Go-Live is a culminating event for all Warriors. It comes after many weeks and months of preparation by stakeholders in IT, custody, and administration. The testing environment has been put through its paces. The integration between your jail management system or offender management system has long been built, deployed, and tested. Wi-Fi is operational, and staff have been trained on most or all core modules. Perhaps all that’s left are some policy and procedure considerations and reports training.
At this point, there are generally very few unfriendly surprises. So what happens now? What does your team need to consider now that the day of Go-Live has arrived?
In this blog, we’re going to walk you through:
Since 2008, the GUARDIAN RFID Go-Live methodology has remained unchanged. And that’s because it works! After all staff members have been trained with the system, generally by our product training team known as Academy, our trainers immediately begin the cutover from training to production.
Our trainers often use some of your production SPARTANs for classroom instruction. As soon as the last class ends, we immediately update the software on your mobile devices to production. Our product trainers lead this effort with our implementation team, which only takes a few minutes.
Then, we begin rolling out the devices in your booking areas, control rooms, and supervisor offices. If you’re a direct supervision facility, your SPARTANs will be brought to your pods or housing units generally within the hour.
The advantage of going straight to Go-Live after the last class is that more than 90% of your staff just received training within the past 24-72 hours. Your team is applying the knowledge they just learned.
If your facility is small, your product trainer will walk the entire jail themselves, shadowing every member of your staff during the shift. They may ask staff if they remember how to log observation checks and security rounds with Mobile Compliance Monitor (MCM) and ask them to demonstrate.
If it’s a commissary day, staff will be encouraged to use Mobile Command XR to log that the inmates’ commissary orders were delivered. Maybe it’s church night, and the local chaplain or deacon is about to start religious services. They’ll ask your staff a lot of questions to make sure that they’re building sound mastery of how to use Command Cloud in the first few hours. Having a trainer on-site and asking questions in real-time serves as a resource for your on-shift team.
Director of Academy, Chris Riedmueller, during a Go-Live
This is what our Academy team refers to as “elbow training.” They’ll shadow every staff member randomly during every shift, spot-checking knowledge, and verifying the system is being used properly and thoroughly – leaving nothing to chance.
For larger jails that have over 1,000 inmates daily, you’ll have two or more Academy product trainers. In these situations, our Academy team will generally divide themselves between different areas of a large jail – or each Academy team member may take a jail to themselves if there’s more than one facility.
For metropolitan jail systems in which there are two or more jails, potentially including a centralized booking facility, we’ll send multiple Academy team members: one for every facility experiencing a Go-Live simultaneously.
What’s the Best Way to Build and Sustain Momentum Post-Go-Live?
There’s one piece of advice we share with every new customer: nothing will build and sustain success better than top-down leadership. Your administration needs to be all-in. They build and modify policies around your use of Command Cloud.
Supervisors will succeed in their roles when they encourage and inspire their staff to use Command Cloud – not just a module or two, but they’re continually championing ways to increase the adoption of Command Cloud throughout their custody operations.
Strong leadership also ensures that there’s constant learning and relearning in the early weeks and months. Some will adopt a Command Cloud training sandbox environment, which may have a training SPARTAN, some Hard Tags, and RFID wristbands or RFID cards so that new employees can onboard in a controlled learning environment.
For agencies who adopt Operational Intelligence, the visual analytics application of Command Cloud, you may display performance metrics based on shift or individuals to recognize high performance, while pinpointing the development of middle and lower performers.
Many jails adopt reward and recognition systems for staff performance with anything from certificates to pizza parties to GUARDIAN RFID swag. While some host a contest to see who can maintain the highest levels of rounds compliance for the month, others have a friendly competition based on data logging volume.
Take an example from Izard County, a small Level 1 facility in Northern Arkansas. Their Jail Administrator, Shelly Davidson, is always looking for ways to reward staff for a ‘job well done.’ She started with the normal pizza party for the shift but needed to get more creative to drive competition between shifts. The GUARDIAN RFID shirts came to mind and then she wanted to add their own flair to the line of shirts. Sherry also gives away twelve hours of PTO per month in which she works the shift for the officer with the highest compliance over the month. She truly is a top-down and lead-from-the-front administrator.
Whatever motivates your team, whether it’s simply a “thank you” or gamifying your use of Command Cloud, these actions can sustain excitement and the use of Command Cloud so that it becomes a new, healthy habit.
The policies and procedures that may need to be refined with your use of Command Cloud are wholly dependent on how you’re using Command Cloud. As an example, if your top-level performance concern is on rounds compliance, you may need to reevaluate your policies and procedures regarding what happens if you’re late with an observation check. Do you force a late check justification in Mobile Command XR at the moment of documentation? Will you require staff to review any late check justifications before the end of a shift?
If you’re under a Department of Justice consent decree, how are you defining things like structured and unstructured Out-of-Cell time? How do you ensure accurate logging and reporting of an inmate’s Out-of-Cell time?
For example, if you need to log a precise amount of time an inmate spends in recreation, you’ll need to consider procedurally when to log an inmate’s entrance (and exit) from recreation – beyond the basic question of: did an inmate accept or decline recreation? The same applies to their out-for-hour time in the dayroom. All of these circumstances need to be considered, which our Implementation, Academy, and JailOps teams have extensive experience in leading.
As you move into post-Go-Live mode, you may be wondering who to contact for support, questions about how to order more supplies, how to configure a feature, etc. GUARDIAN RFID takes pride in being there for Warriors every step of the way.
From a support standpoint, our teams are cross-trained on most support requests, but here’s an ideal breakdown because while our mantra is “One Team One Mission,” each team has specialty skills and knowledge.
In the first week of Go-Live, it’s ideal for your team to reach out to your Academy product trainer since they just spent the past several days (or a week or more) with your staff; they will have the most familiarity with your team.
Your Academy trainer will make a virtual introduction to your JailOps account manager who will be responsible for your success. Reaching out to JailOps is helpful when it comes to a refresher on how to configure a setting, or how to best use a feature.
JailOps is also responsible for helping you order consumable supplies, such as RFID wristbands or RFID cards – or the accessories related to each, whether it’s labels, laminating sleeves, ribbons, etc.
If it’s a technical support question, we encourage you to reach out to our Technical Support Services team through one of these three options during business hours (Monday through Friday 8:00AM - 5:00PM CST):
For quick and easy access to all this information, consider bookmarking our GUARDIAN RFID Support page: https://guardianrfid.com/resources/technical-support
For some agencies where you’ve experienced a large turnover in staff, and you feel that a training refresher may be in store (whether virtual or in-person), reach out to your JailOps account manager. They’ll likely bring in a member of our Academy team to discuss your refresher training needs.
Ultimately, our entire team, whether you contact implementation, Academy, JailOps, or Tech Support, is fully aligned to serve your needs promptly and fully. Our overarching objective is your satisfaction so that each customer, no matter how big or small, is a reference site for future Warriors.
Go-Live is an exciting time! You’re about to see the fruits of your labor, which you’ve planned for for many months. This is a transformative period for your entire team. Remember, strong leadership, effective communication, refined policies and procedures that reflect your use of Command Cloud, and early-stage reward and recognition systems can create a positive motivating force for your early and continued success. Our many diverse teams are aligned to see your success.
For more information on Implementation and Go-Live FAQs, check out this blog that outlines the most popular implementation and Go-Live questions with their corresponding answers below.