Hamburg-Nord District Office: Cultural change in the authority

The challenge

The COVID-19 pandemic has triggered a surge in digitalisation that the existing work culture at the Hamburg-Nord district office has not always been able to cope with. Hierarchical barriers and silos between individual departments made collaboration increasingly difficult during the pandemic. In order to define the challenges in concrete terms, an organisational analysis was carried out in collaboration with the University of Potsdam in the form of employee surveys, which, among other things, identified three specific questions for the working culture:

1. appreciation: how can we create an appreciative way of working together so that employees feel seen in their work and with their skills?

2. mindset: How can we develop a shared attitude that supports individuals and at the same time creates openness and a framework for collaborative working?

3. communication: How can we organise communication in such a way that all employees can access and respond to the information relevant to their work?

Output

As part of a multi-stage, co-creative process, employees of the district office developed an image of future collaboration. In the pop-up office format we developed, creative minds and stakeholders from the business world joined us to define the vision of an ideal organisation "out of the box". In the end, three approaches to an overarching vision and over 140 concrete, vision-led measures were derived and developed. The first prototypes have already been put into practice and are currently being tested in day-to-day work, including

• The creative canteen: the former canteen of the district office has been transformed into a place where the process and results (idea and process sketches, models and prototypes) of the cultural change process are on display. Regular guided tours enable all employees and managers to understand the processes and solutions.
• Open-door culture: The paradigm of the closed office door that has been practised in the administration for decades has been questioned. Visibility, dialogue and collaboration are given a new value and are actively encouraged.
• Brain food, round tables and hallway breakfasts: low-threshold learning and exchange formats are regularly offered across teams. The aim is for employees to get to know each other better, network on current topics and gain more insight into the work of their colleagues.
• Carepackage: In order to support a "culture of good discussion" and promote innovative ideas for collaboration, a care package has been put together in the form of individually tested workshop tools. It can and should be supplemented with your own ideas and methods and passed on from office to office.

Format & method

The cultural change process is a multi-stage approach that was developed individually for the Hamburg-Nord district office. The different phases and methods of the process included

1. define workshop (1 day) with members of the Kulturwandel AG on the results of the as-is analysis and the derivation and development of key challenges

2. pop-up office (3.5 days) with ten participants from the district office, including members of the Kulturwandel AG, as well as interested parties from the private and creative sectors. Objective: Definition of a vision for the ideal organisation and concrete measures to realise this vision.

3. target image workshop (2 days) to define concrete target images that contribute to the new vision of the organisation.

4. self-organised test phase of the measures after the vision workshop by the participants in the district office.

5. wrap-up workshop (1 day) to reflect on the test results, adjust the vision and measures and look ahead to the next steps.