Assessing Workforce Perceptions of Productivity and Success After 730 Days of Distributed Operations in Response to COVID-19

Abstract

During the midst of the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, a large Navy Working Capital Funded (NWCF) government laboratory, Naval Information Warfare Center (NIWC) Pacific, transitioned from a traditional onsite/physical daily operational presence to a distributed, virtual, maximum telework posture. In short, unless NIWC Pacific’s leadership directed that performance of a specific, approved tasking required that it take place at a particular physical workplace location, the laboratory workforce was directed to telework from a safe location while practicing social distancing. To this extent, a majority of the workforce for NIWC Pacific’s programs and projects continued performing their duties in a virtual and secure distributed environment. In addition, the Office of Personnel Management telework policy provided new guidance to give personnel adequate direction, including telework eligibility, agreement, definition, and types of telework arrangements. This new norm certainly raised a number of questions and considerations for the organization as a whole related to the effectiveness of the workforce while under a maximum telework mandate. As a result, the authors distributed two surveys to a subset of the workforce in the early days of the pandemic to assess the perceived work effectiveness of the organization. After 730 calendar days of remote operation by the workforce, the authors initiated this study as a third inquiry, with the goal of understanding the long-term impact of distributed telework on productivity and effectiveness within a department of 900 employees.