Telework Exchange

By government standards, personnel in the United States Navy are, on average, quite young, with 98 percent of the entire workforce hailing from either Generation X or the Millennial Generation. This demographic reality is forcing the Navy to rethink its traditionally rigid personnel policies, according to Sharie Bourbeau, Assistant Deputy Chief of Naval Operations for Manpower, Personnel, Training, and Education for the Navy. Ms. Bourbeau delivered this message in an entertaining and spirited luncheon keynote address at the Spring 2009 Telework Exchange Town Hall Meeting where she discussed the Navy's ambitious plans to implement a virtual, mobile workforce.

These younger generations are "all about flexibility, all about agility, all about 'Give me choices,' and that choice does not mean I am going to sit behind the desk every day," she explained. "So we have to look forward at how we are going to adjust, because it's not about having them adjust, it's about how we are going to adjust to embrace what's important to them."

The Navy has done an excellent job at recruiting top talent in recent years, Bourbeau states, but retaining them will be a lot more difficult, especially in an era when the country's top employers are already catering to the work/life balance benefits demanded by younger generations. In the Fortune Top 100 list of companies, "about 87 percent of the workforce is mobile or virtual at least part of the day," she said, citing a statistic from Fortune magazine.

For this reason, the Navy last year kicked off a number of new programs designed to increase the Navy's productivity and improve the quality of life for its workers and their ability to balance their professional and personal lives. "We want our bumper sticker to no longer be 'It's Navy or Family' but 'Navy and Family," Bourbeau stated. "You can now have both and not lose."

The Navy's new programs include telework, which still is being tested, but has thus far been extremely successful; career intermission, a policy that allows personnel to take up to three years of personal leave and remain competitive through repositioning in the promotion line; and a Virtual Command Pilot.

The latter "means that if you have a skill set that we need or want, then we have a job for you, anyplace, anytime, anywhere," Bourbeau explains, noting that she has a female lieutenant who works for her, but was able to leverage the Virtual Command Pilot to allow her to remain at her home in Washington state even though she was being professionally summoned to Washington, D.C.

"She was at that point in time when she was making that choice of career or children and she wanted stability," Bourbeau recalls. "She was married, she wanted to have roots with her family, so she now is working in Washington, D.C., but she and her family are staying in Washington state. I'll be honest: I've never met her."

Telework is the linchpin of the Navy's Task Force Life/Work initiatives, Bourbeau says, largely because, with the exception of those who work exclusively with classified materials, nearly everyone in the Navy can work remotely at least one or two days a week (when they're on shore).

Bourbeau herself teleworks, as does Vice Adm. Mark Ferguson, III, Chief of Naval Personnel and Deputy Chief of Naval Operations. In fact, she says, some of their best meetings have occurred when the admiral. was teleworking.

"That's not a disparaging comment," she noted. "His days when he's in the office are in 20-minute chunks. He's a very, very busy man, and lots of people are pulling on him. So when you get time with him when he's working from home, it's a really good, really focused conversation."

In fact, she said, a major payoff for the Navy will be an increase in results. "Work is not a place," she said. "So long as you get that result, that place can be anywhere…and I would submit that performance will go up, productivity will go up, and there will be fewer disruptions. All those interruptions will go away with telework…there's a power in presence, but presence doesn't equate to performance. Don't confuse the two."

Ms. Bourbeau's organization has set a goal to have at least 40 percent of its D.C. workforce in a mobile/virtual environment by the beginning of FY2011. A driving factor behind the aggressive push for telework, she stated, is that her office is moving to a site that is significantly smaller than the present location.

"Our vision is to have a seamless, total force that is valued for a lifetime of service to our nation," Bourbeau stated. To do so, she added, the Navy has to embrace a diversity of thought. "Diversity will bring that innovation. Diversity will enable new concepts such as a virtual workplace…things like teleworking, Virtual Command Pilot, and career intermission, that's going to be the keystone to retaining people."