TINKER AIR FORCE BASE, Okla. -- The Equal Opportunity Office at Tinker Air Force Base is another organization on the installation that has had to adapt their processes due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We’re not going to put Tinker at risk of sanctions or our employees at risk of not having their rights protected just because of COVID,” said Interim EO director Rebecca Martin Losh. “Even though we might be performing duties a little differently the actual process is the same.”
The EO office, and the stand-alone Negotiated Dispute Resolution Office, is responsible for processing discrimination and sexual harassment complaints from military and civilian personnel at Tinker, something that Martin Losh said generally involves a lot of face to face communication.
“When COVID hit we had to decide what we would let go for safety,” Martin Losh said. “We’re not doing out-and-about inspections, we have a 60 day waiver for client surveys we do basewide, we’re not teaching our human relations education, we’re not doing any in-person briefings. Any kind of intake interview or mediation or facilitation is being done telephonically.”
Everything regarding complaints will be handled by telephone, email or mail. The EO office staff began the telework training two weeks before the rest of the base so that they would be prepared.
“Our job is to predict patterns and, in doing so, we thought ‘we need to prepare for this now,’” said EO Manager Shane Buss. “We wanted to start setting the trend and it actually helped smooth the transition quite a bit.”
Martin Losh said this preparedness is helping the office continue to serve Team Tinker smoothly.
“For the most part, we’ve maintained the integrity of the process as far as receiving the complaints, doing the interviews, doing everything that’s necessary by law and meeting the time frame,” Martin Losh said. “We’ve got a fantastic team and we haven’t missed a beat.”
While the transition to doing things virtually has been smooth, Martin Losh said there are also challenges in performing the job virtually, including connectivity and gaining a rapport as counselors holding interviews with employees who are distressed.
“You definitely have to be careful with your words because you can’t see the person and body language is very important during conflict, especially,” said Kelly Anderson, EO mediator. “We aren’t able to do that right now, so we’ll have to ask more questions than we usually do and work around it. We’ll have a more clear picture after we do more mediations.”
Overall,Martin Losh said the staff will continue to push forward to keep members of Team Tinker protected.
“We’ve maintained that process integrity and overall we’ll just keep flexing and bending and making it work,” Martin Losh said.
The EO office can be reached at 72abw.eo@us.af.mil. The Dispute Resolution Office can be reached at 72abw.adr@us.af.mil.