Rock County’s Daniel Hale Williams Resource Center will have to deal with a mounting space crunch as the Human Services division looks to grow in house through new hires — and via changes to its work-from-home policies.
Rock County Human Services Director Kate Luster says when the resource center at the 90,000-square-foot former Pick n’ Save on Center Avenue opened four years ago, it was under the shadow of the pandemic.
She says office layout accommodations worked well during a period when the pandemic kept many employees at the service center on the south side tunneling in from home.
Now, as work could gradually shift to being mainly in-office at the Williams center, there are too few cubicles in main office areas to accommodate all those returning to work.
Luster says the space crunch could worsen as some new hires come aboard, but she and the county’s facilities manager, Brent Sutherland, say it’s surmountable.
And Sutherland says the county might be able to reclaim some space needed from conference rooms and areas the Southern Wisconsin Workforce Development Board leases through 2026.
