The experience of Hollands Kroon, on reimagining what it means to work in a municipal government, and the impact on the IT department:

One of the key decisions that Hollands Kroon administrators made as part of the workplace transformation was to empower employees by eliminating standard job hierarchies and reporting structures, freeing up more of the workers’ time and energy to help them better serve citizens. All employees are now organized into self-governing teams based around shared specialties—for example, one group is all people who work on tax issues, while another covers youth and elderly social programs—and the emphasis is on outcomes, rather than micromanaging processes. “Each group hires its own new colleagues, and they are allowed to work in whatever way they believe will achieve the best results,” says Cremers. “Every employee has an education budget for training and development, and their own IT budget to buy whatever sort of laptop or tablet they want. What I think is really beautiful is how eager everyone is to make this transformation to the new working paradigm. They are running faster than I can predict or direct, so my role becomes doing whatever I can to support all these exceptional, talented, motivated people, and that’s a great position to be in.”

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