Database staging environment for non-IT personnel
Usually a decent environment would be made of at least DEV -> TEST -> PRE-PROD -> PROD. Development would normally have access to develop in DEV, acceptance testing in TEST and IT to release in PRE and PROD. If you use source control you will avoid problems around editing the same piece of code by different devs at the same time.

Technically you only need schema to be the same as in prod and not need production data below pre-prod but if you are ok with having prod data outside prod environment t you could have an automated restores into dev/test. I have done similar work with Visual Cron and it works wonders.

Likely in order to stay compliant IT personnel  will have to release changes into pre and prod so to make this easier and more resilient you could go down the route of automated deployments.