WORKFORCE DEVELOPMENT
of the things that we have to organize better is how we recruit talent across the spectrum of eligible folks,” he said. “We’re defi- nitely moving into a heavy use of direct hire authority, which is a great tool.” Using that authority more frequently will facilitate “more remote [opportunities] to support our HRC 2030 strat- egy,” he said.
Te command also aims to demonstrate the successes of Soldiers working remotely, Johnson said. “We had to show Army senior leaders that officers like Kris [Saling] and others could really do what we’re talking about remotely, and I think we’ve been able to do that successfully.” Johnson said it’s possible to retain some Soldiers for longer by offering this flexibility, and HRC has successfully demonstrated over the past year that it provides additional capability to the command.
TESTING TOOLS AND TECHNIQUES Te GSA is running a federal coworking pilot, testing the concept of shared workspaces for federal employees from any agency, and arranging the floor plan to allow creative and collaborative use of space with standard government furnishings. According to O’Duinn, the agency takes an agile approach to the pilot. “We literally do daily surveys and then we move furniture around, like, ‘OK, try this,’ and then we see what happens for a week or two,” he said. “It’s about more than just moving furniture— people have different styles of working.” A federal coworking space, he said, has to allow for personal interaction while also providing adequate security, a professional environment, reliable internet connection and places to take video calls without being disturbed by others. “Tat means a different floor plan to what we used to have before,” he said.
Te Army is also doing research on its ideal office setup, accord- ing to Col. Saling. HRC is looking at how to build a collaborative space, she said, “so that we don’t have an either-or between a cubi- cle and a kind of noncollaborative conference room.” She cited the command’s desire for more collaborative technology, not just for remote teammates but for working with other agencies as well. “We’ve also gained the ability to pull in our counterpart experts, wherever they might be, so we can do a partner white- board with somebody in [Training and Doctrine Command], with somebody in Futures Command, with somebody in D.C., from Fort Knox.”
“It’s really exciting to see how people’s mindsets are shifting,” Cross said of the GSA pilot and similar efforts. “Consider when you’re trying to attract and retain a multigenerational work- force—especially newer careerists and early-career talent—and
what that might look like when you have a space that can adapt to people’s preferences, and you have the technology that can serve as an enabler, rather than a distraction,” she said. “Having these kinds of models to adapt will help start changing the culture in very important ways that will impact the future of federal work for a long, long time.”
CONCLUSION Tough the tools and technology are relatively new, work flexi- bility has been a part of the federal government for years, Cross said. “Mobility in the federal government—mobile work, tele- work, flexi-place, remote work, hybrid, or whatever you want to call it because that lexicon evolves—there have been policies in place since the 1950s,” Cross said. Te key to successful imple- mentation, in her view, is focusing on the data. “Agencies who are using it as an opportunity to really hone in on the measurement, assessing the data and looking at the impacts to their workforce, doing the right sets of measures, are the ones that are going to have what they need to stand up and say, ‘Tis matters to our workforce, it impacts our mission, here are the factors that it affects and we’re going to stick with it.’ ”
For the Army, Johnson said there is no one-size-fits-all approach to implementing work flexibility or modernizing the workforce, but the command has partnered with the National Security Innovation Network to help develop an assessment strategy to determine its return on investment. “We’re just nudging into this,” Johnson said. “Our return on investment is, I’m pretty sure this talent right here [Saling] would have been out of the Army. Tis is just an anecdote because it’s one person, but we feel we’re in a much better spot because [she] is in our innova- tion cell, really driving productivity.”
For more information about Army HRC, go to
https://www.hrc.army.mil. Learn more about Mika Cross at
mikacross.com. Explore
federal
https://workplace.gsa.gov/offerings/federal-coworking.
ELLEN SUMMEY provides contract support to the U. S. Army Acquisition Support Center at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, as a communications project manager for SAIC. She holds an M.A. in human relations from the University of Oklahoma and a B.A. in mass communication from Louisiana State University. She has earned the Accreditation in Public Relations and Military Communication, is certified as a Project Management Professional and has more than 18 years of communication experience in both the government and commercial sectors.
https://asc.ar my.mil 47
coworking at
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