Keeping Navy ship-shape through teleworking

Usually, when you think about teleworking, you think cars, saving gas, and giving people more options instead of commuting. But for one branch of the Pentagon, its all about being ship shape.

Sharie Bourbeau is Assistant Deputy Chief of Naval Operations for Manpower, Training and Education with the U.S. Navy. As the luncheon keynote speaker to last week's Telework Exchange Town Hall, Bourbeau was more or less preaching to the choir when it comes to telework, but she says it's important to remember why telework is important to an agency that does most of its business out at sea.

It's a very dynamic environment, and our mission is changing. Given that, you might be saying, "Why in the world would the Navy look at telework?" Or "why would the Navy even consider a virtual workforce?" Not only are we considering it, we are absolutely embracing the concept of a virtual, mobile workforce. Our vision is to have a seamless total force that is valued for a lifetime of service to our nation. One vision of "seamless" means that we can get our work done anytime, anyplace, anywhere.

Bourbeau says it is all about getting the Department of the Navy to become a "top 50 employer." To do that, she says "you have to be an employer that not only recognizes performance, but also 'quality of life', or 'live-work balance'."

And she says that recognition is part of the Navy's goal of creating a "results-oriented environment."

Bourbeau says for the Navy, it's also important to use teleworking as a way to embrace diversity in order to recruit the people needed to fulfill its mission.

If you look at the college recruits of today, more than 50% -- 58% -- are women. Of the recruitable market, the Navy really only taps into 28%. When you look at the diverse demographics of the nation, when you look at the fact that college graduates are predominately women, you look at the concept of the Millenials. They are all about choice. They're all about agility. They're all about flexibility. They're all about "give me choices." That choice doesn't mean "I'm going to sit behind a desk everyday." Women in the Navy are faced with a choice between the two "Cs". They are "I will choose to have a career", or "I will choose to have children."

She also says that if you look at the generational breakdown in the Navy, 45% are Gen Xers, 55% are Millenials -- both groups extremely comfortable with personal technology, like the kind that makes teleworking possible. So, Bourbeau says her agency did what most agencies do: start with a pilot.

We have 35 people that started out on the pilot. It was a huge success. So, we've exploited that, and now my challenge is to have 40% of our workforce in a virtual environment, a "mobile workforce" by fiscal year 2011.

And Bourbeau concluded with this thought about teleworking:

"There's a power in presence," she told her audience, "but presence doesn't equate to performance."

------
On the Web:
FederalNewsRadio - Navy Walking the Telework Walk
FederalNewsRadio - Telework joy: it all comes from the top
FederalNewsRadio - Spreading the good news about telework
Telework Exchange - teleworkexchange.com

(Copyright 2009 by FederalNewsRadio.com. All Rights Reserved.)