No Schedule, No Time Clock, No Problem!

Here’s a backwards way of looking at things: what if it didn’t matter when your employees arrived at work, or they spend 90% of their day in a nearby coffee shop, or they never come to one of your meetings? In a “Results Only Work Environment,” all of those things and more are completely, absolutely okay.

The Results Only Work Environment, or ROWE, is a unique corporate culture transformation that upends almost every assumption we’ve had about employees, the workplace, and the rules needed to get things done. At its most basic, ROWE allows employees to work how they want and when they want as long as their work is completed. This means there are no 9-to-5 days, no overtime, and no waste.

The heart of ROWE is only results matter. Think about it; all of our policies, management directives, and controls are put in place for one thing: to get the results that allow the company to make money. If you were given a completed project on-time, would you really care if it was done while sitting for eight hours in a cubicle, or during two hours sitting in a restaurant? You wouldn’t care, and neither would your customers. After all, it’s what gets done that truly matters.

This new way of thinking not only embraces the idea of employee empowerment, it blasts past it. ROWE business employees are not overworked, stressed, or guilty. They know what they have to get done, when it’s due, and the best way to do it. All you have to do is get out of their way! And while they are buzzing around doing what they do best, you get to stop monitoring them and pour all your energy where it’s needed most: your business.

The idea of ROWE began at Best Buy; not in the CEO’s office, but amongst the low-rung employees. They banded together and did a guerilla campaign of change. They were so secret, it was only after two years that the CEO found out what they were up to… and he loved it. Why would he not? The employees were happy, productivity was up 35%, and voluntary turnover was lower than it had ever been. All because he choose to focus on results; not how he got those results.

To help put things into perspective, the number one commandment of ROWE is “People at all levels stop doing any activity that is a waste of their time, the customer's time, or the company's money.” How could anyone not love that? If the employees aren’t wasting time or money, then all of the systems and policies setup to make sure employees are working hard become obsolete.

Since ROWE is such a fundamental change, naturally there are doubts and opposition.
• What about loss of control?
o What were you trying to control, how many chairs got filled? No, the whole point of making sure people were on time to work was to ensure productivity and results. If you get as much or more results, why care where the people are?
• Won’t there be less interoffice collaboration and dynamics?
o Of course, but think of all of the collaboration and dynamics created every minute over the social networks on the internet; by people who haven’t met – and probably never will – never spoken, and often never seen each other. The very same technology that allows your people to work in a new way, will allow them to collaborate in new ways too.
• “I had to work 9-to-5 for twenty years, why don’t they!?”
o Unfortunately, this sentiment is out there, even subconsciously in the best intenders. But just because something is different, or unavailable to the past, this is no reason not to change for the future.
• What about people who slack off and let the work get done by the overachievers, or who don’t do anything at all?
o Think of all the controls and surveillance setup now to monitor who is working. Now transfer them to monitor what and how much is being done. If someone isn’t producing results, then you will know. The key to this nirvana however, is that it no longer matters if you are on time or at your desk all day. What matters is that you get results. If you don’t do the work, you don’t have a job.

As it is, ROWE is not for every type of business; some companies have to have a person at a spot all day. But while it isn’t perfect for them now, over time this culture of rewarding results over physical presence will shift to these kinds of jobs as well. While that happens, using ROWE where it can make a difference will increase productivity and morale; allowing us to concentrate on what everything ROWE replaces was used for: to make the bottom line look good.