JCCA

From One Space to Another

Since 1822, JCCA has provided comprehensive care to disadvantaged youth in the New York metropolitan area. In 2022, leadership was preparing to move its Bronx campus, which had housed internal and client-facing operations for almost 15 years, to a new facility that had been designed to accommodate a newly hybrid workforce and Activity-Based Working models. Though the space was already near completion, JCCA needed to finalize a change management plan and behavioral protocols in order to ensure that the transition from one campus to another would uplift the 300 employees and hundreds of clients who used the office on a day-to-day basis.

PLASTARC’s experience working with other mission-based organizations made it uniquely qualified to help JCCA cultivate a workplace that would advance its mission and support employees’ impact-driven work. To facilitate the change management and communication processes, PLASTARC introduced additional discovery steps that would help establish a more holistic understanding of all stakeholders’ needs, while integrating leader and employee feedback into the formation of a workplace strategy.

Using this feedback, PLASTARC made granular recommendations on organizational benefits, distributed wellness services, and workforce tools that would serve to maintain JCCA’s culture and weave its behavioral routines into the new workspace. Among other decisions, PLASTARC facilitated JCCA’s selection of a workplace reservation app that could efficiently support its multifaceted suite of services. PLASTARC also developed a communications strategy, along with several artifacts, such as a Workplace Welcome Guide for employees, that would collectively make the new space feel familiar and intuitive upon move-in.

After the move was completed, PLASTARC conducted a mixed-methods post-occupancy evaluation that helped JCCA understand how well the new Bronx space was achieving its stated goals, and what could be improved to further advance employees’ work and JCCA’s mission. The findings from this study have since helped to inform the ongoing transition of JCCA’s Brooklyn office, which serves 300 employees, to its own new campus. PLASTARC is similarly involved in this process as it helps JCCA once again transition from a physical workspace that’s become too large, to another, more compact office that’s designed to support a diversity of individual work styles and team needs.