JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. — When Anne Precythe took over the Missouri Department of Corrections in January 2017, her inbox started filling with messages from employees who were angry, exhausted and waiting for someone to listen.
“People were miserable. They were calling out their supervisor by name and talking about discrimination, harassment, retaliation — things that I just wasn’t incredibly familiar with. And it was nonstop.”
A statewide employee survey soon put a number to that frustration. About 8,000 of the department’s 11,000 employees responded, and only 3% agreed or strongly agreed that they were motivated to come to work, Precythe said. Employees also reported that they did not understand the department’s direction, did not feel valued and did not believe co-workers were held accountable.
The findings helped define the challenge facing Precythe: rebuilding the workplace culture of one of Missouri’s largest state agencies. Her effort to change it is the focus of “Disruptors: Missouri, Anne Precythe,” a newly released documentary from Prison Life Media and the Fourth Purpose Foundation.
The documentary follows the department’s work to rebuild trust, strengthen supervision and establish a shared mission through an approach known as the Corrections Way. It also examines how staff responded after years of skepticism toward new leaders and short-lived initiatives.
After 31 years in North Carolina corrections, where she rose from probation and parole officer to the state’s first female director of community corrections, Precythe retired in 2016. Less than 30 days later, she was in Missouri leading a department where, she said, “absolutely nobody had anything good to say” about the agency.
The governor had asked her to focus on employees. What that meant was less clear. Precythe began inviting staff members to her office, often after receiving an email that stood out from the steady stream of complaints.
Many had forgotten sending the message or assumed it would go unanswered. Once they sat down, Precythe said, the conversation often moved beyond the original complaint. Some employees were dealing with personal problems. Others needed support at work that they were not getting from a supervisor. Precythe estimates that she met individually with more than 300 employees.
Turning culture into daily practice
Precythe turned to the Corrections Way, an effort developed with consultant Chad Carden and then-deputy director Matt Sturm. Carden’s team spoke with about 2,000 department employees before building the training, Precythe said.
The work focused on practical supervisory skills: understanding how team members communicate, connecting an employee’s daily tasks to the department’s mission, handling difficult conversations, and learning to give and receive feedback without making it personal.
One example was what happened after an officer broke up a fight. Instead of offering a passing compliment, a supervisor was expected to explain why the action mattered: It kept the prison safer, protected other employees, prevented injuries and could reduce overtime tied to staff absences.
Precythe described the kind of recognition supervisors were taught to give: “You just made this place safer. Thank you for what you did.”
The department also checked whether supervisors were using the training. Leaders would approach them without warning and ask how they had recently used one of the skills with an employee.
Six words became shorthand for the effort: trust, respect, rapport, appreciate, value and listen. At some prisons, incarcerated artists painted the words on stairwell walls employees passed each day. Precythe reinforced the message in town halls, staff meetings, monthly videos and conversations with state leaders.
“I just believe people talk about what you talk about. If I’m not talking about it, nobody else is going to talk about it.”
Putting the right supervisors in place
Missouri trained 2,100 supervisors in three weeks. Precythe paired members of her executive team and sent them to sessions across the state, where they welcomed participants, supported the trainers and identified employees who were struggling with the approach.
The sessions also helped department leaders identify employees who understood the new direction and had the skills to carry it forward. Some vacancies opened as veteran employees retired. Other leadership changes occurred when employees could not support the department’s direction, Precythe said.
As positions opened, some employees with four or eight years of service moved into jobs that once seemed reserved for people with decades in the department.
“Tenure is very important, but tenure should never be the reason somebody gets promoted.”
Over three years, employees changed in 107 of 110 leadership positions, according to Precythe. The positions included majors, assistant wardens, deputy wardens, wardens and members of the director’s office. In some prisons, relatively new leadership teams took responsibility for institutions holding hundreds or thousands of incarcerated people.
Precythe said she had not considered the scale of the leadership changes until someone described her approach as disruptive.
“You have a disruptive leadership style. You disrupted everything,” she recalled him saying. “And I’d never thought about it because we were just doing what needed to be done.”
Senior department leaders worked with the new teams, helping them learn to manage the institutions and adjust to their roles.
What changed after 18 months
Precythe said the department saw fewer fights, fewer employee call-ins and no-shows, lower overtime costs and better staff retention.
The employee survey results took longer to change. About 18 months after the Corrections Way began, data collected in December 2019 showed improvement in employees’ views of department leadership, direction, motivation and accountability, she said. In several categories, the department eventually exceeded the state average. In others, it came within 1 or 2 percentage points.
“The Corrections Way. It was our answer to improving retention.”
Her advice to agencies facing severe vacancies is to resist waiting for staffing to improve before addressing workplace culture. Current employees, she said, can be an agency’s best recruiters, but only if they feel supported enough to recommend the workplace and welcome new hires.
“I’m tired of talking about retention. We just have to do it. You just have to start, you know?”
Recognition that felt personal
Some of Precythe’s methods required no formal program. She sent handwritten cards to employees after the death of a parent, sibling, spouse or child. When a report described good work by a probation officer or another employee, she sent a short email showing that she had read the details.
Employees kept the cards and later told her what it meant to be noticed.
“They just want to know who their leader is, but they want the leader to know who they are and know what they do.”
That focus on staff, Precythe said, also made changes for incarcerated people possible. Much of the documentary’s footage was filmed by incarcerated people working inside Jeff Town, a media center within the Missouri prison system.
Precythe credits the department’s roughly 10,000 employees with carrying the effort into their institutions.
“They’re the ones that help make it come to life,” she said.
“Disruptors: Missouri, Anne Precythe” is available to watch through Prison Life Media’s YouTube page.
