b'Today we are positively shaping NASAs culture to maintain high levels of employee engagement and commitment.Leaders also need to build strong teams. I have seenhow to make decisions quickly. We moved fast and worked organizations struggle because they lack strong, cohesivehard, moving 90 percent of the workforce offsite in a very teams. I am blessed with one of the most talented teamsshort period. We created order and determined how wed that you could ever hope to have. I need to be connectedoperatecommunication, charge time, different hours of to people enough to know whats going on, so that I canwork, contractors, etc.support our teams and remove obstacles for them to do their jobs. It is about the teamdelegate to them, let them learn,For my part, I focused on the supervisor cadre, because let them innovate.that is the layer of our organization where the work and the workforce come together. Supervisors are in the best position How did NASA respond to the pandemic andto know whats what at any given moment and to help in keep the workforce performing?the caretaking of the workforce. So we setup a series for supervisors that touched on many different topics. Im proud of how our agency responded during this pandemic. From leadership to every employee andIt was clear the series served a valuable purpose. It fostered contractor, we all kept the agency going in the midst of atogethernessa shared response to a crisis. Though this may very stressful and trying period.have been borne out of a crisis, the resulting engagement will continue long after the pandemic subsides. Focusing on I was CHCO for a couple months when we moved tocommunication across all levels of the agency continues to mandatory telework in March 2020. We quickly assembledbe critical. We are living and working differently. We can no a team focused on the health and safety of our workforce.longer pretend how what we used to do in going in the office We worked to determine what needed to be done andis still the best way forward today. How will NASA be working when the pandemicis behind us? We have declared, as have most agencies, that we will be moving into what we call the hybrid environment. Were striving to take the best of our pre-pandemic experience, the best of what we learned during the pandemicand apply it. We have people with different reactions to how weve been working and how they want to work. Weve done several internal surveysmany focused on productivity, support, communications. People have been surprised at how much they can do remotely. Seventy percent of NASA employees desire to work offsite for more than half of their work schedule. Some are mixed, with more wanting off site. We dont have it all 34 www.businessofgovernment.org The Business of Government'