Culture change in the Defence Team

Learn about the work the Department of National Defence (DND) and the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) are doing to build a safer and more inclusive organization.

Context

The Defence Team is undertaking a series of major initiatives aimed at evolving its culture. The goal is to transform the organization into a modern military forged in innovation, guided by honour, and empowered by unity.

This work is essential to attracting and retaining top talent and ensuring we have the capabilities we need to defend Canada and its values in an increasingly complex and dynamic security environment.

At the heart of this broad effort is the urgent need to evolve our organizational culture to ensure we not only uphold, but also embody and reflect Canada’s values, including its rich diversity and unwavering commitment to equity and inclusion.

Background

In 2021, DND/CAF launched an unprecedented effort to evolve the culture of the organization in a meaningful and enduring way. This effort responds to multiple external reviews, which have exposed troubling gaps between DND/CAF stated values and ethics, and the lived experiences of Defence Team members. As part of the approach, DND/CAF created the Chief Professional Conduct and Culture (CPCC) within DND/CAF to ensure a long-term, focused approach. CPCC is the centre of expertise for Defence Team culture. Its mandate is to unify, inform, advance, and monitor culture change efforts across the Defence Team.

Vision

Culture change is about people. There are four key themes that represent the change that our people want to see in the organization. They serve as a guide for all our culture change effort.


	Teamwork – High-functioning teams that actively seek out, welcome, and encourage a diversity of skills, experience, and perspectives.
	Leadership – Leaders who inspire trust and confidence, motivating and enabling their teams to meet their mission and mandate, and achieve results in a sustainable, responsible way.
	Identity – People serve most fully when they can be their authentic selves, centered on character. We should not have to abandon our own identity to serve.
	Service – The well-being of each team member is the key to maintaining readiness and effectiveness. We must be aware of the impacts of service on members and their families.

How we are evolving the Defence Team culture

Listening and learning from our members and external experts is critical to our approach. This includes:

Consulting with Defence Team members
- We are engaging regularly and widely with Defence Team members, who are sharing their lived experiences and their suggestions for improvements. Since Fall 2021, the CPCC has consulted with over 16,000 members, as well as survivors and external experts. This work includes a formal Defence Team-wide Conduct and Culture consultation process conducted in 2021-22.

Engaging with external stakeholders and experts
- We are proactively and consistently engaging with external stakeholders and experts on relevant activities and key initiatives. To ensure effective engagement and meaningful collaboration with external partners and experts, we established a Conduct and Culture Research and Policy database. This database is making our research and policies related to sexual harassment and misconduct, gender, sexual orientation, race, diversity and inclusion, and culture change more readily accessible within DND/CAF and to the public.

Implementing external review recommendations
- DND/CAF has received many recommendations from external reviews that relate to culture change. These reports span a range of issues and offer important insights on how to improve the organization. To implement these recommendations, we have developed a multi-year Comprehensive Implementation Plan to deliver on commitments and milestones aimed at making the DND/CAF more open, transparent, and accountable to our members and Canadians.

Implementing major policy initiatives
- Following extensive consultations with Defence Team members, we are implementing key initiatives that will directly improve the lived experience of CAF members and families. Examples of these initiatives include CAF complaints and grievance transformation, and the expansion of CAF support services. These initiatives complement external recommendations and address critical culture change requirements.

Progress achieved to date

Since May 2021, considerable progress has been made to implement meaningful and enduring culture change. This progress has delivered:

Stronger supports for survivors of sexual misconduct
Better leadership selection and development
Enshrined rights of victims in the military justice system
Improved oversight and external collaboration

There is also important work underway that will ensure:

Meaningful improvements in grievance and complaints process
Independence of military justice actors
A long-term approach for sexual misconduct investigation and prosecution
Expansion of CAF support services to include anyone who has experienced misconduct, such as racism, harassment, discrimination and hateful conduct. This is in addition to services and supports that exist for anyone who has experienced conduct deficiencies of a sexual nature, harassment of a sexual nature and/or crimes of a sexual nature.

We are seeing encouraging signs of change; however, we know there is much more to do so that our efforts result in meaningful, measurable, and enduring culture change.

Implementation plan and progress tracking

We are taking a deliberate and planned approach to culture change that sets out an overarching vision and foundational elements for what we want to achieve. Within this approach, we have set milestones and identified deliverables to focus and drive our efforts. Our efforts are guided by the Comprehensive Implementation Plan.

Comprehensive Implementation Plan
- This plan provides a detailed roadmap for implementation, incorporating key external recommendations and broader conduct and culture-related initiatives. It will ensure transparency and accountability in our work, and we will provide regular status updates via a Comprehensive Implementation Plan tracker, which we will launch in 2024. Visit the About the Comprehensive Implementation Plan to learn more.

This document integrates feedback we have heard from Defence Team members about our culture and what we can do to strengthen it. It will help us maximize the potential for positive outcomes, and drive and align culture change across the entire organization.

Measuring culture change

Consistent and comprehensive measurement of performance and progress will focus our efforts and help us prioritize, assess, and re-calibrate our efforts, when needed.

Through consultation with experts and leading science and research, we have determined that we can measure the effects of our culture evolution efforts by establishing outcomes and monitoring indicators related to the following aspects of organizational culture:


Diversity, equity, and inclusion	Defence Team experience and well-being	Professional conduct	Trust in the institution and leadership
Key performance indicators Employment Equity inclusion Defence Advisory Groups representation Two-Spirit, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Intersex, and additional sexual and gender diversity (2SLGBTQI+) inclusion Accessibility inclusion Official Languages inclusion	Key performance indicators Job satisfaction Morale Work-life balance Attrition Sentiment on career advancement Sentiment on recognition Mental well-being	Key performance indicators Sentiment on misconduct response Prevalence of incidents	Key performance indicators Trust in institution Trust in chain of command Trust in decision making Sentiment on ethical conduct

We are actively monitoring a wide range of key performance indicators to measure culture change progress and are working to develop a comprehensive framework for long-term measurement and monitoring of progress.

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