Commander MyNavy Career Center meets the Fleet

Photo By Petty Officer 2nd Class Dallas Snider | 220411-N-WU964-1092 YOKOSUKA, Japan (April 11, 2022) Rear Adm. Stuart Satterwhite, left, deputy director, enterprise support, Office of the Chief of Naval Personnel, asks Airman Kaldden Greer from Milwaukee, what his new rating will be during a PACT event to assign PACT Sailors ratings in the wardroom of the U.S. Navy’s only forward-deployed aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan (CVN 76). Ronald Reagan coordinated with Navy Personnel Command’s PACT Fleet Engagement Team to provide this unique opportunity to PACT Sailors assigned to the ship. Ronald Reagan, the flagship of Carrier Strike Group 5, provides a combat-ready force that protects and defends the United States, and supports alliances, partnerships and collective maritime interests in the Indo-Pacific region. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist Seaman Dallas A. Snider)  

MILLINGTON, TN, UNITED STATES

05.31.2022

Story by Chief Petty Officer Jason Perry 

Navy Personnel Command

The admiral in charge of the Navy’s pay has been hitting the road.
Commander, MyNavy Career Center, Rear Adm. Stu Satterwhite, is barnstorming across fleet concentration areas to talk to Command Pay and Personnel Administrators and Command Leadership triads about the changes happening now in how pay transactions are processed and those expected soon.
Since early April, Satterwhite has made visits to San Diego, Pearl Harbor, Japan, Groton, and Hampton Roads. Future trips include Pacific Northwest bases in Bremerton and Everett, Washington, the National Capitol Region, Bahrain, and Rota, Spain. At each stop, he’s met with leadership triads to answer their questions about how changes to pay and personnel transaction processes will impact their Sailors.
According to the Sterling, Virginia, native, these changes are some of the most significant in recent memory for pay and personnel transaction processes.
“This is an exciting time,” he said. “We established MyNavy Career Center in September 2021 because we wanted to improve Sailor pay and HR service delivery. It’s an area that’s gone through different alignments, and honestly speaking, we’ve had some ups and downs fully executing those changes.”
“We did an analysis: what did we do well? What did we not do well? How do we align the organization to meet the need so we can be most effective at this?”
Satterwhite said the engagements address one of his primary challenges: communicating to the fleet what’s happening.
“My goal is to see those command triads in person and talk to them about what is going on and how they fit into this,” he said. “People are concerned about change. So we need to explain how these changes benefit them, so it’s real for them and they can understand what it means.”
He’s been telling commanders that today’s pay system does not identify problems and this is where they can help. “I urged them to tell us whenever they find an issue so we can fix them. It all comes back to getting after the challenges Sailors are facing and solving those problems as quickly as possible.”
If commands are engaged and talk with their Sailors, they will find these issues and identify them early on.
“Commands can engage and talk to their Sailors, especially when they first report on board, to make sure their entitlements changed for their new location,” he said, reminding leaders Sailors should be gained within four days of reporting to their commands so their pay and entitlements can be adjusted to their new command and location.
In his meetings with CPPAs, Satterwhite has been taking questions from these Sailors, who are the principal points of contact for pay and personnel transactions at their respective commands. The first thing he does is to thank them for the work they do. He appreciates their dedication and wants to know how they help their Sailors get their entitlements correctly and on time.
“CPPA training is a two-week school,” Satterwhite said. “Very often these are not Personnel Specialists, but Sailors who have been trained in other ratings. So how can we make CPPAs comfortable doing the work after only a two-week school?”
The Regional Support Centers are critical to addressing this. There are 13 of them and are located in fleet concertation areas to engage command triads when they have issues, as well as continue the training for CPPAs.
“The RSCs are located where we have the most Sailors and we expect with their size to be able to reach out and cover areas near them,” he said.
“The RSCs function as local CPPA training centers and regional points of contact for command concerns. RSCs constantly engage with commands and CPPAs to ensure they are equipped with the tools they need to submit timely and accurate transactions to the Transaction Service Centers, which are expected to come online this summer as the replacement for the old personnel support detachments,” Satterwhite said.
“When the RSC-to-CPPA relationship is working correctly, the Transaction Service Centers can turn items around pretty quickly,” he said.
One of the biggest innovations Satterwhite is explaining in his engagements is the tiered service delivery model. The model utilizes three tiers of support, each more robust than the last, tailored to handle increasingly complex situations.
Tier 0 is a self-service level, where Sailors go to MyNavy Portal and make requests and inquiries that are handled through the portal and routed to the appropriate location for action. Tier 1 relies more on customer service, with interactions either by phone, chat, or email with the Human Resources Service Center, a call center with two locations, one in Millington, Tennessee, and the other in Little Creek, Virginia. Tier 2, the highest tier, tackles more challenging issues.
All of this, Satterwhite said, is to help keep a Sailor’s mind on their job and not their paycheck.
“When a Sailor is on a ship I need them to focus on the mission,” Satterwhite said.
As the changes occur, Satterwhite said, so will the continuous learning to find out what’s working and what’s not. Methods such as surveys, listening sessions, spouse advisory groups, and monitoring social media all play a part, as does feedback Sailors provide through MNCC’s customer experience team.
Navy Counselor Senior Chief Wesley D. Fox from USS Bataan (LHD 5) said he came into the all call having "lost a lot of faith" in the changes happening around him.
“I have seen so many issues deflected because of a lack of ownership," he said. "I was very surprised though. The admiral directly acknowledged issues in the organization, and outlined process improvements that I was very happy to hear about. In addition, his team expeditiously resolved our own command's issue when we brought it to the floor.”
He said there's still work to be done, but he's confident Satterwhite, “will hold the organization accountable to a standard that will greatly improve service to the Fleet.”
“Executing this will not be easy,” Satterwhite said, “but we are committed to get this right. Do we have work to do to get there? Yes we do, and I’m the first to admit change can make people uncomfortable. We’re changing things, but it’s designed to provide Sailors with a better solution. We know we can do this and now’s the time to go out and execute it.”

• Date Taken: 05.31.2022
• Date Posted: 05.31.2022 13:54
• Story ID: 421861
• Location: MILLINGTON, TN, US