One company that has finally made the leap into the 21st century (better late than never) workplace is Best Buy. They have rolled out a program called ROWE (results-only work environment). Just like the name implies, the program lets employees focus on getting their work done rather than where and when they get it done. Aside from Semco SA (a Brazilian company owned by Ricardo Semler), this is the largest implementation of the Seven-Day Weekend principles that I have seen. And so far the results have been very good, with productivity up 30% and voluntary attrition (quitting) down to almost zero. Perhaps one of the critical factors contributing to the success of the program is the fact that this was not some top-down program unleashed on employees through a corporate HR mandate. Instead, it was started as a grassroots collaboration between two HR renegades and a few progressive managers. By the time it was revealed to company bigwigs, the program already had a track record of measurable, positive results.
Not all companies, however, have a culture that can or will support such a radical approach to work. One problem is that many companies don’t even have a system to measure what their employees do, except at the most basic job levels. So-called knowledge workers are often measured by the number of hours they spend in the office, the number of meetings they attend, the number of emails they write, the number of PowerPoint presentations they run…well, you get my point. Since there is no objective yardstick of productivity for these workers, some folks are destined to always feel like they can never do enough and others will get by fine with doing nothing at all. It’s all a matter of perception and not results (and I could go on about this topic, but I’ll leave it for another day).
I’m hoping that this experiment will succeed and will encourage other companies to give it a try. Best Buy has even formed a consulting service, CultureRx, to help other companies implement the program. Nonetheless, I think that it’s a good idea to try it out on a small-scale at first. Why not see if you can get this going within your department? Drop us post if you’ve want to share any success (or failure) stories. Finally, this Business Week article makes reference to the ROWE 13 Commandments, but only mentions three of them. I’d love to hear from anyone who has a copy of all thirteen.
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