The Department of Homeland Security has about 180,000 employees who work in 12,000 locations. They are at the nation's borders, in airports and on ships. Many do not have a desk or regular workday access to the Internet or e-mail.
The department's size means that communications with employees -- and their feedback -- will be critical to the department's efforts to revamp how it conducts business.
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Finding a strategy to reach workers will be especially important for one of the department's multiyear projects, the adoption of a personnel system that will change how employees are paid, promoted and disciplined. Employee perceptions about whether their pay is administered fairly often determine whether reform projects succeed or fail, management experts say.
Joseph B. Adamoli, the department's director of internal communications, said he hopes to leave nothing to chance when it comes to providing Homeland Security employees with information. "We are committed to communicating, communicating, communicating," Adamoli said in a recent interview at the department's Nebraska Avenue NW complex.
The department is using an array of methods to bring announcements, updates and briefings to its vast workforce. Employees receive paper and electronic newsletters each week. In addition, the department sends out e-mails, satellite broadcasts and Web-based slide shows and videos.
Employees who don't spend much time at an office computer learn about the department's policy and operating changes at staff meetings, such as the daily roll calls attended by law enforcement officers.
As the department rolls out its new personnel system, "we are going to rely on the supervisors and managers to be effective communicators," Adamoli said.
Large organizations naturally resist change, and Homeland Security is no different. Two years after the department's creation, the Washington headquarters staff is still trying to smooth rough edges and pull together 22 agencies. Federal unions, meanwhile, oppose the personnel changes underway and have launched their own communications effort aimed at shaping perceptions.
Adamoli believes that communication "has to be two-way" inside Homeland Security. The department has a responsibility to push out information, and employees must make the effort to read material and educate themselves about upcoming changes in policy and practices, he said.
His office has received some feedback. On Feb. 2, the day after final rules for the personnel system were published, 139 employees sent in e-mails, with most of the comments and questions directed at the new salary structure, called "pay bands," Adamoli said.
Some employees who watched a 35-minute Internet video on the new personnel rules, which was made available Feb. 8, said it took up too much of their time. Adamoli said he will recommend cutting the run time of future showings to a few minutes and narrow their focus to one topic.
The department's outreach effort comes on top of employee information programs run by most of the Homeland Security agencies, which publish their own magazines and newsletters. Adamoli meets each month with a committee that includes representatives of Homeland Security agencies and meets every two weeks with senior officials on MaxHR, the department's name for the new human resources system.
As director of internal communications, Adamoli has had a hand in designing the department's seal (featuring 22 stars for 22 agencies), business cards, stationery and brochures and in coining the term MaxHR. His next big projects include replacing agency signs with new ones that have the department's logotype and putting the department's brand on police cars, boats and aircraft operated by the 22 agencies.
Adamoli previously worked in communications at the U.S. Customs Service, one of the agencies merged into Homeland Security. His career has included stints with large companies, such as Northrop and Dun & Bradstreet, and with a think tank, the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
He is putting the finishing touches on a draft communications strategy for the department and helping plan an employee survey for later this year to gather more feedback.
"It is important for me to know how well we are doing, what we need to improve on," Adamoli said. "That will help shape the future strategy for communications."
E-mail: barrs@washpost.com
