A NEW NORMAL
like increased enlisted bonuses, reduced entry requirements (high school diplomas and test scores), additional recruiters and new marketing approaches have all worked in the past, but as demonstrated in the last few years, relying on these approaches is insufficient for addressing current military and civilian recruit- ing challenges.
REMOTELY POSSIBLE Remote work may be a little bit newer to the Department of Defense and the Army, as they are still trying to figure out what that looks like and what types of jobs should be remote. Not every job can be done remotely, so, as Gonzalez said, it’s really about determining what the best needs for each organization are.
COVID forced remote work and telework on a large scale, but once all the health protection conditions started going back to what they were before the pandemic, many government orga- nizations tried to go back to the same work arrangements, soon realizing that the competition for talent acquisition had changed. So they needed to become a little bit more responsive in order to stay within the competition for that talent.
Army Contracting Command (ACC) is one organization where, pre-COVID, almost no one was remote. Post-pandemic, ACC Redstone Arsenal, Alabama, started using remote work as a way to attract better talent to the organization. ACC’s established telework program, according to its website, “allows greater work- life integration, reduces transportation costs and vehicle wear and tear, helps the environment and saves time otherwise spent commuting.” Positions with flexible work hours, aligned with OPM, are offered with core work hours designated to allow for flexible start and stop times as an alternative to the traditional 9-to-5, 40-hour workweek.
Another organization applying a more flexible “work from anywhere” approach is the U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command (DEVCOM), which has been work- ing under a different work model since March 2020. (See “Te Future of Work—Living Te Experiment,” in the Spring 2023 issue of Army AL&T.)
According to DEVCOM’s “Future of Work Concept,” remote work and telework provide individuals with greater flexibility, increased opportunities, enhanced quality of life and improved financial posture. Organizations benefit from improved employee morale, productivity and engagement, access to a broader and more diverse talent pool, and reduced infrastructure and envi- ronmental footprint and costs.
16 Army AL&T Magazine Winter 2024
DEVCOM’s future objectives significantly contrast its past and current work models. Currently, the best (local) talent would work at an official duty location with locally defined “core hours” and discrete teams, operating within the constraints of the organization’s boundaries. Te future model evolves to one where the best talent, local or not, can work where they are most productive in agile, cross-competency/cross-organization teams rapidly formed to deliver integrated solutions. “To maximize our potential and impact, our command must embrace a future of work environment that is different from the past,” DEVCOM’s “Future of Work Concept” states. “Flexibility in implementa- tion is essential.”
CONCLUSION After settling into a three-year remote, telework and hybrid routine, a return to the office may not be the direction federal employees had hoped for. But with the new remote work and telework guidance and ongoing work environment plans and assessments, the workday in the “new normal” could vary from agency to agency, potentially offering more flexibility (than before) to accommodate Army commands and the workforce. It could also help leaders identify, attract and retain high-perform- ing individuals to serve in both military and civilian career fields as new considerations to traditional hiring practices, societal norms and work-life balance are addressed.
For more information, go to the U.S. Office of Personnel Manage- ment’s official hub for the federal government’s telework program at
https://www.opm.gov/telework.
CHERYL MARINO provides contract support to the U.S. Army Acquisition Support Center at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, as a writer and editor for Army AL&T and Network Runners Inc. Before USAASC, she served as a technical report editor at the U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command Armaments Center at Picatinny Arsenal, New Jersey, for five years. She holds a B.A. in communications from Seton Hall University and has more than 20 years of writing and editing experience in both the government and private sectors.
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