Cassidy, Laureen (SEN)
From:	Nick Jans [sigma@virtual.net.au]
Sent:	Monday, 9 April 2001 7:24 AM
To:	fadt.sen@aph.gov.au
Subject:	Inquiry into recruitment and retention by the Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade
I welcome the FADTC’s timely enquiry into recruitment and retention of ADF personnel.
 
The ADF is facing nothing less than a personnel crisis. This is being articulated in terms of problems with recruitment and retention; but these are symptoms rather than causes. The causes go much deeper, into the very spirit, soul and values of the institution. 
 
One of the key issues is the ADF’s approach to strategic personnel management. The term is virtually an oxymoron: the ADF does not really have an ‘approach to strategic personnel management’. At the day-to-day administrative level, ADF personnel management is first class, and for many years this allowed them to muddle through at the strategic level. 
 
To the outsider, this neglect - in an institution which really means it when it says ‘people are our most important resource’ - is puzzling. But the neglect is clearly evident and now the ADF is facing the crunch.
 
In 1988, the Parliament’s Joint Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade published its report on Personnel Wastage in the ADF - Report and Recommendations. This was know in Defence as the ‘Cross Report’, after its chairman. Perusal of its recommendations shows that most of the crisis issues of the moment were flagged for attention in 1988. Most of the Cross issues were nominally addressed by the ADF but few of the recommendations were acted upon. But the issues did not go away just because the ADF chose to ignore them. They continue to dog the ADF; and it thus not surprising that the Cross Committee’s recommendations have a close resemblance to those of the current Action Plan For People team.
 
***
 
I am a Principal of Sigma Consultancy, whose work of late has been chiefly directed at strategic personnel issues in the ADF. I am also a Brigadier in the Reserve, appointed as such to head up Project OPERA, the ‘Officer Professional Effectiveness Review for the Army’. OPERA presented its final report about a year ago. I served in the ARA from 1961 to 1985. I was Director of Employee Research (Asia Pacific) for Towers Perrin, Australia 1991-1994, during which I conducted and coordinated employee research for several hundred companies in the Asia Pacific region. I was Senior Lecturer in Management at the University of Canberra from 1985-1991.
 
My colleague at Sigma, Ms Judy Frazer-Jans, and I  have conducted many studies of the ADF and its sociology, beginning with my PhD in 1980. These studies have included career issues, retention, job satisfaction, and family issues. Of the last seven years, Sigma has pioneered the application of a market research technique called ‘discrete choice modelling’ to issues associated with ADF full-time and reserve retention, recruitment, employer support and family support, and the impact of personnel factors on military capability. We have recently concluded the eighth such ‘Decision Support System’ (DSS) study for the ADF and the first for the US Navy.
 
Our Career Decision Support Systems have been used by the ADF and especially by the current Action Plan for People team to identify strategies for retention and enhanced commitment among currently serving members. We would be pleased to show you how it works when one of us next visits Canberra.
 
I am writing a book which is close to completion called ‘The real C-cubed: getting to grips with the personnel component of capability’. It is to be published by the ANU.
 
I would be pleased to discuss this further with you. In the meantime, Judy and I will be preparing a submission for the Committee. In it, we will note what is both commendable and frustrating about the way that the ADO is addressing the current crisis (and why this is a crisis). 
 
If I might draw your attention to some papers/reports that we have produced recently that are relevant to your deliberations:
 
Jans, N. A., Options for ADF human resource management: part of the solution or part of the problem? in Ball, D (Ed.) Maintaining the Strategic Edge: The Defence of Australia in 2015, Strategic & Defence Studies Centre, Australian National University, 2000.
 
______ Rich organisation, poor organisation: Defence performance and military leadership, Australian Defence Force Journal, 2000, No. 142, May/Jun.
 
______ & Frazer-Jans, J. M., Facing up to the future: proposals for career/personnel issues to assist in staffing the ADF in the 1990s and beyond.  Report to the Chief of the Defence Force, 1989.
 
______ & Frazer-Jans, J. M., Job rotation and military capability: benefits, certainly - but is anyone counting the cost? Australian Defence Force Journal, 2001, No. 146, Jan/Feb, 47-59.
 
Sigma Consultancy, The Services’ officers’ professional effectiveness study: final report. Consultancy study for Head DPE, 1999.
 
______ Defying Gravity: The Dynamics of Partner Support in the Australian Defence Family. Consultancy study for Head DPE, 1999.
 
Yours sincerely,
 
Nick Jans, PhD
 
PO Box 97
Marysville 3779
61 3 5963 4030 (ph)
61 3 5963 4031 (phax)
0407 008 721 (mobile)
e-mail: sigma@virtual.net.au
Web: www.sigmaconsultancy.com