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Brett February 2nd, 2009

We have all heard the sayings:

 

“We have flextime for senior positions,”

“We don’t have a starting time for work.”

“We have summer hours.”

 

Well as I’m sure most of you know these office ‘policies’ rarely translate to all employees, and are mainly used to attract recruits. In many cases, workers cannot use all their vacation time let alone their ‘flex’ time for fear they’ll be labeled lazy and ‘not a team player’. Even going to an appointment can be a hassle with some people having to use sick days to cover these everyday events, leading me to wonder why people assume work has to be like this. Why is the movie Office Space our model for corporate America? Few people enjoy work, and yet no one has attempted to change the system or its basic premises. Even with the advent of tools like the internet or email, people still fail to question whether employees need to sit in their seats from 9-5 in order to be productive. Although many people like the comfort and predictability of the current workplace, this new economy of terabytes and efficiency forces us to reexamine the entire idea of work and how it affects both our professional and personal lives.

 

Almost every aspect of our lives other than the way we work has changed radically over the past ten years. Take home video formats as an example. Over this period the American public has switched from VHS to DVD and now to Blu-Ray. While we have changed a simple thing like media formats, the way we work has stayed relatively constant. For many of us the work week goes from Monday to Friday, 9 to 6 with about 20 vacation days a year just as it has for decades. While it is true that the workplace has changed in some areas (such as incorporating computers, software programs, etc.), most of these changes are window dressing compared to the broader question of how we work as a culture and how employees are managed. The internet, cell phones, and email afford employees the ability to complete many of their jobs from any location, and yet most companies are scarred to change the work environment.

Change; however, is on the horizon. One of the first radical shake ups in managing employees has come from two women who worked for Best Buy, the consumer electronics retailer. Best Buy’s management had tasked them with revolutionizing the corporate work environment, and reinvigorating their employee base, and in their book titled Why Work Sucks and How to Fix It, the authors describe how they transformed Best Buy’s management of its employees.

 

During their initial research, Ms. Ressler and Ms. Thompson found that many corporations still utilize a manufacturing management structure little changed from the 50’s and 60’s when workers had little education or access to technology, and therefore had to be actively monitored. They argue that this management style has persisted to the modern day through the ideas that employees must be at their desks in order to maximize productivity and that without constant supervision workers will be less productive. Today’s workforce; however, is obviously much different than that of the 60’s. Our service economy is better educated and has broadly adopted technology, making a manufacturing management structure inefficient. As a result, the authors claim that workplaces no longer need an active monitor, but a facilitator that empowers and guides their workers.

 

The authors also felt that managers place too much emphasis on time in the office, and not production/output. Ressler and Thompson also found that many employees reported feeling stressed at not making it into work ‘on time’ because their boss would get a negative opinion of them. They reasoned that while managers were placing a high degree of importance on their subordinates arriving at the office before 8 AM, an employee arriving 15 minutes late had no actual bearing on their work performance. Managers were simply taking the easy route and evaluating the employees not on their production, but whether they fit into the classical model of appearing on time, taking only a half hour lunch break, and staying until 5. In fact, they argue that time spent in the office has no correlation with results or profitability, and managers should instead focus only on results. Eliminating time, they reason, breaks the cycle where every employee feels chained to their desk, and allows them to be more creative and innovative, while achieving measurable, company-centric goals.

 

To solve this problem, the authors created a system without schedules, made meetings optional, and a work structure where an employee was judged solely on their results. They called this system a Results Oriented Work Environment (ROWE), and began with a large focus group. The key tenant and revolutionary idea that forms the basis of a ROWE is that we should not be paying people for their time (as we do in a typical workplace), but their results. Under the ROWE at Best Buy, employees could now leave work at 11 AM if they needed to pick up a sick child or not even come into work until 1 PM if they wanted to get a few extra hours of sleep. Within this system, no one is allowed to judge another employee for how they chose to spend their time, and must instead focus on their own goals. While seeming like a paradox, letting employees take more control of their schedules and methods to accomplish goals increased productivity and employee engagement at Best Buy. The program expanded rapidly, and during the course of their study, Best Buy saved $6.5 million from a reduction in voluntary turnover alone (Work Sucks and How to Fix It, pg.160). In fact, the program has been so successful that Best Buy executives have decided to extend ROWE across the entire workplace, including their hourly employees in the retail stores.

 

Why Does ROWE Work?

It is a commonly held belief that each person is unique, and learns/functions differently than everyone else. In the workplace; however, we have failed to adopt this idea, and instead treat everyone the same. Operating under a ROWE though allows a company to maximize the skills, timing, and output of each of its employees because the system treats each worker as a unique person, acknowledging that some people operate better in the morning, others at night. The manufacturing management style cannot possibly create the unique work process necessary for each employee, but a ROWE can because it lifts the burden from the manager and places it on the individual employee. In a ROWE, the manager serves in a more advisory/guiding role, concentrating on the big picture and keeping their team motivated.

 

Additionally, a ROWE’s overarching goal is to increase communication through decreasing forced communication. Since meetings and even coming into the office are made optional at Best Buy, employees must maximize the time they have together and work smarter. The system also enables employees to take control of their own work-life balance (a key employee concern), and believes that because they control their own schedule, employees will naturally maximize their production.

 

Why Companies Should Adopt a ROWE

Aside from the dramatic positive results with regards to productivity and reducing turnover, the ROWE system signifies a transition to the 21^st century workplace. The ROWE system offers the flexibility and employee empowerment necessary to succeed in this decentralized environment. While there will always be a need for a central office, technology will shortly allow a majority of workers to operate remotely in the near future. Combined with the globalization of the workforce, a company’s employees will be working at all hours of the day, making time and a 9-5 work schedule more and more irrelevant. Companies will also see a dramatic reduction in their office space cost because they will have less people at an office at a given time. We can already see the first versions of a decentralized workplace in the consulting industry where many employees do not have their own desks or a direct landline. Instead, corporate managers/partners expect employees and their teams to handle all work related matters in a timely and efficient manner, operating fairly independently from and having little interaction with the central office.

 

This decentralization trend will continue to accelerate as business becomes more virtual. ROWE provides a system to manage this decentralized workplace because it focuses on the only thing that matters: results. Companies who become early adopters for this system will have a dramatic head start on their competitors, and employees of all ages should respond well to this environment because they have more control over their careers. And so for once it looks like both employee and employer interests are aligned.

 

For more information about ROWE please see: http://www.culturerx.com/

 

Other Posts on the Book:

http://www.businessweek.com/careers/managementiq/archives/2008/06/why_work_sucks.html

http://alexandralevit.typepad.com/wcw/2008/06/why-work-sucks-and-how-to-fix-it.html

http://www.finance-weblog.com/50226711/book_review_why_work_sucks_and_how_to_fix_it.php

http://mystrategicplan.com/resources/why-work-sucks-and-how-to-fix-it-a-book-we-all-need/

http://edodds.blogs.com/conmergence/2008/05/why-work-sucks.html

• Corporate Issues , Workplace
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