a paid PCS to stay home and do whatever??? YGBSM!
Helluva deal if you can get it.
I must admit I’m somewhat jealous. I left the military once my wife and I decided we were ready to start having children.
This is just wrong.
(Better just leave it at that.)
Jesus Christ, where were all these sweet assed deals when I was in??
Fuck it, they probably wouldn’t have offered it to enlisted swine anyway.
I’d be interested to know how this affects manning. During this Sabbatical, are they un-slotted so the slot can be filled or do they stay in that slot rendering the unit one person short?
In the link it states that the D.O.R is adjusted for the intermission time. Something to consider for promotions and positions if someone were to consider taking it.
I’ve worked for companies that have sabbatical programs, and for companies that don’t. Intel for example, allows you to take six months plus your vacation time, plus floating holidays, etc off every seven years. For guys that had been there a while, they could be gone up to a year. I know one guy who took the time, got his CDL and drove semi-trucks across the country for a year. And he was a hardware engineer. Another guy took his time and spent eight months working with habitat for humanity in Africa (back when it was safe to do so). In both cases, they came back to the company refreshed and motivated. Now granted the program there was open only to top performers, meaning you really had to earn it.
Even my last (not current) employer offered a sabbatical of sorts. All you had to do was have orders from the military and they’d give you up a year off with differential pay and hold your job for you after that. Only the last part is mandated by law. It was a perk that I am missing at my new job, which only offers the two weeks with pay and the holding of my job for me.
I see the good in these programs, and provided they are only provided for the top performers (people who should be retained, as opposed to those who shouldn’t be there in the first place), I’m all for it.
TO: Commanding officer. FROM: Male-type soldier. MESSAGE: Wife and I are apart because of assignments. Have not f—ed in six months. Request one-year sabbatical so wife and I can catch up on f—ing and get ahead for next assignment.
@17.
To: Male-Type Soldier
FROM: Commanding Officer
Re: Request for Conjugal Leave
DENIED. Kleenex is available through supply.
@17 Thank you. ROTFLMAO. Those were my thoughts exactly. My only experience with wifely troubles had the First Shirt telling me that if the military had wanted me to have a wife, they would have issued me one with my foot locker. Now “go see the chaplain son and get out of my office”.
This may be the one time I disagree. And here’s why. I stayed current in my Army field of study for years even as a civilian. Save for the instrumentation, all other things remained relatively constant. I wanted to re-up an I was a degreed professional. The Army didn’t want “old” until a few years later. There was alot of attrition in many of the MOS’s.
In light of the war going on, it was hard to maintain a great level of trained professionals and the standards got lowered to get people in.
I would much rather retain already trained people who want to be there by using an alternate “bonus” as I am sure that pilots are not necessarily slackers.
If you are trained in one MOS and re-classify, how does your one or two years with pay say for Med school, differ from leave to have kids–because in both cases, you go back to duty and probably “owe” time in service for each case.
Nothing is free.
@20. Yes, you owe. Nothing, as you say, is free. It’s a 2:1 deal. And you pull 1/15th pay during the sabatical.
It’s good for morale right? So it has to be a good thing! 😉
Great gig, I’m sure that, as Hondo said up in #5, this is probably “available” to males, but it’s career suicide if you try to avail yourself of it.
Let’s see, non-chargeable leave for gays to travel to get “married”? Check. Paid time off to study and start a family, nominally for everyone, but female-oriented? Check. Do more with less, for less pay, for everyone? Check.
What an interesting concept….guess the Navy is having a retention issue with pilots?
We have these sabbaticals/leaves of absence in the private sector too, except it’s called being unemployed….and very seldom is there a job to come back to after the sabbatical is over….unless you happen to have a job that is not production or deadline based and there don’t seem to be as many of those around these days…
I am 50/50 on this.
My son would not be as squared away, if not his mother!
I will leave it at that and leave it to you guys to debate this one.
Do the enlisted get to take a year off? I already know the answer to that question. This is a bullshit officer centric program.
Hondo: It’s all relative; The most desirable places to love like DC pay less because supply is higher. People want to live in the area, so there’s a large pool of professionals, driving wages down.
The other thing that is to be considered is that most nurses leave the military with a specialty identifier of some kind; 66H8A, 66HM5, 66E, 66G, 66C ect, ect. Specialists make more on the outside too and some of that military specific training is looked upon very highly on the outside (The 66E course comes to mind, right off the bat. That OR/Surgical Specialty course is hot stuff to have when leaving)
And most people (Nurse corps officers, in particular) leave and pick up GS jobs at the same grade equivalent as when they were in uniform, so they get relatively comparable salary and benefits, sometimes even staying in the same hospital/position and job, only minus the sucky parts of being in uniform.
Either way, the fellas here are right: It’s of limited applicability, to specific high demand professions that the military has problems retaining. (Medical, Aviation, Legal (maybe) Dental, and most definitely Anesthesia providers).
All that said; AMEDD is now over strength by something like 130 percent. People had better think mighty hard before they do this, as the axe is falling soon on AMEDD officers; Involuntary seps and early retirements are incoming. DoD is looking it’s it’s military medical community and saying: ‘Thanks for your wartime service, but GTFO’.
God forbid any of you TAH armchair quarterbacks actually read the program guidance posted in comment 8. RABBLE RABBLE OFFICERS RABBLE RABBLE
@26 Trapper, yes, probably. But it’s more likely a retention tool for hard to fill specialties that are in the Army risks loosing if they don’t handle with kid gloves. Perfect example: Surgeons and Anesthesiologists in the reserves. If you aren’t nice to them and super flexible, they leave, and are incredibly hard to replace. In my last unit we had four open positions for 62H/61A. Family practice and ER docs that simple went unfilled for years. The docs we did have almost never showed up, didn’t PT, didn’t really do anything but write profiles. Yet, they stayed because the army needs em. And my very first BC was a Internist who somehow every time passed his height/weight despite being like built like a bowling ball. As you joes well know, when the Army wants something or someone they will overlook a lot of things.
See? With careerist women officers, it isn’t about “service” or “sacrifice”. It’s about catering to their desires at all times. So they can continue to do as they please, when they want to do it. As well as continue to not meet the same physical standards as men.
If it were all men serving in these fields, they’d offer bonuses but they wouldn’t be catering to them by giving sabbaticals.
I do not necessarily think it is a bad idea.
However, it cannot solely apply to senior, female and pregnant officers.
The wealth should be spread.
I am a simple man who gave simple service in the enlisted side of the house. I think this is a crap program. It was obviously geared and steered towards women. Officer type women at that. If there are so few qualified women already, why are they offering them time off like this, for these reasons? Pilots have to maintain monthly flight hours for flight pay, which they may be foregoing in this case but also for continued flight certification. Sabbatical in this case is just the DoDs use of a friendly term to justify gender bias. I agree with above posts that if a man tries this, it will be the death knell in his career. Okay, the more I write the more pissed I become. What the f— is going on in the Pentagon? I can bet money this went all the way to the POTUS and he said sounds good to him. Anything to accommodate gals, queers, trans-gender (yea get ready folks, it’s coming) and every other sideways individual in uniform. Instead of taking care of the regular old boots and grunts. Let’s not get started on retiree pay and health care. So how much in long dollars does a sabbatical like this truly cost, say the Navy? In terms of lost time on station and retraining for flight certification, plus the extra person to fill in those duties being missed so she can have a baby or two and be better educated for her civilian career to come. Fuctards in charge just piss the hell out of me.
ANCCPT: my point, amigo, was that if you leave uniformed service and don’t pick up at least 30% more (and that’s probably low) in salary than your military base pay, you’re not going to come close to breaking even – much less come out ahead. The untaxed military allowances and items provided in-kind (quarters, medical, dental, MWR, commissary, etc . . . . ) are virtually always costs paid for out of pocket as a civil servant or while working for a private-sector employer.
Been on both sides of that particular fence; both sides have their pluses and minuses. But, frankly, the “poorly-paid while on active duty” argument has been flimsy as hell if not bogus for years. You get a helluva lot of stuff in-kind or tax-free in uniform that you pay for out of pocket as a civilian.
trapperfrank: the Navy program referenced here appears to have 20 officer and 20 enlisted “slots”. See link in comment 8 above by 2/17 Air Cav.
Hondo, all good points. Maybe it’s not as apparent to me since I came in with experience, and as a specialist (critical care), in an area where the pay was really good for my specialty.
As for the debate as a whole: This isn’t a gender thing. It’s Army/DoD going ‘Holy fuck wow are these people expensive to train, and boy does it take a long time to do it! We’d better keep em happy.’ It’s about money, people. All about money.
There’s a second, hidden benefit to the flexibility that leads to increased retention. Your convoy is hit; You sustain a major injury. The bird arrives; The pilot, having been given the flexibility to stay in the military and still maintain a family is a multi tour veteran. She knows her shit; a real hot, salty pilot. They throw you in the back of the bird, where the medics stabilize you; Medics trained with doctrine written by military researchers and medical providers who are retained through use of these programs. You get to the FST; and roll into the trauma bay. The nursing and support staff are all salty; They’ve been in a while and at the top of all of this: a surgeon who’s doing trauma surgery because he was forced to by the Army; He’s a GYN surgeon by training.
Because of a failure of retention of the trauma surgeons, your IED and blast injuries is now going to be handled by a guy who spend the last five years doing hysterectomies and D+C’s. Will you survive? Maybe; probably even. Will it be the best thing for you? No. Your survival rates and post injury clinical sequalae increase dramatically with the relative experience of the team treating you. Think it’s far fetched? Not as far fetched as you might think.
These programs seem incredibly unfair. Most of us will never be able to utilize them. But the ones that can and do are of organizational value and their retention helps everyone in some way or another. These programs are tools to retain talent. Nothing more.
@22 Who’s Morale? The one on Sabatical or the others left behind picking up the slack.
@35 Here is the hidden effect of BS. I go into Iraq and kill and destsroy everything in sight, you know the way we used to fight. I get to shoot first, I get to bring my war to my enemy. We need a lot less doctors when we do the killing.
@6 Also I am pretty sure that everybody had shiver run down their spine when you made mention of a room full of 02-03’s in a room brainstorming. You know the old saying about dangerous, “In my vast experience”
@37 No arguments there. If we did it in the most violent efficient way possible you’d need a lot less of people like me. But we don’t, due to the pansy ass, poll driven people in charge of the DoD. It’s warfare in the Information age.
And, if it were any other room full of O1-2’s brainstorming, sure. I’d agree with you. It’s a 1SGT’s nightmare, that many LT’s in one place at one time. But be comforted with this thought: The entire medical, dental, nurse and MSC corps are *all* officers, and unsupervised by NCO’s and/or adults. /evil smirk. How’s your black old NCO heart doing with THAT tidbit?!
On a slightly more serious note: You guys have to remember too, my background being AMEDD, we do and think about things differently. The bulk of our training and experience comes from outside of the military, from our civilian careers. You can take a team of trauma nurses and docs from Cook County Hospital in Chicago, LA County Medical Center, Temple University Medical Center, throw em on a team and send em in theater, and they would *shine*. That’s what they do, trauma. We do it all the time, in the military or not. The same cannot be said for Armor, Infantry, Artillery, MI, ect. Not much civilian employment for an artilleryman. They may be less polished militarily than the active duty nurses, but the great strength of AMEDD is it’s reserve component (And that statement just made a career active duty AMEDD person just have a stroke) Retention is crucial for medical professionals. We are not a product of the military education system, by and large, with USHSUS being the major exception. The military doesn’t control the supply, which leads back to…retention strategies.
If the military is saying they’re losing good people in these slots after 4 or 5 years, perhaps they need to reevaluate enlistment and contract requirements based on training. Way back when in NROTC the contracts were I think 3 or 4 years longer if you got a pilot slot? If the military is willing to pay for the training that will get you a specialized job when you get out, possibly training you couldn’t hav afforded, why not up the initial enlistment timeline?
The fact that there are 20 slots each for officers and enlisted does nothing to negate the idea that the program is “officer centric” considering that the ratio of enlisted to commissioned is apparently about 5:1 in the Navy. http://www.navy.mil/navydata/nav_legacy.asp?id=146
ANCCPT: These really are two different issues. Seemingly related, but not really.
Retention of personnel is one with which I can empathize. The situation you describe can directly relate to keeping highly trained personnel in the military. Fine. Figure out an equitable way to implement any changes and go with it. Traditionally, paying critical career fields bonuses has worked fairly well. Need more? I’m OK with discussing possibilities.
Rewarding people for not working is just wrong. Granting time off for only a small percentage of the workforce is silly. It is divisive, among other things. And not necessary at all, especially in military career fields.
Stupid. And a slap in the face to all the women who have reported for duty, done their jobs, and made the choice not to expect special treatment. Disgusting.
@38 It was me not directing snark or ire, just me trying to re-direct what the conversation should be. I once had a neighbor say how great our “Bullet Proof” vests were. They were taken aback when I explained to them that we had those F-ing Vests because we had to be extra judicious with our firing. Even sometimes not allowed to fire first. It did not make a lot of sense to them either.
Not sure about the Army side but NAVMED has Corpsmen from E1-E9, and they are some of the most hard core dedicated pros on the Battle Field, just ask any Marine. I pretty sure they do not let Medical Corps run amok. My heart is not black, it is Navy Gold, like my Anchor. Just my smile is black.
@33: You get a helluva lot of stuff in-kind or tax-free in uniform that you pay for out of pocket as a civilian.
I had a rather anti-military boss when I was in the Reserves. One day I got tired of his ranting about how we get free food, free health care, free housing, etc so I decided to end the conversation.
“Yes, but you can’t tell me ‘I want you to go over there and die.’ The Corps can.”
No argument that the program has its bennies, ANCCPT – for those who are allowed to participate. However, the program also has its costs as well.
Beyond the substantial economic costs, such programs have an impact on readiness (losing people for a year or more kinda does that). They can also have a huge adverse effect on morale. Consider a unit where some specialties (say, RNs) are allowed to participate in such a program and others (say, medical admin officers) aren’t. Think the admin officers might be a bit torqued concerning the “windfall” their RN colleagues were getting? How about any enlisted medics? Do they qualify? If not, will this affect their outlook?
The key question is whether or not the benefits of the program outweigh the program’s total costs – financial, readiness, and unit morale/cohesion. My “gut feel” is that unless this is a very limited, highly competitive program open to both officer and enlisted personnel, it could well raise holy hell with unit cohesion and morale.
If it’s limited to selected career fields, it will also foster additional division/ill-will between those who qualify and those who don’t. We’ve got more than enough of that as it is.
And don’t kid yourself. There’s a reason this was sold above from the “family friendly” POV. It’s called political pandering.
NR Pax: that’s a different discussion, amigo. ANCCPT brought up the “leave for better pay” argument above when discussing retention. My point was to indicated that the “leave for better pay” argument is often a chimera. When tax-free and in-kind bennies are factored in, often a person is substantially better off financially in-uniform than out.
There is, however, also that non-financial item you mention – e.g., the risk of being sent somewhere and returning home in a box or not coming home at all. Different people give that risk different weight.
Is this really that different from the other programs the military has for officers, like sending them to grad school while still collecting a full paycheck, or getting a cushy assignment at an embassy as a FAO or “Liaison” to NATO or some such (like that dickhead LTC in London who penned the anti gun article referenced in TAH a few weeks ago?)
Either way you’re taking them out of “the line” for an extended period of time but its supposed to help “round out” the officers for the high positions they’re destined for in the future. And either way, some other schmuck is going to have to pick up the slack when they’re gone.
I honestly don’t see this as a big deal, especially given the small size of the program.
Besides, how many of my fellow senion NCOs have complained about too damn many officers around doing nothing and trying to justify their existence? You ought to be ecstatic! 😀
And here I thought the military was in business to win wars not play social engineer and blatantly discriminate in the process.
Silly me.
I could see something along the lines of a year or 2 in the reserves, then back to active duty…. though that may prove more problematic than helpful
Hondo: All good points, but it’s already happening, just not the way people think. Lets take a regular, run of the mill reserve USAH. They basically exist to provide reserve staffing pools for the active Army hospitals. On paper, three USAH’s when full staffed and activated backfill one regular Army hospital when their integral CSH is deployed. *However* Your nurses, docs and enlisted medics ARE mobilizing. Every four years, like clockwork. The administrative officers, not so much. I went through three ARFORGEN cycles (or whatever the hell it’s called now) like this. The Medical Administrative officers (MSC, mostly), not so much. They don’t mobilize every cycle because they’re not as high of a demand. My last big mobilization, our Med Admin people all stayed home, the only ones that went were the ones that wanted to. So, I see your point in theory. In practice, they are not going out as often and as fast as the medical corps/support people and therefore shouldn’t really need this program. And as for training and readiness, this type of program should be limited to people who will maintain proficiency in their military job fields even when not in the military: Again, the aforementioned practicing professionals. You can take a medical person out of a military environment, and as long as they working in their field and aren’t just sitting at home slurping down beer and watching TV, they’ll still be pretty much good to go when you call em up. This goes for the docs, nurses, and the enlisted medics as long as they are practicing in EMS on the outside. I didn’t see resentment as an issue as you have postulated, in fact it was more the other way around. The clinical people going ‘Godammit, we’re going AGAIN? And the MSC people are sitting back here AGAIN?’ That kind of disparity lead directly to our loosing a LOT of good medical personal, all the way from medics who wanted to finish nursing/PA/med school, to nurses who wanted kids and decided to take a break in service to have em. Another thing that… Read more »
@42 CB Senior, you might *think* your heart is Navy gold, but trust me. I was a 2LT once. It’s black. It was turned that way by hundreds of butter bars over the years rubbing the gold off via stupid questions and attempting to thing.
Now me, I had mustangs for officers for my first three commanders. They squared me ass away in a HURRY when I was an LT, so I’m good. I also had a ton of salty senior NOC medics to make sure things were right when I set plans for something. Nothing happened without a sanity check/ GO/NOGO from my NCOIC.
@41 OWB; It’s time off at a cost. You gotta pay to play this one. The service in question has decided that retaining this person and giving them a year in the IRR or whatever the AF calls it is worth getting a minimum of two more years out of em. I’d have to think real hard to think of that as a free year, for sure.
@ 46: Martinjmpr: you’re right. This program and ones like it will also have the unintended benefit of being for people who are planning to come back. The wishy washy justifying their own existence types won’t take this type of program. Too much commitment. And in the interests of full disclosure, I’de take this in a hot minute over going into the IRR to go to grad school. But, none of those programs the Army offers applies to my field of study, (Acute Care Nurse Practitioner) so the educational programs are all a no go for me. I’ll be back, just the Army refuses to integrate ACNP’s into the medical force structure. I guess I’ll have to settle with being a bad ass 66H8A again.