THE FUTURE OF WORK—LIVING THE EXPERIMENT


expected,” Willison said. “I went in to our [commanding general] at the time, Maj. Gen. [John A.] George, and said ‘I’m seeing a lot of anxiousness in the work- force. Tey don’t know what’s coming, they don’t know what to expect.’ So we took a step in August to tell our work- force that we want everyone to continue to work remotely to the maximum extent possible, through December. We wanted to give them at least that certainty, or that assurance.”


SPREADING THE NEWS


Willison, left, speaks to Dr. Robert Kania of the U.S. Army Ground Vehicle System Center, at the Association of the U.S. Army annual meeting and exposition in Oct. 2021. DEVCOM’s future-of-work concept has been widely discussed among DOD organizations since its inception. (Photo by DEVCOM Public Affairs)


DEVCOM leaders had worked for about 18 months to publish a comprehensive talent management strategy. “We’re an organization that does research, develop- ment and engineering, but in the end really, it’s a people business. So, we went through a phase of defining six talent domains over 70 different competencies within those domains, and really getting to an understanding of the talent that we have, the talent that we think we need in the future, and everything having to do with talent, talent engagement, talent recruitment, etc.”


Ten, as the talent management initiative was being implemented, COVID-19 forced


52 Army AL&T Magazine Spring 2022


an unplanned change. “As the pandemic hit in March and April of 2020, our imme- diate reaction was to take care of the workforce,” Willison recalled. “We pushed everyone remotely, with the primary focus being the health and wellness of the work- force.” Tis is what he refers to as “phase one” of the future-of-work experiment— the period marked by the reactive steps the command took to adapt to the pandemic. But a reactive posture has a short shelf life, and DEVCOM leaders knew they needed to plan their next steps.


“By August of 2020, we were going into the fall and this seemed a little more enduring than probably anyone had


“Shortly after we put that out, the boss came in and said ‘OK, now what?’ And I said, ‘Tat’s a great question,’ ” he chuck- led. Tis was when the idea started to take shape. “We had an eye on, by the end of December or early January, publishing a concept paper for our workforce—and we did that in January. It said basically, the ‘why’ of our mission and the ‘what’ of our mission are not going to change. Why we exist as an organization, what we do as far as our mission, isn’t going to change. But the ‘where’ and the ‘when’ and the ‘who’ and the ‘how’ are likely going to change, so we looked at how we define that change, how we give people some idea of where we were and where are we going.”


“You’ve got to be willing to trust your managers and leaders, and in turn, they’ve got to be willing to trust their workforce.”


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