Wayne Brannock, information systems manager of Pullman, Washington

What have you accomplished in your role in the past year that you want people to know about?

The ability to pivot quickly and make a remote workforce with COVID-19. It was pretty crazy when things started happening. Myself and our technicians, we scrambled when we were sending people home. I think that’s the biggest thing. It took us a couple of weeks, but we were lucky in the fact that we had some old inventory on the shelf that we hadn’t surplused yet, so we pulled that off the shelf, put it back in service and sent people home for months on end.

What are some of the human lessons you pulled from the past year?

The changing schedules — it was hard for some people to stop working, at times. It was such a blur and there were so many different things, like trying to help people that were remote was very challenging, and having people try to explain to you what problems they have. People get that customer service they’re used to when they’re at their desk and somebody shows up at their desk. When they’re remote, they don’t get that customer service, and it’s hard for us to make them understand that we’re here to help, but sometimes we just can’t.