About the Engagement
In June 2013, following the occurrences of Hurricanes Irene and Lee, and Superstorm Sandy, a state-level disaster recovery organization was created to focus on recovery and rebuilding efforts for effective areas of New York State. The agency’s aid focused on four areas: housing recovery, small business, community reconstruction and infrastructure. In Fall 2021, our engagement team was procured to support the community reconstruction and infrastructure operations team. In 2019, the client underwent organizational restructuring, combining teams and changing roles.
Business Problem
Following the restructuring, staff had little time to acclimate into the new working order prior to moving to full-time remote, as a result of the Covid-19 global pandemic. One business problem was that there was not a defined strategy to manage change across the department, and more specifically, the operations team.
Challenges
The primary challenge was stakeholder engagement, ensuring buy-in across all staffing levels to create a shared understanding of the need for and importance of change management. The secondary challenge was understanding and documenting how department interactions occurred across the agency to ensure adequate planning and communication.
Project Impacts and Outcomes
The engagement team collected data and interviewed staff across the department to determine what was effectively working, where improvement was needed, and areas of the work requiring additional attention or improvement. This data was analyzed and used to create a solutions framework including a [re]training plan for staff, an onboarding plan for new hires, focused team building activities for improved morale and employee engagement, and a new staffing pattern to redistribute the workload.