News Smart WorkPlace
3 min.
In March 2020 the Shared Service Organisatie Caribisch Nederland (SSOCN) inaugurated the first flexible workspace concept in the Dutch Caribbean. The SSOCN supports the various ministries and federal organizations linked to the Dutch Government on the island, but up until now, these have been spread over three locations in Bonaire. With the new open workspace concept, the goal is to bring together all of these ministries and departments in one location in order to improve communication and collaboration.
The concept
“We believe that moving everything to one open and recognizable location will both stimulate collaboration and strengthen our identity as an organization”, says Erik Rusman, Senior Advisor Business Operations at the Rijksdienst Caribisch Nederland and project manager. Once the concept is fully operational, the only person with a fixed workspot will be the receptionist. The rest of the employees throughout the workspace will be able to pick their workplace based on the work that needs to be done and their own preferences. The space will be located at the former APNA building, along the Kaya International on the southwest side of Bonaire.
The ambition
The overriding of ambition of this new workspace concept is to improve. To improve the collaboration between different individuals, departments, and teams, to improve the overall quality of service, and to improve the cross-organizational sharing and management of information. At the same time, creating a hub for different ministries and administrative bodies of the Dutch Government is also expected to have a positive effect on the image of the organization as a whole. As a result, this should lead to an improvement of overall service quality, both internally, and towards the citizens of Bonaire and the Dutch Caribbean.
The challenge
One of the major challenges faced by this project is the fact that there is no example in the region to follow yet. Unlike in the Netherlands, for example, there exists no real reference for open and flexible workspaces in Bonaire yet, or in the rest of the region for that matter. According to Rusman, providing guidance and information is one of the most important tasks when it comes to getting started with the new workspaces. “You can't just take your employees and pop over to a company that has already adopted a new approach to working, simply because there is no such company on the island”.
That's not all though, as he continues, “A lot of local providers are barely or not at all familiar with the work concepts we're going to introduce here, so sometimes you need to take a guiding role with your providers as well. That's something you don't see in Europe every day and another aspect of what makes this project so special”. At the same time, Rusman has observed that the differences in this sense between the Caribbean Netherlands and the European Netherlands are not as big as some might expect. “In the Netherlands you notice a largely similar pattern where most people find it difficult to deal with chance in the workplace”. Rusman doesn't see this so much as a problem as he sees it as an opportunity, “We want to show everyone that working in a different way is possible, possibly fun, and possibly even more fun than the way of working they were used to”.
The basis for this article (by Pieter van der Laan) was originally published on www.ynno.com.
Foto: Lorenzo Mittiga
