USE OF AVAILABLE RESOURCES

Effective use of personnel is perhaps the most difficult of all military or professional tasks to learn. Materials and systems can be examined, analyzed and classified rather easily. The traits and characteristics of individuals are infinite in variety because they differ in physical abilities, intelligence, background, training, temperament, ambition, philosophy, and any number of other traits, defying any absolute classification. Yet anyone who wishes to manage an organization, of whatever size, must weld these individuals into a harmonious team in which each contributes to the common effort.

Petty officers first class and chief petty officers have a more urgent need to develop their management skills than their civilian counterpanes. There is no process in the Navy comparable to firing a person. Transfers used as a means of eliminating problems are not recommended, even when you are willing to overstate ^{the case.} Certainly, discharge of a person for unsuitability or bad conduct is a serious step with a permanent effect on the individual, and the Navy is understandably reluctant to do this. You are expected to accept the personnel assigned to you and, with competent supervision, to accomplish whatever tasks you are assigned.

Effective use of personnel takes place when certain conditions are met. Some of these conditions are as follows: l There is no "featherbedding''-every person

assigned has a legitimate function to perform. . There are opportunities, encouragement, and

help for all personnel to develop their individual

abilities, whether professional, military, or general; and recognition for progress is given.

There is a minimum of disciplinary problems.

These external symptoms of effective personnel use are not separate or isolated but are so related that improvement in any one area leads to improvement in other areas.

Senior AKs, like other petty officers, spend a great deal of time supervising subordinates. Too often, they tend to think that the emphasis should be placed on the jobs and how well they are being done by the individuals. A little thought shows that actually the individuals should be supervised so that they get the jobs done well-a view that involves an important difference in orientation on the part of the supervisor.

Some of the factors involved in effective use of personnel are discussed in this section. No effort is made to present a definitive treatment of the subject; rather, the section is intended to alert you to the advantages to be gained by developing your skill in managing people, and to give you a starting point for further reading and study.

Personnel Versus Workload

The standard complaint of many supervisors, when faced with any change in procedure, is that more personnel are needed. For anyone to consider the work force too large already is unlikely. Sometimes, however, there are actually more personnel available than can be used effective y.

Perhaps it is only natural to think that any job could be done better if only a few more personnel could be assigned. The fact is that the law of diminishing returns applies in the Navy as surely as in any profit-making organization. Individuals need to feel that they are performing a useful function and are contributing something tangible to the defense of our country. If people do not have a feeling of accomplishment, morale in an organization will suffer.

A supervisor with a knowledge of the variety of jobs done by workers can easily compute the optimum number of personnel for the organization. You must review the number of personnel now assigned and the work that must be done. Does every person have a full-time job? If some of the functions were combined or eliminated, would the performance of the organization suffer? Often, operations that were necessary at some time in the past are continued long after they cease to serve a useful purpose. An accumulation of these can sometimes waste the productive time of several persons.

If you cannot prove beyond a reasonable doubt that

you need every person, you are overstaffed. In determining manpower requirements, it is better to err on the short side than the long.

People are flexible enough to absorb more work than they are generally given credit for being able to perform, and inventive enough to devise the means of doing the job more easily.

Assigning and Rotating Work Assignments

The supervisor should be able to make an equitable and efficient distribution of the individual jobs among assigned personnel. This is not a simple task. It requires careful study and planning because several factors affect it. These factors may vary from one organization to another. One of the factors is personnel ability. Your personnel will have varying degrees of knowledge and experience. Also, the jobs differ in complexity, required time to perform, and frequency of performance. While the ultimate responsibility for the assignment of personnel rests with the supply officer, he or she will rely heavily on your recommendations.

The practice of rotating personnel through the various phases of their rating is universally recognized as beneficial to the individuals and hence to the Navy. Unfortunately, it is by no means universally practiced, and even more unfortunately, resistance to a regular system of rotation is often concentrated in the senior enlisted personnel.

The first step in planning personnel assignments is to prepare a list of all jobs that are required in performing the supply functions for which you are responsible. The size of the list will depend upon the number of supply functions under your supervision and the degree to which you break down these functions into jobs. It is not necessary to list every motion required to perform a task, but each separate, distinct job should be shown.

The list should not be limited only to routine work, but should include reports as well as the jobs that are performed less frequently.

The next step is to analyze the job requirements. The major purpose of job analysis is to help you to make the most effective use of manpower. Therefore, you decide how much information is needed about each job. You can make the analysis as simple or as elaborate as you deem necessary. The items listed below could be used in making a job analysis; either by listing on a

separate sheet of paper for each job or in the form of a chart using separate columns for each job. l Operation performed

- Where performed

- Knowledge required

- Skill and experience required

- Equipment and material requirements . Information required to perform

- How obtained

- Where obtained l Time required to perform

. Frequency of operation . Disposition of completed work . Related jobs

Another feature of job analysis, in addition to determining skills required to perform the various jobs efficiently, is the information to group similar jobs so that they may be assigned to the same person.

After you have inventoried and analyzed the tasks to be performed, then match the personnel with the skill requirements in the job analysis. Simple? Hardly. You will seldom be in the position of having a group of people who possess all of the skills required.

At this point, you are primarily concerned with assigning an individual to each job. Therefore, the job responsibility should be assigned to the person most nearly matching the skill requirements. Rate alone is not always the best way to make this determination. An AKAN may have more experience in a particular job than an AK3, or an AK3 may be more qualified in an area than an AK2. Another factor to be considered is the number of jobs and the number of personnel you have to fill them. The number of jobs to be assigned to a member depends upon the member's experience. The more experienced person may be able to handle several jobs with ease; whereas the person with limited experience may be able to do only one job successfully.

With all the inventorying and analyzing, don't forget that you are dealing with people and not material. Try to find out something about the person you are assigning. An individual may have special aptitudes, interests, physical characteristics, or personality traits that make that person particularly well suited or unsuited for certain tasks. These traits should be considered

when making assignments. This is not to say that personnel should be coddled, but individuals doing jobs that they like and are well suited for, will do a better job with less supervision.

Your goal should be the timely, accurate completion of all jobs with the work equitably distributed among all personnel.

Once you have assigned jobs to each of your members, don't be misled into assuming that you have everything covered. Every person will not be on the job every day, you will have people TAD or on leave, and personnel being transferred. Some provision must be made to cover the tasks these persons were doing.

One way to make sure that personnel are checked out on other tasks is by job rotation. As personnel become proficient in their jobs, they should be considered for reassignment to different jobs. They probably will learn faster if the new job is related to the old one, and, if possible, personal preference should be one of the factors in deciding new assignments.

Job rotation should not become a periodic game of "musical chairs." Each reassignment should be a progression from an easier job to a harder one, and the individual must stay in each job long enough to develop a sense of responsibility y for a job well done. Otherwise,

you may end up with personnel who know a little bit

about a lot of jobs but are generally confused about the purpose and procedures for any one of them. Everyone benefits when more than one person is qualified to handle each of the jobs in the department.

Duty Section

Supply operations consist of 24-hour service to customers. Most services are rendered during normal operating hours. The efficiency of any supply organization is challenged by its ability to handle urgent business during nonworking hours.

After normal operating hours, the duty section mans ^{the supply department.} Duty sections, afloat and ashore, are normally under the leadership of a supply duty officer (SDO). Whether or not an officer is assigned, the duty section must have authority in equal measure with responsibility. When an emergency arises that can be alleviated by some action possible within the supply department, the personnel present in the duty section must be able to take action at once. A full account must then be presented to the supply officer or a cognizant assistant at the earliest opportunity.

At shore stations, the AKs may stand watches in the supply office, where they may be called upon to perform other tasks outside their normal professional field. Aboard ship there are two duty watches with which the AK1 are directly concerned-the supply department duty petty officer and the duty AK. The AKC may be assigned as the division duty chief, duty supply chief, assistant SDO, or SDO.