Photo By Peter Clute | A Naval Undersea Warfare Center Division, Keyport employee completes the Defense...... read more read more
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Naval Undersea Warfare Center Division, Keyport personnel are often asked to participate in official federal surveys designed to assess topics ranging from command culture to quality-of-life services.
The type and frequency of surveys varies from year to year, but the two most predictable annual surveys designed to assess job satisfaction, leadership effectiveness and workplace conditions across the government are the Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey and the Defense Organizational Climate Survey.
The two surveys provide distinct but complementary perspectives. The FEVS, conducted annually by the Office of Personnel Management, helps gauge how federal employees perceive their work environment, leadership and overall engagement. The DEOCS is tailored to Department of Defense personnel—including both military and civilian staff—and focuses on unit-level issues such as cohesion, trust and inclusion.
Together these surveys give leaders a well-rounded perspective on both broader federal workplace issues and more localized, unit-level dynamics within the DoD.
The DEOCS is administered annually between August and November by the DoD's Office of People Analytics. It typically takes 30 minutes to complete and consists of roughly 20 to 25 questions consisting of both multiple-choice questions and open text fields where respondents can provide written feedback. The questions cover six areas known as strategic target outcomes: racial and ethnic harassment and discrimination, readiness, retention, sexual assault, sexual harassment and suicide.
“DEOCS results help leadership understand the command climate,” said NUWC Division, Keyport Affirmative Employment Program Manager Edgar Alvarez, who assists and advises with DEOCS administration for the command. “This gives them an idea of how effective the current policies and programs are. If retention is low and people are leaving, they want to know why. And if there's a high level of harassment or discrimination, we need to evaluate our programs and figure out what's missing—for example, training for leadership or the workforce.”
Employees can access the DEOCS through email invitations from their individual units, and the survey remains open for at least 20 business days. NUWC Division, Keyport’s DEOCS opened Sept. 16 and will remain open through the end of this month.
The FEVS takes a broad look at employee satisfaction with workplace factors such as leadership, work environment, rewards and recognition, professional development and opportunities to contribute to the organization’s mission. The survey contains roughly 100 multiple-choice questions and takes about 20 minutes to complete. Its findings help agencies identify strengths and weaknesses in their workplace cultures and develop strategies to address weaknesses.
“As soon as the results are made available by OPM, the Keyport FEVS Champions pull the data and start reviewing the results,” said NUWC Division, Keyport Outreach Coordinator Lindsey Abair, who is among the unit’s command survey champions.
Abair added, “Command leadership and the Keyport Leadership Team are briefed on the results with a focus on the top and bottom three scored elements, and then a discussion is held to determine what the command’s focus should be for the upcoming year. This action plan is then provided to headquarters and briefed out to all supervisors for their awareness and support.”
The National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2004 requires federal agencies to administer the FEVS, though employee participation is voluntary.
NUWC Division, Keyport's FEVS was conducted from May 13 to June 28 this year and its results are expected later this month.
Alvarez and Abair stressed the importance of participating in the surveys.
“Rest assured that our commanding officer reads all comments on the DEOCS and reviews all data collected from the survey,” said Alvarez. “The DEOCS is an objective, unbiased method of ensuring that every individual in the workforce is given an opportunity to state their opinions and raise their concerns to leadership.”
Abair added, “Your FEVS responses absolutely matter. Real people at Keyport are reviewing the results, identifying the areas where we need improvement and then using that feedback to create a command action plan.”
Alvarez and Abair said survey fatigue is a significant obstacle to participation in the DEOCS and FEVS, particularly because the two often coincide, compounding the demands on employees’ time. Additionally, many employees are reluctant to participate because they feel their feedback doesn’t lead to meaningful changes.
“A consistently low-scoring element on the FEVS is ‘I believe the results of the survey will be used to make my agency a better place to work,’” said Abair. “People wonder, ‘Why should I spend 30 minutes of my day doing this? We're really busy and there don’t seem to be any results from [taking the FEVS].’”
However, Alvarez and Abair pointed to tangible actions taken because of past survey feedback, including more "all-hands" emails from NUWC Division, Keyport's commanding officer and the introduction of regular monthly updates from the head of the command’s Corporate Operations Department, in response to concerns about information not effectively reaching the workforce.
Abair said there has also been an increase in employee recognition—as demonstrated by a more effective use of the command’s awards budget—after FEVS results revealed a need for greater recognition from command leadership.
“Last year our goal was to increase employee recognition,” said Abair. “In a review of the fiscal year 2023 awards budget, we found that a sizeable amount of the allocation was left unspent at the end of the year. I'm happy to report that for fiscal year 2024 only 5 percent of the On The Spot Award budget is remaining and the Time Off Awards were over executed.”
Abair added that command leadership has realized the importance of clearly linking new initiatives to FEVS feedback so that employees know their input is valued and is being acted upon.
“I think that was a big piece that was missing,” she said. “We weren't telling employees why we were doing the things that we were doing. Instead of just saying, ‘We’re doing this new thing,’ we want to say, ‘We’re doing this new thing because it came directly from your survey feedback.’”
Recent years have seen a slight increase in NUWC Division, Keyport’s FEVS participation rates, though the most recent survey still had a turnout of only 32 percent. Abair and others involved in NUWC Division, Keyport’s FEVS are continually looking for ways to communicate the survey's value and encourage employees to take it.
The command's DEOCS participation rate was 40 percent last year and has been steadily increasing in recent years. Alvarez aims to boost it further.
"We're trying to come up with ways to incentivize people further, but we don’t want to force participation—we want genuine input so we can get an accurate assessment of the climate," he said.
To those who may be concerned about confidentiality, Alvarez and Abair say both surveys follow strict protocols to protect respondents’ individual identities. DEOCS results are collected using unique identifiers rather than names, ensuring they can’t be connected to individual employees. Similarly, OPM ensures FEVS responses are kept confidential by not collecting any personally identifiable information in the survey and by having a third-party vendor administer it.
-KPT-
NUWC Division, Keyport provides advanced technical capabilities for test and evaluation, in-service engineering, maintenance and industrial base support, fleet material readiness, and obsolescence management for undersea warfare to expand America’s undersea dominance.
| Date Taken: | 10.07.2024 |
| Date Posted: | 10.07.2024 19:11 |
| Story ID: | 482709 |
| Location: | KEYPORT, WASHINGTON, US |
| Web Views: | 70 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
This work, NUWC Division, Keyport employees urged to take federal workplace climate surveys, by Frank Kaminski, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
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