Chapter 7: Paying For Performance
Everyone gets paid the same with no true reward structure. Pay in the military is incongruous in a generation that watches their peers gain followers through Youtube and Instagram. Better content, and better performance = more money.
Solution: The DoD should begin performance pay as bonuses for success, and money for food with a college style meal plan to encourage healthiness and choice.
Money is often the most controversial topic in military affairs. While crafting the world's largest defense budget, America's politicians are planning to spend $857.9 billion in the 2023 National Defense Authorization Act.[1] With such a large number, it's daunting to imagine the thousands of accounting lines these dollars eventually funnel into. Hundreds of books and speakers have opined on defense spending, and many of the recruitment problems facing the military could easily be hand-waved with more money. However, the nation must stay fiscally responsible and we’re running out of money to spend. Instead of just "throwing more money" at these recruitment issues, the premise the Armed Forces must operate under is that they will have to make do with less. They must assume they won’t be able to spend a single dollar more on recruitment, but instead have to work harder and smarter with what they've been allocated. The military way of dealing with large war campaigns is to break things down to the strategic, operational, and tactical (SOT) levels. This strong framework is perfect for planning to tackle defense budgeting.
The strategic level concerns Generals and Congress, the topline numbers that go into major line items like how much each service branch is budgeted annually. The operational level is where each service branch invests in key weapons programs, training initiatives, and their yearly goals for manning and equipping troops. The rubber meets the road at the tactical level, and financial decisions here can most directly impact current and prospective military individuals. The financial item most significantly tied to recruitment is naturally base pay. Military base pay is an extremely complex bureaucratic system that doesn't lend itself well to serving modern-day recruiting. This chapter focuses on understanding how pay in the military is incongruous with Generation Z, and proposes that shaping a better performance-based rewards system will incentivize more recruits…
[1] James M. Inhofe National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2023
Matthew Weiss is currently an Intelligence Officer in the United States Marine Corps. His book, “We Don’t Want You, Uncle Sam: Examining the Military Recruiting Crisis with Generation Z” is available on amazon in paperback, e-book, and audiobook format.
