I’m a business owner with employees and maybe you are too. Now think about this with me. Do you care how much time your employees put in, or do you care what they get done? Unless you run a law firm or another service business that bills strictly by the hour, you probably lean towards the latter. Then answer this question–do you care when your employees get their work done, or just that the work gets done by a certain time? Again, not all, but many companies would lean towards the latter.
You might be aware of small companies here and there that don’t have set working hours and focus on results rather than time put in, but now major companies like Best Buy are jumping on the bandwagon.
It’s called ROWE, or a “results-only work environment,” and it flies in the face of the generally accepted idea that full time employees need to work from 8am to 5pm in order to be worthy of their pay. Instead, it teaches the seemingly obvious concept that what employees get done is more important than how much time they put in and when.
Other large companies like IBM have had some sort of flex-time schedule for many of their employees for years. One of my professors at BYU who previously worked for IBM never had an office at IBM, he just worked from a home office and set his own hours. But no large company has ever instituted the practice for their entire workforce, which in the case of Best Buy means all their 4,000 corporate employees.
The practice doesn’t work for every situation. Obviously there would be a problem if Best Buy extended the option to its retail employees, because place and time are essential components of their job. Likewise restaurants, oil change stations, dry cleaners, and many other businesses clearly can’t offer their employees the choice of working when they want, where they want. My own father, as an optical engineer for NASA, couldn’t have worked very well from home because he often worked in a laboratory, and so his physical presence was an essential part of his job description. However, if he were still working today instead of enjoying retirement he could probably do 50-75% of his work remotely due to the Internet and increased use of computer modeling software.
But ROWE could work quite well for millions of employees across the United States, let alone the rest of the world. And by replacing the paradigm of an 8 to 5 workplace with results-oriented standards, I predict we would see a substantial increase in worker productivity. If all or much of what an employee has to do in order to make the boss happy is sit in his seat and look busy for 8 hours per day then we’ve got a “run out the clock” situation. But if we tell that same employee that he can take the rest of the day off as soon as he gets his work done, then we might see him finishing what previously would have taken days in a matter of a few hours, and he’ll be constantly looking for new ways to get work done faster.
This could backfire if employers begin piling more work on employees without any raise in compensation. After all, the logical thinking of an employer whose employees can get their work done in two hours each day would be that they must not have enough work to do. Employers need to resist the temptation to see things this way, otherwise their employees will come to understand that no matter what they do, they’re going to end up working 8 hours per day, and would they rather be extremely busy 8 hours per day, or have the option of taking it easy like they did before?
The ROWE system only works if there is a reward for getting work done faster, and there are only two rewards that matter–higher pay and time off. If you remove the ability for employees to make more money by working harder, or you remove the ability for them to work harder in order to have time off, then you remove the incentive for them to work harder in the first place.
Employers who are instituting ROWE policies should look at ROWE as being something that can help them get work done faster, allows them to give their employees marginally increased amounts of work (easy, not too much!), and gives them a valuable tool for employee retention, at least until everyone else starts offering ROWE as well.
At my firm this is essentially the way I’ve run things for years. I’ve always told my employees, with the exception of the office manager who answers the phones, that I don’t really care when they work, as long as they’re getting their work done. I have to admit I’ve waffled a bit on this, however. Sometimes I have felt that some employees feel there is a lack of structure and that things are disorganized. But perhaps that is due to me not talking with them about ROWE as part of a purposeful plan, rather than me just being a lazy employer who doesn’t care.
Ultimately I believe the majority of employers who can offer ROWE will, and to a greater extent than previously seen. It will work in many situations, and companies that don’t offer it will become less competitive. If it can be implemented widely in the U.S. it could also create added advantage for the U.S. economy as worker productivity goes up. There are also many fringe benefits such as the flexibility it gives to those with families and those who need to work multiple jobs. What if someone who now works two full time jobs could work three full time jobs and get all their work done in 12 hours? This could be a tool for helping single parents, the poor, and those who are in debt, leading to a host of positive consequences that go beyond the workplace and influence society at large.
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I am a senior employee at a conculting firm and I have worked this way for the past five years. I absolutely could NOT go back to a 9 – 5, be in your cubicle, job. I am very, very scrupulous about recording the time I spend on our clients’ projects but I might be doing it in my hammock or in my pajamas (or both).
Early in my working life I had a boss that insisted he see all of us at our desks at 8 AM and again at 5 PM. Anyone who had a newspaper or magazine out on his desk at any time except lunch was in for a severe reprimand. Nobody gave him their best effort and nobody ever worked late for free either. The lack of respect for us as human beings was palpable. I sincerely hope that my kids never have to experience that kind of life. They see the way I work and I think that already they’ve decided they want that sort of life too.
ROWE is actually much more of a revolutionary change in organizational behavior than you might think. The dominant paradigm in the business world is bottom-line economics which currently implies the worker or human capital, as merely an input in the indongenous model. Time is thus the easiest way to physically meaure an employee’s produvity input into the model. ROWE implies that the productivity actually results from things like knowledge, creativity, and imaginiation.
These inputs are much more difficult to measure in the superficial, physical sense.
There are a few feasible objection as well..
Unless you have a good amount of discipline It’s just so hard to produce in an environment outside of the office. I personally like a work space, that is specialized for working. It put me in the right frame of mind and insures that I have the right tools to produce..similar to the library being a study base in college.
Also, even with all the technology we have these days, it is difficult to collaborate with co-workers unless they are physically present. Collaboration is a huge factor in good ornganization behavio and is where new ideas emerge, so this is certainly important.
However, with analytical, left-brained work moving overseas I do see a shift in the workplace and eventually all workplaces will to consider ROWE.
Among the companies that can implement ROWE, I predict, there will be a gradation effect.
The lowest grade which can include small to medium sized companies, some startups, some fortune 500 companies where IT is for in house software development and consumption and consulting companies. This grade of companies are hardened, either in the concept face time equals actual work or the temptation of managers to over burden the employees who finish 8 hours work in 2 hours or the temptation of managers to use the threat of layoff/firing to get more work done without time off / more pay. Needless to say employees with less self-confidence in their skill will survive these work places.
The middle grade, will be the worst, since they won’t be able stick to ROWE or old style and will continue to waiver back and forth based on the turnover effect and loss of intellectual property and erosion of competitiveness.
The top grade companies, like Google and may be Best Buy, will have the highest retention rate or employee satisfaction as long as the sheer size of the corporation induced bureaucracy and tainted ROWE implementation are kept at bay by some kind of self regulating checks and balances.
I actually think a ROWE could work for Retail, production, labs, etc. ROWE is NOT about WHERE you work. The definition, according to CultureRx, is people are free to do whatever they want, whenever they want as long as the work gets done. The most important thing is the RESULTS! Applied to retail, the employees would need to be in the store in order to get their RESULTS. Perhaps there could more flexibility in the way the employees are scheduled for shifts. Mabye there wouldn’t be predefined, 8-hour shifts! It’s all about giving the employee back the control to achieve in his/her professional life AND personal life.
I love the idea of ROWE so much that I created a job board for ROWE (results only work environment) called “rowejobopenings dot com” so ROWE companies please sign up your jobs. The world is waiting!
* It’s amazing to me that with all this technology we’re still expected to be sitting in chairs from 8 to 5, then spend 1-2 hours commuting both ways.
It’s sick that my job as an IT person is still being done like this when I can do my job from anywhere and probably get more work done and be happier but my boss loves to walk up to my cube and BS about some idea they have and that’s considered the software requirement, ugh!
As a society, we’re stuck in this early 1900’s manufacturing mentality and we need to see you with your “butt in a chair” or we think you’re not working, that’s so deflating to your workforce.
Lets hope this ROWE movement happens soon because burn out will become a huge issue for our workforce and we can’t afford to lag behind in this truly global economy.
We’re going to need happy workers which in turn make efficient workers and helps increase the bottom line.