Full-time Defence personnel and civilians will have the chance to voice their opinions on a host of issues in the 2001 Defence Attitude Survey, commissioned by the Secretary and Chief of Defence Force and sponsored by the Head Defence Personnel Executive.

The survey, due out in mid-March to early April, will seek attitudes towards leadership, Service life, change and communication and follows up on the initial Defence Attitude Survey of August 1999.

'I guess there will be some surprises, but I hope there's no surprises in areas we've been putting lots of effort into to try and overcome the difficulties that were reported two years ago,' said the HDPE, Major General Simon Willis.

Like the previous survey, this one will again present the opportunity for personnel and civilians to have a voice in their organisation, with results to be fed back through the three Service newspapers, the Defence Information Bulletin, The Key and also via the Defence Internet website.

The information gained will also be considered vital to the process of evaluating and developing Defence personnel policies and conditions of Service, career management, job satisfaction, mobility and retention. It is also hoped the results will provide a valuable tool for further research in the areas where it is required most, while also refining the survey process.

Delivered by mail, the survey will seek responses from 30 per cent of both Service and civilian personnel.

MAJGEN Willis also encourages a 'warts and all' response to the survey, with attitudes from the 1999 survey providing a detailed account of the hardships being faced in Defence circles.

'One result of the 1999 survey was that people perceived that headquarters didn't really understand the difficulties out there. I can now assure you we do and hopefully that's reflected in this survey,' he said.

He also stressed that this will not be 'just another survey', with the DPE going out of its way to cut back on the amount of surveys conducted in the last six months. This year's survey is shorter than previous years and is considered to be the over-arching survey that targets major issues.

The officer responsible for the survey, Justine Greig said that some items have also been added to give the DPE a good indication on the progress of the organisational renewal agenda and the Defence scorecard.

'That's what the jump from 1999 to now should tell us - from those initiatives, has that next level of change taken place in terms of communication and morale issues,' said Justine.

An important issue for Defence is also that of recruitment. The survey will indicate whether or not Defence is on the right track in terms of managing an environment that will ultimately attract people to the organisation.

'Consistently, in terms of professions, Defence is right up there,' said MAJGEN Willis. 'In fact there was a recent Australian survey of the most respected professions and Defence came fourth out of 25, so that's pretty good.'

MAJGEN Willis is hoping members see the benefits of participation and that a high response rate will mean the effective use of results to evaluate and develop policies consistent with members' views, and retaining and attracting personnel to the organisation.

By Michael Weaver