The Best Places to Work ranking, produced by the Partnership for Public Service and Boston Consulting Group, offers the most comprehensive assessment of how federal public servants view their jobs and workplaces, providing employee perspectives on leadership, pay, innovation, work-life balance and other issues.
Despite the difficult challenges in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, NAVWAR jumped in rankings from 135 out of 420 in 2019, to 90 out of 411 in 2020, a 12 percentile improvement from the 32nd to 20th percentile. Notably the command also had an engagement score of 78.9, well above the U.S. Government average of 69.0. This places NAVWAR in the top quarter of the U.S. government in the subcomponent agency category.
“I’m glad to see our rankings this year reflecting the focus we have put on making NAVWAR a great place to work,” said NAVWAR Executive Director John Pope. “We are always on the lookout for new and innovative ways to make this a place where employees can thrive so they can seamlessly contribute to our important mission for the Navy.”
Rankings are determined by an agency’s Best Places to Work employee engagement score, which measures employee satisfaction, commitment of the workforce and willingness to put forth discretionary effort to achieve results. The score is calculated using a proprietary weighted formula that looks at responses to three questions in the Office of Personnel Management’s Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey (FEVS) including:
- I recommend my organization as a good place to work.
- Considering everything, how satisfied are you with your job?
- Considering everything, how satisfied are you with your organization?
While the rankings do not cite specific programs or policies that most contribute to any given organization’s ranking, the FEVS survey results showed the NAVWAR workforce expressed positive sentiment in the sense of accomplishment employees get from their work, high levels of cooperation with teammates, care and respect shown by supervisors, and the measures the organization implemented to support the health and well-being of the workforce through the pandemic.
The command also has a NAVWAR Best Place to Work Committee, which includes a dedicated group of volunteers that work together to look for different ways to improve the work environment.
“Having the diverse opinions of employees from across the command helps us shape initiatives that provide benefits to our employees at varying stages in their career,” said Dr. Bill Luebke, director of the NAVWAR Logistics and Fleet Support Directorate and chair of the NAVWAR Best Place to Work Committee. “I think it also empowers people to know they have a committee focusing solely on their well-being.”
The 2020 Best Places to Work rankings include 488 federal organizations: 17 large federal agencies, 25 midsize agencies, 29 small agencies and 411 subcomponents. NAVWAR was included in the agency subcomponent category as a subcategory of DON.
NAVWAR’s survey results includes the roll up of NAVWAR Headquarters, Naval Information Warfare Center (NIWC) Pacific, NIWC Atlantic, Program Executive Office (PEO) Command, Control, Computers, Communication and Intelligence (C4I) and Space Systems, PEO Digital and Enterprise Services and PEO Manpower, Logistics and Business Solutions.
NAVWAR identifies, develops, delivers and sustains information warfighting capabilities and services that enable naval, joint, coalition and other national missions operating in warfighting domains from seabed to space and through cyberspace. NAVWAR consists of more than 11,000 civilian, active duty and reserve professionals located around the world.