NDU Colleagues, 

In a slight timing change, we will be opening the window to take our DEOCS Climate Survey a couple of weeks earlier:  it will start next Monday on 19 April and run through 30 April. This survey will help me and our senior leadership understand issues that you identify—so I strongly encourage everyone to take the survey and make their voice heard.  In my last Town Hall, I promised you I will read every single page of the survey results with a commitment to understanding and addressing our most prevalent and pressing issues.  Next Monday, you will receive an e-mail with instructions from our NDU survey administrator, Dr. BJ Miller, on how to access and complete the DEOCS.  Dr. Miller (bj.miller.civ@ndu.edu) will also be your POC for any questions you may have about the survey. 

The DEOCS is a resource for you to provide confidential feedback on many of the factors that affect you and our workplace.  When the results are compiled, I will only receive information about the University as a whole and the University’s main Components.  I will not be able to see how you, or any individual in our University, answered any specific questions.  Once we have the results of the survey, the hard work of understanding the issues and charting a path forward will be the next steps, and we’ll need your help there, too. 

Thanks for taking the time to help us improve our University. 

My warmest regards, 

MICHAEL T. PLEHN, Lt Gen, USAF 

President, National Defense University 

• Organization/Unit = National Defense University
• Organization Leader/Unit Commander = NDU-P
• Immediate Supervisor = The individual to whom you directly report 

• Question 1 asks about your affiliation to NDU. If you select “Civilian employee,” you will encounter Question 135 later in the survey. Question 135 asks you to select your current pay plan. If you are a Title 10 employee, please select “Title 10 non-tenure-track faculty.” 

• This will direct you to Question 139, which asks about your position at “the Military Service Academy.” Please ignore the Service Academy reference and the specific AD levels presented. If you are teaching faculty, please select the option corresponding to your rank. If you are not teaching faculty, please select either “Admin Faculty” or “Supervisory/Professor Dean/Academic Dean.” 

• Question 53 asks if your immediate supervisor is enlisted, a commissioned officer, a warrant officer, or a civilian. If you answer civilian, you will be directed to Question 57, which asks about your supervisor’s DoD civilian pay category. If your immediate supervisor is a Title 10 employee, please select the option, “Title 10 non-tenure-track faculty.” 

• This will direct you to Question 60, which asks about your supervisor’s position at “the Military Service Academy.” Please ignore the Service Academy reference and select either “Admin Faculty” or “Supervisory/Professor Dean/Academic Dean.” 

Scaled Questions

Indicate your agreement with the following statements (Strongly disagree, Disagree, Neither agree nor disagree, Agree, Strongly agree): 

• I am satisfied with the communication from the chain of command. 

• My commander/leader listens to the concerns of the unit/organization members. 

• My unit/organization is accepting of individuals with diverse backgrounds. 

• I am treated with dignity and respect in this unit/organization. 

• I feel quite confident that I will be treated fairly in my unit/organization. 

• I believe I can use my chain of command/leader to address concerns about discrimination without fear of retaliation/reprisal.  

• I trust leadership to handle complaints, problems, or issues effectively. 

• Decisions in my unit/organization are made after reviewing relevant information.  

• My unit/organization makes good use of available resources to accomplish its mission. 

• I have seen extremist group behavior or propaganda in my workplace. 

Open-ended Questions

• How would you improve the communication processes in the unit/organization?  

• What changes should your leadership make to better support diversity and inclusion? 

• How do you feel about the actions taken by your leadership in response to COVID-19? 

• The greatest morale-enhancing action leadership could make at this unit/organization would be:  

• What climate issue does this unit/organization most need to improve?

Who should complete the DEOCS? 

Military and civilian employees of NDU. Students, contractors and employees of the regional centers are not part of the intended population.

I received the email with the survey link and passcode but have been assigned a passcode that doesn’t match my component. What should I do? 

Please contact the survey administrator for the correct passcode at bj.miller.civ@ndu.edu 

I’m a military or civilian employee of NDU but didn’t receive an email about how to access the 2021 DEOCS. How do I get a passcode? 

Please contact the survey administrator at bj.miller.civ@ndu.edu 

How long will it take to complete the survey? 

The survey will take approximately 25 minutes to complete and must be done in one sitting. Your completion time will depend, in part, on how much time you spend on the open-ended questions.  

Are my responses anonymous? 

Yes, your responses are anonymous, unless you enter identifying information in answer to an open-ended question. The survey is conducted by the Defense Equal Opportunity Management Institute (DEOMI) and NDU will receive only reports that summarize the responses, not the individual responses themselves. 

There will be several reports generated by DEOMI:  an overall report based on all responses to the survey and group breakout reports for each component. There must be at least 16 responses in a group to generate a breakout report. Some results are also presented by subgroup based on demographic categories; there must be at least five (5) responses in a subgroup for this type of result to be included in a report. 

Answers to the open-ended questions are included in the reports verbatim and are grouped only by question; that is, they do not include any identifying information based on other survey responses such as demographic categories. The overall report will include all open-ended responses and each breakout report will include the responses from that component.