Posted by Vice Admiral Robert Archer (Vice President) in Discussion: Encouraging Fleet Report Submissions
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Hi everyone!

I’ve had a few FComms come to me to say that they are really struggling to get fleet reports out of their command staffs. I would like to pose this question to everyone here since we have a wide variety of experience and involvement levels that read Command:

How can we encourage timely submission of these reports?

Sarah
President

This is going to sound harsh, but I’ll say it anyway, lol. Submitting fleet reports is one of the key responsibilities of being a CO / XO / GM at STF and, quite honestly, if a player can’t manage to do it then, in my opinion, perhaps they should consider whether they really want to be a CO / XO / GM?

I agree with Sharon here, as a CO/XO/GM and even Fcomm/AFcomm we need to get our reports in timely this information can be important to analyze where problems arise and if its happening too often where we dont get this information that itself is to me a point people have a problem of some sort.

To soften my response a little, I’ll also add that maybe the question we should be asking is, what is stopping these players from submitting reports? Are there issues with the report upload system? Are they forgetting every month and would benefit from a regular reminder (if they’re not getting one already)? Are they struggling to decide what to put on there, in which case perhaps we could all agree on a more in-depth template than just the section headings we have now?

Useful feedback from people who don’t regularly submit reports would definitely be useful here (as well as a possible way for them to submit the feedback anonymously if they so desire?)

• Sharon

I’m echoing what Sharon has said in her first paragraph. It states plainly that a CO/XO/GM must submit monthly reports unless it’s excused with notice by a FCOMM/AFCOMM. If missing monthly report becomes a problem then the FCOMM is well within their rights to remove that person from said role. Not submitting monthly reports looks bad on a fleet.

AJ

As far as encouraging, that can go only so far until there’s a pattern. It puts the FCOMM in an awkward spot because of your missing report.

AJ

I agree with what’s been said. It’s a basic responsibility. Submit your reports or hit the bricks. I remembered I had a report due yesterday at 9pm and I wrote it without shedding a tear.

-Thomas

Honestly in my experience FComms are doing a good job in reminding people, giving people upwards of sometimes 10+ days to get a report in that should only take on average 15 mins at most isnt a huge deal to get in to me. Even if you got to piecemeal it like I do sometimes I manage it and I’m running a full time IT Business, managing my own life, my parents responsibilities and more I still (up till this month at least) was able to get reports in almost without fail, only reason I asked to be excused this time was due to a death in the family adding to this. The important thing in the end is to communicate, and it seems to me people are failing to do that if not outright ignoring their expected responsibilities they agree to undertake when they get to the CO/XO/GM etc levels. If this becomes a pattern to me this should then follow through with warnings and after say 3 strikes removal and replacement. Painful to do but necessary I think, and more then fair.

Robert Archer

While I agree it’s a requirement of the role i do question the reasons that people aren’t submitting them. And I think we need to use this as a communication that there may be an issue rather than just punish those who don’t submit.

I try to send a reminder to the fleet with an agreed date that the report needs to be done by and the date I plan to submit it so they know. I also reach out to anyone who hasn’t submitted by that deadline and ask them to submit or talk to them about any issues.

So is the reason these aren’t being submitted because it’s easy to forget? or is it because its seen as a paper work task rather than a useful report? I can see people not wanting to bother if they don’t see the point in it other than it’s always been part of the role. So maybe as Sharon said we need to ask those who don’t why or even look at the report and work out if what we are reporting is useful or not. If not what else should we be reporting on?

If people think they have a use are they more likely to submit? I don’t know.

Calé

I agree Cale that finding out why people aint making the reports on time is needed. In my experiences as Black Fleet FComm last term every effort I ever did to approach people on why they missed it was met with silence and no further replies on the matter. So it made me feel like I just was being ignored for XYZ reason. Hence my perhaps in hindsight testy tone above. For which I do apologize if I offended anyone. Finding out reasons is great in the end, but if efforts to get reasons wind also up in failure then what are we to do I guess? How can we change or fix something if we’re ignored or got no info/feedback? Then all we got left is to go by the rules we got set forth of requiring said things being an expectation.

Robert Archer

One potential way to approach this issue is less of a punitive or disciplinary approach of ‘if you don’t like doing it, then leave the position’ and maybe more of a positive reinforcement type of approach.

Given that the question asked is how to encourage timely submissions, maybe it’s best to look at what we can do to make submitting the reports more rewarding. From what I have seen, the homepage for each fleet tends to be a little outdated or not necessarily utilized as a place for encouraging participation. I’m speaking of Starbase 243, Starbase 157, Meridian Station, Black Rock and the like. I love the Monthly Fleet Award Winners that Starbase 243 has, for example, but they haven’t been updated since May.

If we could have the FCOMMs and AFCOMMs onboard to update these hubs more frequently, we could do things that are good for both report submissions AND player retention. For example, on each CO/XO/GM report, there is a space for a writer spotlight. What if every writer spotlighted in these reports got their name and character put on the fleet hub page for the month? Maybe submitting a report with a particularly rousing summary of how the sim is going gets to be posted on the fleet hub for players on other ships to see. Maybe if we have a more organized Monthly Fleet Awards Winners process for each fleet, a prerequisite for being considered for those awards is that the ships reports are all submitted on time. I know these pages aren’t used for this sort of community building or writer appreciation much at the moment, but they could be used that way as a potential motivator to increase command staff incentive, rather than reports just being some paragraph that gets posted in command.

Ben Z