Garrison commander supports new team member onboarding process at Fort McCoy DHR

Several new members to the Fort McCoy team completed their oath to federal service Dec. 5 under the guidance of Fort McCoy Garrison Commander Col. Stephen Messenger at the Directorate of Human Resources (DHR) Headquarters.

“This is something new we’re doing to enhance our onboarding process for new team members,” said Workforce Development Specialist Jamie Gular with Fort McCoy DHR. “The garrison commander said he’s planning on continuing to do this for new team members.”

Gular said Fort McCoy DHR has been working on improving their new team member onboarding process over the past year based on feedback the directorate has received from new team members the garrison workforce and leaders.

“Onboarding is more than just in-processing, completing administrative requirements, and mandatory training,” Gular said. “It’s where we communicate who Fort McCoy is and what we stand for — our culture, our values — it sets the new team member up to become a successful and contributing member of our team.”

And through the feedback and through a lot of hard work by the DHR team as well as the Workforce Development Working Group, a new onboarding program was built in a phased approach.

“Phase one is pre-arrival and sponsorship,” Gular said. “Phase two is arrival and welcome. The goal of this phase is to personalize the welcome of new team members to the Fort McCoy team. Successfully welcoming and onboarding a new team member requires planning, careful thought, and effort — especially from leaders. However, it is effort worth spending.”

Gular said this effort with improving new team member onboarding is also part of Army Installation Management Command’s Service Culture Campaign.

According to IMCOM, the Service Culture Campaign “is built upon the premise that excellence in customer service is a byproduct of how employees are treated. Therefore, the Service Culture Campaign aims to establish an environment where employees have engaged leaders, feel valued, are loyal to the organization, and treat each other with dignity and respect.”

“The campaign instills a culture of service excellence through leader and workforce engagement; on-boarding programs that welcome and integrate newly assigned Soldiers and civilians to IMCOM; employee recognition programs that effectively further Army mission, goals and values; and standardized customer service training implemented enterprisewide,” states the Service Culture Campaign web page at https://home.army.mil/imcom/index.php/professionals/scc.

“IMCOM is ensuring that the foundations of service excellence are understood and applied at all echelons of the organization emphasizing junior leaders, first-line supervisors, and front-door service providers,” the web page further states. “At present, IMCOM organizations are assessing and revamping existing efforts associated with service excellence, leadership, communications, on-boarding, recognition, and integrating service culture principles into strategic plans.”

Gular added that now that the garrison commander has already supported phase two of the onboarding process, he’ll also begin supporting phase one in January 2023.

“Starting in January, the garrison commander will also be included in phase one by personally calling the new team member to congratulate and welcome him or her followed by his welcome letter,” Gular said.

The onboarding process has seen a boost for sure, Gular said, and improvements will continue.

“We will enhance the process even more as we move forward,” she said.

New team members welcomed Dec. 5 by Messenger included William Almquist, Jeffery Remy, Alexander Scholten, Brian Vieth, Edward Van Ravenstein, Jessica Clark, Paul Confer, and Reginald Jefferson.

Fort McCoy’s motto is to be the “Total Force Training Center.”

Located in the heart of the upper Midwest, Fort McCoy is the only U.S. Army installation in Wisconsin.

The installation has provided support and facilities for the field and classroom training of more than 100,000 military personnel from all services nearly every year since 1984.

Learn more about Fort McCoy online at https://home.army.mil/mccoy, on the Defense Visual Information Distribution System at https://www.dvidshub.net/fmpao, on Facebook by searching “ftmccoy,” and on Twitter by searching “usagmccoy.”