Fort Leavenworth was host to the Employee Engagement Training Conference (E2TC) at the Lewis and Clark Center Thursday, Aug. 11 and Friday, Aug. 12. The one-and-a-half day event brought together numerous Department of the Army's senior leaders in an effort to craft reasonable solutions to address issues facing the Army's modern civilian workforce.
The conference, which was organized by the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army for Manpower and Reserve Affairs, was part of an effort to address a presidential mandate to increase civilian employee engagement scores to 67 percent from the current number of 63.9 percent. The desired goals of the event were to spur recommendations, which could be brought back to Washington D.C. for further review.
"In the Army, our weapon systems are our people," said Debra S. Wada, assistant secretary of the Army (Manpower & Reserve Affairs). "As leaders of a people-focused organization, it is our responsibility to support our personnel -- both military and civilian. Doing so will enable us to meet our mission and increase our personal readiness. One of the ways to do that is through enhanced employee engagement. We want to ensure at the end that our employees are passionate and energized about what we do, and take pride in their work."
The theme of this year's E2TC was to discuss ideas that could bring positive change and be implemented on the local level.
"For the last year, we've been working on big enterprise solutions, such as what policies do we need to change," said Edward Emden, civilian workforce transformation integrator for the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army for Manpower and Reserve Affairs. "Now we're telling the leaders in the field, 'Since you have a big portion of this responsibility, we want to be able to help you be effective E2 (Employee Engagement) advocates at your organization.' Instead of them helping us, we're asking attendees 'How can we equip you to be effective at the local level?'"
The conference commenced with several speakers, whose subject matter was intended to inspire the working groups that would gather later in the day. The hand-picked senior leaders in attendance were separated into eight groups to address four specific engagement issues, including: onboarding of new civilians, accountability in performance management, shared responsibility in performance management and retaining top talent. Each section had a subject matter expert to provide guidance and a lead to act as a facilitator. After an afternoon of discussion, the groups presented their findings to representatives of the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army for Manpower and Reserve Affairs.
"We asked them to come up with solutions they can implement," Emden said. "We don't need policy changes. We need solutions that can be implemented where the rubber meets the road. We'll take these ideas back with us and share them at the general officer level and publish them on milSuite for anyone across the Army community to use."
At the end of the second day, Lt. Gen. Michael Lundy, commanding general of the U.S. Army Combined Arms Center, gave his words of wisdom on leadership and employee engagement before Wada closed out the event. He discussed the day one counseling -- or setting expectations, developing leaders and creating trust.
"For a team to be effective, there has to be trust -- that's the Mission Command piece," Lundy said. "It's all about how you create shared understanding as leaders and set expectations."
According to Wada, one of the most important objectives for the E2TC was to breathe new energy into senior leaders with new ideas to take back to their organizations for the next year and beyond.
"My biggest hope is that every employee leaves this conference engaged and reinvigorated to make difference to the entire force," Wada said. "That's the goal of this gathering."
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