Open, Flexible Government Workshop report

1. 2014
Management
of Change
Conference
Workshop Recap:
Open and Flexible Government
Workplace

2. Open and Flexible Government
Workplace Overview
Speakers
Mary Davie, GSA
Kim Hancher, EEOC
Sonny Hashmi, GSA
Mika Cross, OPM
Marietta Allen, DOI
Rebecca Ayers, PhD, OPM
Jonathan Shrier, Federal
Reserve Board
Larry Melton, GSA
Karen Porciello, DOJ
Bart Bush, GSA
Tara Cruz, DISA
Chris Dorobek, Moderator
Session 1: Work, It’s What You Do – Not Where You Do It
• Establishing Open and Flexible through Technology, Process, People
and Design
Session 2: Making Sense of the Intangibles
• Examining approaches to address culture, organization and behavior
barriers
Session 3: Reading Between The Numbers
• Defining metrics to measure and assess state and evolution of mobile
and open workplace

3. What are the Challenges and
Barriers?
Comments from Workshop:
• “Agencies do not have strong performance based
culture”
• “Culture will eat strategy”
• “Performance is not counting people in seat rather
driving results”
• “Getting people and organization to manage
performance is difficult”
• “Telework forces you to manage”
• “State of performance management is the issue”
Common Challenges:
Guidance: Lack of clear procedures and guidance (24% of the Federal agencies do not have telework policy
and 12% of Federal employees have not been notified of telework eligibility)
Management Resistance: Resistance from management and organization to promote open and flexible
work environment. One of the top 5 barriers to open and flexible workplace.
Access to Technology and Productive Work environment: Up to 3rd of the workforce works outside of the
office. President Memo consolidation of gov’t real estate footprint
Five Generation at Work Environment: 7% of the workforce are millennial but expected to grow
Remote and mobile is not for every worker: Agency mission to be on site can limit mobile work
environment.
Misperceptions: Lack of visibility in office will limit career growth and performance
• “Average building utilization rate 35 -45% on a
daily basis”
• “Everyone trying to right size building to
employees….utilization of 80-90%”
• “An Open environment leads to more healthy
work environment”
• “1/3 people will never be happy. 1/3 people will
be happy no matter what you do. Challenge is
the middle third….can you get them to be
productive/happy”

4. Potential Solutions
• Performance Management: Develop a strong performance and accountability work culture.
• Focus on results and outcome rather a prescriptive output.
• Tailor behaviors to be support paradigm shift
• Update procedures to evolve with organization and workforce needs
• Broad Enterprise Participation:
• Make certain shaping of the procedures and guidance is all inclusive and includes the likes of HR, IT and key
agency program. Understanding the reason for open and flexible work environment.
• Monitoring and Transparency:
• Survey workforce and management routinely as input to procedure improvement
• Report on performance using meaningful measures.
• Comprehensive Training:
• Training Management on communication and promoting open and flexible environment.
• Nurture and cultivate basic collaboration skills
• Organization Transformation
• Success of the Open and Flexible begins with Executive and Mid-management
• Develop a framework for enabling transformation through Process, People, Technology and Design
4
Outcome
Productivity Collaboration Innovation
Outcome
Outcome

5. Key Outcomes and Next Steps
• Develop Reference Guide and Forum for Agency to:
– Share success stories and lessons learned
– Set goals and communicate performance
– Outline GSA, OPM and Agency approaches, tools, and success stories
– Holistically address all pillars (People, Design, Technology)
• Next Steps:
– Focus beyond the optics of Telework
– Cross Agency: Identify core team to champion initiative (GSA, OPM and
Target Agencies
– Setup planning meeting with appropriate ACT-IAC and Innovation Pods
– Interested? Reach out to Open and Flexible Committee Members
• Sang Yun, Beth Stiers, Dave Johnson, Pat Burke

6. Thank you for a memorable MOC!