FORT LEONARD WOOD, Mo. — Fort Leonard Wood garrison leaders hosted a town hall for civilian employees on June 1 at Nutter Field House.
Col. Anthony Pollio, U.S. Army Garrison Fort Leonard Wood commander, kicked off the event by thanking everyone for attending and explaining his intent in hosting a town hall each quarter.
“These forums are not only there to provide you information that could be useful, but also to get feedback from you on areas where we can continue to improve, or even areas where you think we’re doing well,” Pollio said.
After opening up the event for questions from both the employees physically in attendance and watching online, Pollio addressed the updated cleaning contract to come for Bldg. 470, which he said is currently on schedule to be awarded by June 19.
“In that new contract, it will be twice-a-week cleaning for Bldg. 470 because we recognize it’s such a high-traffic building,” he said.
Pollio and U.S. Army Garrison Fort Leonard Wood Command Sgt. Maj. Danny Castleberry also presented commander’s coins to some of the garrison’s exceptional employees, including Dawn Arden, with the Public Affairs Office; Heide Lenning, with Army Community Service; and Kenneth Mann, with the Directorate of Plans, Training, Mobilization and Security.
Following the coin presentations, Pollio and Castleberry presented two-star notes on behalf of the Maneuver Support Center of Excellence and Fort Leonard Wood commanding general to Camilah Jefferson, with the Directorate of Human Resources, and the Army Substance Abuse Program team, which includes Polly Guthrie, Guy Caley, Shannon Eaton, Garth Griswold, Rachelle Harvey, Michael Jacobs, Malia Nemetz, Kyle Roberts and Rick Roloson.
Mike Vail, the director of Fort Leonard Wood’s Plans, Analysis and Integration Office, next spoke on what’s called the Service Culture Campaign, a U.S. Army Installation Management Command plan first formulated in 2017, to establish an environment where employees have engaged leaders, feel valued, are loyal to the organization and treat each other with dignity and respect.
“We have been taking many steps across the garrison, and there are still more to come – from workforce development, to our (Interactive Customer Evaluation, or ICE) campaign…to our awards policies and so on,” Vail said.
Fort Leonard Wood’s ICE comment card system campaign is one way leaders here “gauge performance for customers,” Vail said, noting customers can be internal and external.
“Everyone in this room has a customer,” Vail said. “You either support someone else in the garrison, or on the installation, as well as Soldiers and their families and retirees.”
Vail said there are “three major goals” regarding ICE: increasing the number of submitted comments, increasing the quality of comments via constructive feedback, and being able to provide useful information to managers and leaders here based on ICE comments.
“We don’t want to mess up what we’re doing right,” Vail said. “But we do want to get your opinion — or the customer’s opinion — to try to make changes to make things better.”
More information on Fort Leonard Wood’s ICE program can be found here.
Pollio also took time to highlight some “recent wins” for the garrison team.
“I always like to highlight successes,” Pollio said. “Now, this is not the complete list of successes, because if we put up the complete list, we’d be here all day.”
These wins included the garrison being confirmed as the “Best Garrison for IMCOM Directorate-Training” out of the 16 ID-T installations; a successful intern program was created with Waynesville High School — seven students participated over this past school year, and 11 more have applied so far for the coming school year; the ASAP team was recognized during a staff assistance visit as outstanding, with many best practices; and new scanners were fielded for the installation entry control points.
“I think sometimes everybody gets focused on what work still needs to be done, and we lose track of the fact that we’ve actually accomplished quite a bit,” Pollio said.
Megan O’Donoghue, director of Family and Morale, Welfare and Recreation, spoke about upcoming events, many of which can be found on the FMWR website.
O’Donoghue also noted civilian employees may use all FMWR facilities, including Army Community Service, the Bruce C. Clarke Library, the Daugherty Bowling Center, the Lake of the Ozarks Recreation Area, Leisure Travel Services, the Outdoor Adventure Center and more.
Pollio said the next garrison employee town hall is tentatively scheduled for Sept. 19.
(Editor’s note: U.S. Army Installation Management Command announced on Tuesday that Fort Leonard Wood is the best garrison in the Army. Lt. Gen. Omar Jones, IMCOM commanding general, and IMCOM Command Sgt. Maj. Jason Copeland, presented the 2022 award — in recognition of Fort Leonard Wood’s garrison Soldiers, families, civilians and community partners “for exemplary dedication and commitment to excellence” — to Col. Anthony Pollio, U.S. Army Garrison Fort Leonard Wood commander, and USAG Fort Leonard Wood Command Sgt. Maj. Danny Castleberry during a brief ceremony in San Antonio, Texas, where IMCOM is headquartered. Read the full story here.)
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