Naval Surface Warfare Center Philadelphia Division, Pa –
Naval Surface Warfare Center, Philadelphia Division’s (NSWCPD) first group of Many Voices initiative participants presented their Capstone Projects via a hybrid meeting with the command’s senior leadership and department heads on Nov. 18, 2021.
The event consisted of the five small groups providing briefs featuring specific topics of interest to the NSWCPD workforce at large:
- Team Monday: Equity in the Promotion Process - Team Tuesday: Communication is Key - Team Wednesday: Build Effective and Inclusive Interdisciplinary Teams that Value All Career Fields - Team Thursday: Digitals Tools Strategy - Team Friday: Emotional Intelligence
Led by NSWCPD Deputy Director EEO Robert Turner, NSWCPD’s Many Voices is an initiative based upon the 2020 “Many Voices—One NAVSEA - A NAVSEA Forum: Candid conversations on diversity, equity and inclusion”, a response to an annual command climate survey and focus groups constructed to improve the work environment. The program is designed to create conversations around racism, diversity, equity, and inclusion in employees’ professional and personal lives. The six-month Many Voices pilot program kicked off on April 14, 2021 with five different groups of 12-15 NSWCPD employees meeting for 90 minutes each month, engaging in lively exchanges about difficult subjects. Each session was facilitated by Vitruvian Worldwide LLC, with discussion topics including: Inclusive Diversity, Unconscious Bias, Neuroscience and Evolutionary Psychology and Leadership, Psychological Safety and Creating Inclusive Zones, Meaningful Conversations, Building Trust and Leading Teams, and Driving Results. The Capstone projects were the culmination of this initiative.
NSWCPD Commanding Officer Dana Simon started the session with a brief introduction, saying, “This project, Many Voices initiative, is really great. We’ve had great participation. It’s been very beneficial going through this especially during trying times we have had over the past 20 months with the pandemic.”
Turner said, “I would like to thank all the groups for their hard work and determination they put into these projects. These presentations are the culmination of six months of getting to know each other and getting to look inside of yourself and think out of the box. This has been a long journey. I’m not going to say that it’s ending.”
“It’s the beginning because some of these groups are passionate to keep moving some of these projects forward with the command’s help and resources,” added Turner. “But we are looking to continue to drive this train. I appreciate the department heads allowing the Many Voices initiative groups. I’m very proud of every group and all of the effort they put forward to this initiative.”
Each presentation stated clear concerns/problem statements, along with concerns and recommendations to help solve the issue.
The “Equity in the Promotion Process” team sought to ensure that the NSWCPD promotion process is equal and equitable. Their recommendations included the wider distribution of NSWCPD standard operating procedures (SOP) for filling competitive positions, provide services to help employees develop resume and interview skills, as well as commission a task force to conduct a deep dive on potential equitability issues and develop solutions.
In the “Communication is Key” recap, they noted that ineffective communication occurring up and down the chain of command negatively impacted individual morale, team performance, and organization mission and safety. The small group noted that the hybrid environment makes the communication process more difficult and makes actually utilizing existing communication structures more important. Remediation recommendations included continuing to work with NSWCPD’s workforce development branch to identify available trainings and to physically use the existing message maps/communication plans.
The “Build Effective and Inclusive Interdisciplinary Teams that Value All Career Fields” presentation stated that undervaluing personnel across all career fields adversely impacts engagement and performance of the collective workforce. Their presentation mentioned that inclusion makes us stronger, conversations make us better, and that we must build effective, inclusive, and interdisciplinary teams that value all career fields. Recommended actions include expanding their team, sharing quarterly updates, and engaging with professional organizations to bring in other points of view.
The “Digital Tools Strategy” team identified inconsistent digital tools usage as a barrier to inclusiveness within the command. Currently, employees are reached mostly via email and obtain information from multiple intranets, while not using existing digital tools strategy, which leads to information silos and minimal information distribution. Their suggestions include the creation of a “tiger team” to create a digital tools strategy road map, a command survey to identify opportunities, develop measurable logistics process to ensure websites are current, implementation of command-wide digital tools seminars, and more.
The “Emotional Intelligence” brief identified a lack of focus on emotional intelligence, which is the cornerstone to building an inclusive hybrid workforce. The team noted that emotional intelligence is the grease that lubricates our human engine and allows everyone to work in a smooth, effective way. Their recommended courses of action include leveraging existing workforce development training courses as recurring training and utilizing outside resources such as other warfare centers and local universities.
“It was a great experience for the team and it was really enlightening to be able to not just network with colleagues outside of our daily work, but with those in other departments and divisions as well,” said Ed Carter, acquisition manager and chair of the NSWCPD African American Employee Resource Group (AAERG). “As we went through this journey over six months, we were encouraged to seek to engage with people on a deeper level to know them and understand how their backgrounds may shape their perspectives and why the diversity they bring to our work groups and teams is really our strength.”
Lauren Cavaliero, a NSWCPD business finance division head, added, “We want to start building teams where in the same room, people are not thinking as one. We don’t want to look around and see a carbon copy of ourselves. We want people who challenge each other and challenge each other’s ideas. We really do believe this will propel our workforce forward, and that diverse groups will produce the innovative and creative solutions needed to meet future challenges, and leverage new technologies.”
NSWCPD employs approximately 2,800 civilian engineers, scientists, technicians, and support personnel. The NSWCPD team does the research and development, test and evaluation, acquisition support, and in-service and logistics engineering for the non-nuclear machinery, ship machinery systems, and related equipment and material for Navy surface ships and submarines. NSWCPD is also the lead organization providing cybersecurity for all ship systems.