Unit-wide Announcements / Headquarters
Results of the 4th Annual Survey

Throughout December and January, over 65% of the active force took part in the UNITAF annual survey - both a fanstatic engagement rate and some quality responses throughout. In this update I'll give a running commentary of our 4th year of operations and reflect on some of the statistics and general trends falling out of the survey this year.

Thank you to everyone who took part.

Force Size

The active force size continued to grow through 2022 and the force cap of 140 remains. As I explain in previous updates there is always a difference between the Rostered Force and Active Force, as the data below only considers Regulars as active members - wheras our force cap is for Rostered members. This looks strong and to continue into 2023.

Deployments

As predicted, the DPC (deployments per capita) reduced following the end of the COVID-19 lockdowns and we finished 2022 with less overall deployment activity. With growth, I would expect that 2023 will equal or exceed 2021.

Deployment Ratings

Deployment ratings are still above the acceptable minimums of 8.5, and have remained as such since 2021. This shows the consistency we have managed across multiple teams. However as I noted previously, the vast number of Field Leaders and Mission Support Teams, as well as huge increase in mods and campaigns has resulted in a wider range of results in 2022, this is something we are working hard on with more SOPs and should improve in 2023. Indeed for the first month ending January 2023, the figure is 87%.

Progress

On the whole, the Task Force are a happy bunch, but we do see a continued creeping of discontent at the fringe. When I say on the whole, typically when I review the annual survey as much as I love to read all of the postive comments regarding how organised we are, the website and automation, that people love the flexibility and varied nature of our deployments, roles and everything else - I'll focus mostly on the points of improvement below, rather than blowing our own trumpet - as I've said before, that's a good way of getting complacent.

• The primary reasons given were
  • Slow progress in some areas
  • Difficulty getting involved outside of the ORGCOC
  • In some cases, lack of communication on progress
     
• What we're doing to help in this area
  • The recently announced restructuring is designed to speed up the roadmap and burst open the door for contributors
  • We recently overhauled the comms center and futher changes will be made to the suggestions system

Slot availability

As with deployments, slots will dip in line with my guidance above, but with well over 8,000 slots in the previous year we expect in the region of 10,000-10,500 in 2023.

However you're telling us you want more - our forecasting is quite good and typically we're not putting deployments out unless we know they will fill, couple that with the vacancy rates and what will probably help here is more larger deployments in general (i.e. proportionally an increase more slots rather than deployments)

• The primary reasons given were
  • It can be hard to get slots sometimes when you are free
  • More deployments on weekdays
  • Sometimes there are slots but I avoid a deployment for certain reasons
     
• What we're doing to help in this area
  • We recently introduced an update to find out specific reasons for not attending a deployment, we plan to use this to dive deeper into our forecasting.
  • As part of the restructuring, we're going to be unlocking many roles which are currently ORGCOC only to the total force.
  • We plan to introduce better matchmaking tools in the future.

Session organisation

If there is one thing you should expect from UNITAF it's being organised. We've made a name for ourselves for being consistent and it's a key part of our identity. We've seen a marginal dip in the best results but on the whole, 2022 is a fantastic result which continues trends from previous years. This is of great credit to all our Field Leaders and Mission Support Teams and Server Administrators for continuing to put the time and effort in deployment after deployment.

To improve this further in 2023 we need to ensure that our servers are up in time and our Mission Support Teams need to ensure that mod lists are correct, we may move to ban mod changes on deployment days barring emergencies.

Leadership

Our biggest area for improvement in 2023 will be in our Leadership. This is something I've already addressed in the recently announced restructuring and I'll be looking keenly at the results next year to see where this goes. For the most part as we've grown, to maintain the quality of Leaders both in and out of game becomes more challenging and we'll need to spend more time in supporting them to achieve this.

• The primary reasons given were
  • The ORGCOC is not always the most approcable
  • The senior ORGCOC needs to spend more time on a frontline basis
  • Improvements in the quality of OPCOC leaders is desired
     
• What we're doing to help in this area
  • The recently announced restructuring will go some way to improve both OPCOC and ORGCOC as they will be split
  • A new OPCOC rating system will be launced soon
  • The new ORGCOC will be more approcable and there will be changes to our Chain of Command policy.

Progress

This is always an interesting question because many people who join UNITAF, usually about 50% have vast experience on joining and so generally tend to hold the opinion that they have nothing new to learn. Any of you who have heard me speak on this before will know that I'm a staunch believer in continual learning and 2023 will be a very interesting year for personal progression. We've already announced Tier Decay, Lesson Plans and the Enhanced Tiering System for this year and there will be a huge focus on the quality of our gameplay and SOP compliance, so this is a hot topic going forward.

Summary

There are pages and pages of feedback in the survey this year and reviewing it has been a enlightening excercise. I've taken on many points for consideration which aren't shown in the charts above, but in the considered responses to the more detailed questions which many of you provided. Some of those include tiers, fatigue, and FTXs as systems - and these are things that we're aware of and some works are underway. I'll talk more about some of these topics in the future, but suffice to say that your input has been noted.

Shortly, I'll be announcing appointments for the new Chain of Command and shortly thereafer we will continue our normal update cycle!

Major James
Commanding Officer, UNITAF