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Shared Work Space Shows Promise at Corrections Department

Why IT developers for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation are leaving their cubicles behind.

California’s correctional bureaucracy isn’t the first place that comes to mind when thinking about innovation. For prisons, safety is a top priority. Caution and a conservative mindset tend to prevail.

But the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) is breaking that mold at one of its office buildings in Rancho Cordova, where dozens of computer programmers and other personnel are discovering that where you work — even where you sit — can foster creative thinking and collaboration.

At a meeting about a year ago, Paul Smith, CDCR deputy director of enterprise applications and maintenance support, heard tech executive Meg Whitman, the Hewlett Packard Enterprise CEO and past candidate for California governor, talk about how she doesn’t have an office or a parking spot. Smith took the insight to heart and immediately moved out of his CDCR workspace.

He started pitching the idea to the  department soon after in April 2015, and a back-office training room was converted into a wide-open floor space called the Hive. Couches and furniture were brought in (picked up from Department of General Services surplus) and big-screen TV monitors were plugged in. Staff were invited to abandon their tried-and-true cubicles. It was an experiment.

“We really had to think through how we were going to engage employees, the union — everyone — and let everyone know this was voluntary, it was going to be a good thing and a fun thing, and you could always go back to the old way if you wanted to,” Smith said.

Uptake was slow at first. Smith said he worked there alone for the first week and a half, then a young staffer, Matt Bigelow, joined him. Mindy King, operations and communications manager for CDCR’s Business Information Systems program, came along; her office became a briefcase on wheels. Within a month, 17 people were working alongside one another in the shared space.

Before long, workers from other business functions showed interest in joining. A staff survey showed that space was needed for at least another 30 people, so other flexible work areas were arranged and they designed the layouts themselves. SciFi now houses workers from supply chain and finance units. There’s a space for HR, and The Tech, for technical infrastructure and data. More than 50 staff members are working in the new spaces instead of a cubicle farm.

“It’s baby steps, but it’s picking up speed,” Smith said. “We did this in a measured way, and it works for us.”

The rearranged office is one of a number of steps that Enterprise Information Services has taken to make work life more comfortable and more attractive for younger employees. Wi-Fi was put in throughout the building and in outdoor common spaces, so workers can connect from anywhere, even from a picnic table outside. Unified communications also are a priority because workers in the Hive have neither an assigned desk nor a desk phone. Smith said he makes three-fourths of his calls through Lync. The division bought four big-screen TVs so employees could work together on them.

Now it’s not uncommon to see three or four “clumps” of people working together, rolling their chairs around the room. Collaboration happens organically instead of at a scheduled time within a meeting room.

“We always give them an opt-out. It’s not mandatory that they sit in the open space,” King said. “Out of the 56 people, we have two people that have asked to stay in a cubicle — and it’s no big deal.”

Early returns suggest the open office could be making an impact. During the past few months they’ve seen a 30 percent increase in Production Change Requests processed. Smith said his group has trained 50 scrum masters and is focusing more on using agile development; the Hive helps support that type of IT development. Other state departments are touring the office and asking how they too can move toward an open floor plan.

But like any new initiative, Smith concedes there inevitably are some in management who will think it’s too disruptive and “upsetting the apple cart.” Like anything else, change management is needed. It’s important to discuss such a move with the public employees’ union and involve the facilities department. There’s much less cultural resistance now than there was a year ago, Smith said.

“It’s not something where you could walk in and say, ‘Hey, we’re going to do this.’ It was incremental over months and months,” Smith explained.

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This story is in the Summer 2016 issue of Techwire magazine.

Matt Williams was Managing Editor of Techwire from June 2014 through May 2017.