2012 Acquisition Workforce Survey

We are all too busy to take it. I lie, I took it. But time is a big reason.

At my agency 19% of COs took it but only about 1% of CORs and PMs. I don't think the word got to them and many don't consider themselves in the "acquisition" workforce anyway. A Department notice was sent and all us supervisors were expected to encourage our personnel and CORs. Lets see if the numbers go up?

I took it, too, but my first inclination was to ignore it. Too busy doing real work was first thought, and second though was that nothing good will come out of all the effort.

good to know. I agree, we are all tremendously busy. I also thought it was a kind of cumbersome survey.

One of my complaints about contracting people is that too few of them have a sense of professional community. Regardless of how the survey results are used, it's important for contracting professionals to respond to such surveys promptly and honestly. It sends a message that you are a community that is concerned about itself. The information cannot hurt (if everyone is honest) and it may help. Anything that might make your lives better is worth devoting some time to. While I'm at it, I'll make a pitch for NCMA membership and active participation. It is not a perfect professional organization, but it's the only one you've got and you should support it. As for being busy, you're not too busy to show some interest in your own profession. Unless you don't care about the kinds of things that have been done to it over the last 20 years.

Not a government employee, but I have a lot of experience in the private sector. In my experience, when an employee satisfaction or similar type survey receives a very poor response rate, it indicates a very serious workforce morale issue. People feel like management isn't interested in honest feedback, or will fail to take meaningful action upon receipt of honest feedback. It indicates a profound disconnect between management and the workforce.

I don't know if this situation is similar or not. Maybe there are a ton of other reasons for the lack of responses--and workload is probably a good reason. But if this was my company and my survey, and this was my response rate, then I would be very, very concerned.

One reason. It is way too long. When you see that it takes 30-45 minutes to complete, a person thinks, "I don't have that much time" and they skip it. I think no survey should be longer than 5 minutes.

I think no survey should be longer than 5 minutes.

Really, Desperado? No more than five minutes, no matter what the topic or purpose? You want to think that through just a little bit?

Upon further review, perhaps I should put this into context. If you are sending a nationwide survey to hundreds (if not thousands) of 1102s, the survey should not be 30-45 minutes and should not include text-box answers. With that many respondents, it is not practicable that the text box answers will really be taken into consideration. If you want to maximize participation, keep the survey to no longer than 15 minutes (as opposed to the 5 I stated before). Any longer than that and I believe most people lose interest and the validity of the responses decline as people get to the point where they are just answering questions quickly to get through the survey.

With 20+ years of service, I've completed many a survey, including the recent FAI 2012 survey. Admittedly I ignored the first couple of survey notifications emails because I've never felt a survey asks the right questions to get the response I want communicated and I just didn't feel like "doing stupid today". It generally feels the surveys are designed to produce the responses desired. But after a prompt from our head of contracting, I did my civic acquistion community duty.