Your bonuses are about to get personal.

Want that coveted instructor job in Mayport? Or three weeks of schoolhouse training for a hard-to-get NEC course?

The Navy may soon offer corporate-style bonuses that package together targeted bonus amounts with plum assignments or hard-to-get training.

He wants the Navy to change the the current bonus system and make it more flexible. This year, they're asking congress to re-write the laws that govern such bonuses, asking for more flexibility in how they dole out incentives to service members.

Navy Secretary Ray Mabus wants to change the bonus system radically and offer incentives beyond money, by dangling carrots such as guaranteed duty location and advanced training schools.

"We're asking Congress to amend our current broad-based bonus system to make it look more like those used in the private sector," Mabus told Naval Academy midshipmen May 13.

"By granting department leaders the flexibility to match pay incentives with individual skill sets and talent levels, we can better compensate and retain officers and enlisted."

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For most of the past half century, the service has given out those bonuses in what personnel officials now call a "one-size-fits-all" system that doesn't take into account the individual, only the individual's job codes and skills — and sometimes pay grade and years of service.

Under the current system, the Navy simply uses money, and only money, to influence sailors to stay in the service.

Bonus overhaul

While retention is good, officials are wary of an improving economy . In offering bonuses , officials take into account the need for experienced and top-notch people in the most critical skills and weighs that against the Navy's ability to train new sailors off the street.

But some skills you can't find on the street. They can only be acquired through longevity and experience .

Officers, for example, are offered retention if their initial service obligation has or is about to pass to keep them in the ranks for department head and command billets.

On the enlisted side, there's the Selective Reenlistment Bonus for those with up to 14 years of service and Enlisted Supervisor Retention Pay to keep those with critical skills in the ranks.

And after a time during theis latest decade long drawdown when it was even, for a time, eliminated altogether — officials are expanding the program on the enlisted side and plan to spend more money over the next couple years

The Navy pays out bonuses at five different maximum levels, depending on the Navy's need for a given skill: $30,000, $45,000, $60,000, $75,000 and $100,000.

For fiscal 2015, the Navy has a budget of $135 million for initial re-up bonus payments, and officials are hoping to entice 8,500 sailors to stay in the ranks.

Next fiscal year, the Navy is asking for a $19.4 million increase for fiscal 2016, for a total re-up budget of $154.4 million.

What a sailor can get is based on a formula with a "multiple" the Navy attaches to their rating or Navy Enlisted Classification. That multiple is then factored with their basic pay and the number of months they're re-enlisting for, up to the payout max .

The trend now isn't toward bigger bonuses, but spreading money to more sailors. Mabus' desire to move to a private-sector like system has been often discussed in the past decade, but until recently there's been no official move .

Chief of Naval Personnel Vice Adm. Bill Moran said in April that he'd like to offer more targeted bonuses and to be able to tweak payout levels in real time, instead of relying on annual updates .

The overhaul would go beyond that to eventually tailor bonus packages to the individual sailor's skills — and to better meet the sailor's personal and family needs.

Such a system would take a deeper look at sailors' value, taking into account all their training and civilian education.

In the end, this new multiple could be used by the Navy to put a monetary value on each sailor's retention in the service.

This value could be used by the sailor to negotiate a package of incentives that might include taking less than the full value in cash and opting instead to bargain for choice orders or a career-enhancing school .

"We regularly hear from our folks that flat rate bonuses by themselves are less and less of a reason for high-quality sailors to stay Navy," Moran said in April. "To ensure we keep the right people with the right skills, we need to continue to improve and refine the SRB process."

But creating the ability to dig deeply into a sailor's service record and then build metrics for each sailor's value will likely take years of work.

In addition to convincing lawmakers to loosen rules on bonuses, leaders will need to upgrade and consolidate human resource databases and systems, a daunting project.

Moran plans to move forward in incremental steps, like the twice-yearly SRB updates .

"Key to this is upgrading our old and outdated personnel system, cleaning up data and improving access across all of our IT systems," he said. "Better information in the hands of sailors, COs and detailers will improve this and many other 'people' processes across our Navy."