Bye bye office hours, now welcome ROWE
HOW OFTEN have you had to sit through long unproductive meetings, apparently absorbed by the baloney being doled out by the spadeful, but actually day dreaming about your last vacation in Honolulu? And what about times you couldn't get important work done because the phone wouldn't stop ringing, as well meaning co-workers kept distracting you with their `friendly' interruptions? Life at a conventional workplace can sometimes be driving you to the borders of insanity. But it may no longer be so!
Though still an unfulfilled vision for most workers, with the latest technology and gadgets ready to bail out overworked, overstressed employees from their everyday misery, chances are they will soon be free to decide just where, when and how to want to get work done.
Welcome to the world of ROWE (Results-Only Work Environment). Examples of companies that have dumped old conventions from out of their high-rise offices abound.
And Minnesota-based national electronics retailing chain Best Buy is just one such example from a vast vanguard of innovative companies driving the sea change. (`Throwing Out the Rules of Work' by Patrick J. Kiger, Workforce.com)
In his feature, Kiger cites Best Buy's Results-Only Work Environment, as a radical experiment "whose aim is to reshape the corporate workplace, achieve an unparalleled degree of work/life balance and redefine the very nature of work itself".
So what does ROWE mean? If you are lucky enough to work for an organisation that espouses ROWE, you might no longer have to show up at office each morning.
Meaning you could stay at home and not get fired. Er... provided you have accomplished the work assigned to you. Unlike conventional workplaces where workers often grapple with inconvenient timings, outdated rules, and several other restrictions, there is only one rule governing ROWE, and that is work!
Employees of organisations that practise ROWE, have the autonomy to choose how to get their job done.
They can work at the office if they want to, of course. But an employee can also work from a car, home office or anywhere else he fancies and the boss would have absolutely no problems! At Best Buy, for example, salaried employees are required to `put in only as much time as it actually takes to do their work', and believe it or not, hourly employees can choose when they want to come in to work!
Most meetings are carried on through the teleconferencing mode, and what's more, the boss is unlikely to spew molten lava if you decide to take the afternoon off on a whim! As Patrick puts it, the only yardstick for evaluating employees is whether they meet goals for productivity.
Almost 60 per cent of the 4,000 people at its headquarters campus have reportedly converted to the new way of working, and as the feature indicates, ROWE has had a significant impact on the morale and productivity of its employees.
Best Buy employees who converted to ROWE report that they have better relationships with family and friends, feel more loyal to the company. They are better focused and more productive when it comes to work.
According to Cali Ressler and Jody Thompson, two former Best Buy employees who now run CultureRx, a Minneapolis-based consulting firm that is managing the ROWE conversion at Best Buy, implementing the programme takes roughly six-months.
The first phase is leadership training, in which Thompson and Ressler work to get managers to rethink their concepts of what work means.
Changing the mindset is very important, because, as Ressler reiterates in the feature, "You can spend lots of money equipping your people with laptops and cell phones, but if you're the manager and you cling to the old definitions of working, then everyone is going to know that being in the office every day is the basis for good reviews and promotions, and nobody is going to dare do anything else."
The trainers also do a cultural audit of the department or team to measure the impact of ROWE on their performance.
The second phase involves training the team as a whole. Employees go through role-playing exercises and "sludge sessions," wherein they learn to cope with negative management behaviour that can cause stress or place guilt on employees.
To playfully reinforce the change, such "sludge" expressions are written down and thrown into a large silver trash-can that Ressler and Thompson provide.
The next phase brings in "culture clinics". The trainers discuss the details of making flexibility work— use e-mail, voice mail and other technologies that enable seamless communication, irrespective of one's location.
And finally after all that briefing and training, the group "goes live". The team tries ROWE for six weeks before returning for a debrief. Best Buy is so satisfied with the success of the programme, that it is in the process of marketing the system to other companies. It is even considering trying a modified version in its retail stores, according to Patrick.
The success or failure of the whole experiment depends wholly on the extent of trust and discipline managers and employees place on themselves and their team. And although sceptics might question the effectiveness of such a programme in corporate houses with a relatively larger and more diverse workforce, employees at Best Buy are certainly not complaining! That certainly is proof of the pudding.
BINDU SRIDHAR
faqs@cnkonline.com
Printer friendly
page
Send this article to Friends by
E-Mail
Opportunities
