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ADF morale slumps to 38 percent; 20 percent plan on leaving - Sydney Morning Herald


Related Reddit thread - it's almost a cut/paste of issues plaguing the CAF.


On the upside, they actually survey for morale statistics. This is a good thing.

On the downside, any client we work for who got appalling results like below would see the Board firing the whole management team, or something like that:

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Another way to look at this?

Perhaps people have adjusted to the "gig economy" and neither expect nor want lifetime careers. Maybe the future is "4 years and out". How do you build a force with people with those expectations?
 
How do you assign a percentage to morale? Can you even quantify that? Low vs higher perhaps, or good vs bad but a number?
 
On the upside, they actually survey for morale statistics. This is a good thing.

On the downside, any client we work for who got appalling results like below would see the Board firing the whole management team, or something like that:

View attachment 70631
DB- tapping into your experience- if this isn’t too wide a question, when you look at that private vs public side, why are our (CF or public services) middle and senior managers out of touch?

If I was making predictions I would have expected it to be the other way around. Since private senior managers can jump industries and companies they don’t necessarily “get” the ground floor, so WHY are they better at managing it?

Hopefully that makes sense
 
How do you assign a percentage to morale? Can you even quantify that? Low vs higher perhaps, or good vs bad but a number?

I would surmise they asked people if their morale was low, or how their morale was, perhaps using a sliding scale or just a yes or no to it being good or bad.

Then with the responses they used some arithmetic and mathematical equations and they got those percentages.

We used to do morale surveys.
 
DB- tapping into your experience- if this isn’t too wide a question, when you look at that private vs public side, why are our (CF or public services) middle and senior managers out of touch?

If I was making predictions I would have expected it to be the other way around. Since private senior managers can jump industries and companies they don’t necessarily “get” the ground floor, so WHY are they better at managing it?

Hopefully that makes sense
That might not be as fair of a comparison though; a lot of policies causing grief on the benefits/pay side are imposed on the CAF by TBS. Procurement grief also relies on PSPC, TBS, and others....

We're a bit like a really big sister company that gets flow down direction from an overall conglomerate.

My experience on that is pretty 3rd hand info, but from what I understand the successful ones operate more hands off at the conglomerate level, where we have routine and direct interference from other departments on relatively day to day stuff, as well as in the longer term/strategic elements.

Our general context is pretty unique, so mapping private sector practices based on their context is a challenge and doesn't always work. Because we aren't kicking out widgets with profit driving things, a lot of the private sector things don't really translate.

It's fair to say though that TBS, PSPC etc don't know how we do things and generally don't care.

Would be interesting to see our numbers, even on good days I frequently find myself thinking the only reason I'm still here is to look out for sailors in a very specific area that I work in and can positively influence. The institution's disconnect with reality is part of the issue, but not sure if that's down to any specific senior managers, or just the generally dispersed nature of the responsibilities and siloes, so it's just difficult with the lack of people for anyone to really get a handle on the overall picture, as we're all just treading water to fight whatever the fire of the day is.

Working from home has actually been a big help to improving my morale/MH though; being able to temporarily down tools and come back an hour later when I get frustrated with the bureaucracy has helped a lot, so that would also be another interesting breakout. If I was working for 8 continuous hours (with a 2+ hour commute) I probably would have broken down by now. Sometimes being able to spread that workday over 12 hours really makes it bearable, but wouldn't have that option if it was standard work from the office.
 
DB- tapping into your experience- if this isn’t too wide a question, when you look at that private vs public side, why are our (CF or public services) middle and senior managers out of touch?

If I was making predictions I would have expected it to be the other way around. Since private senior managers can jump industries and companies they don’t necessarily “get” the ground floor, so WHY are they better at managing it?

Hopefully that makes sense

I've seen good and bad leadership in a variety of sectors, and have helped dozens of clients identify and address 'morale', and other business performance issues, that we've helped them draw out/ measure through surveys, interviews and focus groups.

Where leadership is good, morale is generally good. Where it is bad.... well, you can guess.

This is all quite independent of various other 'uncontrollables' like pay, working conditions, pandemics etc. too.

Good leaders can always find a way through the turmoil of the daily grind to build effective organizations and, where morale is consistently low, the organization needs to either hold its leadership accountable for fixing it, or replace those leaders.... as soon as possible.
 
I do find we have a tendency to make a boogie man out of TB. Compensation is one factor in pretty complex ecosystem for morale.

When my people are working around decisions made at higher levels constantly- that extra effort is the morale robber,

I’ve been public sector since I was 18. My perspective on private is basically zero. I’ve been in several cycles of high and low morale and I am only now starting to try and dissect what the deal is. Anyways. Back to read 🤓
 
I have a feeling they have, and folks are.
.... and leadership is subsequently surprised that we have retention problems.

Similarly, we don't have enough people, so we push things to ISSC... who hire our people to do the job because they already know how to interface with our lunatic systems.
 
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