ANALYSING QUITS AND SEPARATIONS FROM THE ROYAL NAVY

Abstract

Manning difficulties and retention of skilled personnel is a timely issue in the British armed forces, and especially in the all‐volunteer Royal Navy. Allied with difficulties of matching personnel numbers and posts, significant skill mismatches can take a long time to eradicate, with obvious financial and operational penalties. In the light of these factors, a holistic understanding of the exit behaviour of naval personnel is vital for naval manpower planners. This paper analyses ratings’ voluntary (quits) and involuntary (separation) exit patterns from the Royal Navy using an independent competing risks hazard regression analysis framework. The results show that both voluntary and involuntary exits are pro cyclical with respect to macroeconomic and labour market conditions for both male and female ratings. Male ratings are more likely to quit or separate due to a lack of promotion to higher ranks as compared with females. Male ratings are also more likely to quit as a result of a hectic operational tempo when compared with their female counterparts. Frequency of sea/shore deployments also seems to exert a significant effect with respect to quits and separation outcomes of both genders. In terms of marital status married males are less likely to quit compared with their unmarried male counterparts, whereas the opposite is the case for female ratings.

Keywords:

• Retention
• Early exits
• Competing risks framework
• Duration analysis
• Royal Navy

JEL Codes:

• J14
• J26

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This paper is based on a funded project by the Royal Navy. The authors gratefully acknowledge the support given by Commander Richard Jenkins, Commander Julian Wyatt, Commander Ross Rennison, and Lt. Commander Geraint Ashton Jones, Royal Navy and the DASA staff. The authors thank all the participants of briefing meetings held at the Royal Naval Base, Portsmouth. The usual disclaimer applies.

Notes

¹ PVR has now been replaced by Voluntary Outflow (VO) in terms of nomenclature.

² We acknowledge that Navy specialisations (trades) are ever changing and some of the ones reported here are no longer in use but a fixed terminology is necessary for the research.

³ It is now called CNR – Captain Naval Recruiting.

⁴ All the estimations were performed by using STATA 8.2 Maximum‐likelihood complementary log‐log estimation (cloglog) routine.