Feral Jundi

Monday, February 25, 2013

Surveys: RAND Launches Contractor Health And Well-being Study

Filed under: Industry Talk,Surveys — Tags: , , , — Matt @ 9:51 PM

Hey folks, I was contacted by RAND awhile back about this survey and they asked me if I would be willing to help them out when the time came. So that time is now, and here is the survey which is described below.

Also, I asked the folks at RAND what they plan on doing with this information and who was sponsoring this, and this is is what they said:

…this is actually a RAND-sponsored study, funded with RAND’s own internal research and development funds. The goal of such studies is to build up a knowledge base on topics such as this one that may not have much existing research done on them to date, with the goal of raising awareness and potentially bringing in follow-on work from various sponsors. We will be briefing several of the participating companies on our results, as a courtesy to thank them for their assistance in distributing the survey. We will also make an attempt to brief the study’s results to any interested government parties, and will aim to distribute the report, once published, as widely as possible. Ultimately, we are not doing this for any one client, and our goal is to make the published research very widely available.

What is cool is that if you complete the survey, they will make a donation to the Wounded Warriors Foundation. When they complete this study, I will put up a post about the results and it should be interesting.

My personal view on this is that we need to get a handle on where this industry is at when it comes to our health. All of us have been participating in the war for a very long time and I have no doubt that our community has been impacted–much like the military has. Contractors from 2388 companies have had over 3,258 killed and over 89,182 wounded–so the war has definitely had an impact on our health and well-being. Check it out below and let me know if you have any issues with the survey or if you have any feedback, because I imagine the team at RAND will be checking out your comments. –Matt

Link to survey here.

 

If you are a private contractor with deployment experience:

The RAND Corporation, a non-partisan, non-profit institution that helps improve policy and decision making through research and analysis, is sponsoring a study on the health and well-being of private contractor personnel who deploy to conflict zones (including maritime security personnel). Private contractors continue to provide crucial support to both governmental and non-governmental entities across the globe, yet the health and well-being issues facing deployed contractors are not well understood.

To that end, RAND is conducting a short, 10-minute survey of current and former contractors with deployment experience. The reliability of the study’s results – and hence its usefulness for the contractor community – will depend upon the number of people who complete the survey.

Your participation in this study is entirely voluntary and confidential. The study is completely anonymous: no identifying information on either yourself or your employer will be collected, your answers will go directly to RAND, and your company will never see them.

This is your chance to share your experiences. If you agree to complete the survey, you can access it online at this link:

To thank you for your participation, we will make a donation to the Wounded Warrior Project for every person who responds in full to the survey. The Wounded Warrior Project is a non-profit organization that provides programs and services to meet the needs of injured service members and veterans.

We hope you will agree to participate in this study by completing the survey. Every contractor experiences deployment in a unique way and your contribution will help us get the full picture of how the deployment experience affects contractor health and well-being. If you have any questions about the study, please contact us at the following email address:

contractorsurvey@rand.org

Tuesday, October 23, 2012

Surveys: Danger Zone Jobs–2012 State Of Overseas Contracting Industry Survey Results

Here are the results from our fourth annual State of Overseas Contracting Industry Survey. This year 857 people took the survey which consisted of 9 questions and a final option to offer advice to other contractors. I will be releasing the Advice from Contractors section a bit later after I have finished editing it.

William does a great job of putting together this survey every year and they are pretty interesting. Of course DZJ focuses on the entire industry of overseas contracting and not just the gun carrying security contractors. So if there are more contractors than military in places like Afghanistan, then this is a cool little snapshot of what this group looks like.

Probably the most interesting statistic to me was the graph that showed the amount of military veterans versus just civilians in this industry, and that civilians are the top. If you would like to see the other graphs, please go over to their website through the provided link and check it out. –Matt

Link to survey here.

 

 

Thursday, September 22, 2011

Surveys: The Annual DZ Jobs 2011 ‘State Of Overseas Contracting’ Results

Filed under: Industry Talk,Surveys — Tags: , , , — Matt @ 4:17 PM

I posted just one of the survey results, and if you would like to see the others, follow the link below. This is a really cool survey about our industry and a big thanks to William for doing this every year. Danger Zone Jobs covers all contractors and not just security contractors, so this stuff gives you a good feel for where we are at as a whole.

Probably the big surprises for me was how many 1st year contractors there were, and how little folks are moving around to different gigs. I would have expected to see a lot more contractors jumping contracts? This is probably an outcome of the economy and of companies becoming more stable and professionalized.

The Facebook results were interesting too. Meaning more and more contractors are using FB to network and research ideas for jobs. It makes sense and that is why I hang out on FB so much. Plus, folks use FB to communicate with home and friends, so it is not that big of a jump to use it for work related stuff. Not to mention all of the really useful groups on FB, which is now starting to compete with the utility of the forums.

Networking and applying for jobs through company websites were the two top methods of getting a contract according to the survey. No shock there.

This one graph I posted below though, was the one that grabbed my attention. I would have thought that more contractors would have had military backgrounds? But that is just not the case. Although for the security contracting side of the house, I would have to say that a large percentage are former military or police, just because that is what is required for the job application. Of course when it comes to medical contractors being used on security contracts, we are seeing the companies not caring about military or police backgrounds. Primarily because there are not enough medically qualified folks to draw from in this military/police pool. That is at least what I am seeing.

The other other statistic that would be interesting, would be how many folks are using mobile devices or tablets over laptops/home computers for work related stuff? More and more soldiers and contractors are depending upon mobile devices for their everyday digital life, and I would suspect that there are a lot of folks that use that stuff. It is why I souped up my mobile game for the blog. Interesting stuff and check it out. –Matt

 

2011 State of Overseas Contracting Survey Results
September 22, 2011
Here are the results from our third annual State of the Overseas Contracting Industry Survey. This year 1,263 people took the survey, which is about 100 more than last year. I will be releasing the Advice from Contractors section a bit later after I have finished editing it.

Link to survey here.

Monday, July 11, 2011

Maritime Security: Feral Jundi Survey–The Best Company To Work At For Maritime Security In 2011

This is cool. On the internet there has been a list floating around that detailed all of the maritime security related companies out there to apply with. I thought I would make a survey based on this list and offer it up for the readership to participate in. You get one vote per computer and one company of choice. Once you vote, you get to see the results, so it is pretty simple and quick. I also apologize if any companies are missing that are relevant, and I think I can make some edits to this thing. If not, this is just a test to see how this goes, and I might do more of this type of thing in the future. Let me know what you think in the comments section, and this should be fun to see what company gets the title of Best Company To Work At For Maritime Security In 2011. (also, feel free to pass around the link to get more folks taking the survey)-Matt

Edit: 07/12/2011- I have closed down the survey and these are the results. I had to shut it down because someone decided to cheat on the thing. I won’t name names, but they know who they are. It is the weakness of such surveys like this, just because they work great all the way up until someone decides they want to cheat the system. A better survey is one that can minimize cheating, and automatically keep people honest. That is the reality of the internet I guess, and it is too bad. Here are the results for the top three companies, and take it for what it’s worth.

MAST 8 votes
PVI 7 votes
EOS Risk Management 5 votes

Powered by WordPress