The Power of "WE"
Thursday, October 21, 2010

NATCA Joins FAA, PASS, in Workforce Engagement Effort

FAA Administrator Randy Babbitt has stated that one of his top goals is to make the FAA one of the best places to work, with a continued focus on employee engagement; involving every ATO employee. To that end, the FAA formally launched the "Workforce Engagement (WE)" initiative this week.

What is Workforce Engagement?

At its most fundamental level, Workforce Engagement is an effort to involve every ATO employee in creating a better place to work. Workforce Engagment is about all of us. So many of the programs and initiatives we have are about procedures, technologies and maintenance of the NAS. These are all vital to doing what we do best, but Workforce Engagement recognizes the need to focus on the FAA's strength -- the people that maintain the world's safest airspace.

WE is part of the ATO's integrated engagement strategy to become a best place to work. WE is one of the central components of this integrated strategy, just like the Collaborative Process, Partnership for Safety and other programs.

The FAA recognizes that some of the best ideas and solutions to challenges we face as an ATO will come from you. Your ideas and your input is needed to make improvements. WE was created by all levels of the ATO, involving over 100 representatives of all levels of management and labor in each service unit. They all designed the WE effort in collaborative fashion.

There are three main components to Workforce Engagement:

1. A baseline assessment: You give the FAA feedback on where we are now.

2. Impact planning and implementation: What the FAA does with your feedback, together.

3. Long-term follow-through: Steady improvement over time.

In order to be able to measure progress, it's important to establish a baseline. The ATO has partnered with Gallup, a recognized leader in workforce engagment, to help do just that. In studying nearly three million work groups in over 1,500 organizations, Gallup has boiled down the drivers of organizational sucess to 12 key items that form the foundation of the baseline assessment. Gallup will administer the assessment and summarize results.

The assessment process gives a reading on both strengths and opportunities to improve from the organizational to the workgroup level. No one in the FAA will have access to raw survey data; all responses will be completely anonymous. The WE assessment will be administered annually to gauge progress.

The baseline assessment in the form of a survey will be taken in early December. All of you will have the opportunity to take the survey on official time and it will only take a few minutes. NATCA is recommending participation in the survey. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact the National Office at 202-628-5451.