Retention in the Royal Australian Air Force Aviation Technical Workforce: Is it Changing and how Feasible is the Future Demand?

Abstract

Recently, the Royal Australia Air Force (RAAF) has embarked on a large-scale expansion of its air and space power capabilities to better achieve joint effects. The RAAF fleet currently comprises both legacy and advanced aircraft with differing maintenance requirements. In order to deliver air and space power effects, the RAAF needs to recruit, grow, and retain personnel with specialized aviation maintenance skills. The focus of this thesis is the enlisted aviation technical categories of Avionics, Aircraft, and Armament technicians, which represent approximately 15% of the RAAF’s full-time members. This thesis develops Markov models for time in service and time in rank to determine transition rates within this workforce and to predict future inventories until fiscal year 2030–31. These predictions are compared to a fictitious demand profile to determine the feasibility of the demand and system behaviors that need to be changed. A one-year time in service and one-year time in rank model perform well in predicting system behavior in recent years. The results show that the RAAF will not meet future demand for the aviation maintenance workforce by 2030–31, particularly at the E05 and E06 ranks. E03 personnel are leaving sooner in their time in rank, and retention rates are too low at E05 and E06 ranks. The RAAF either needs to adjust the future demand or attempt to modify the behaviors in this workforce; adjusting promotion rates is one lever to modify retention behavior.