Toss out that alarm clock

A few years back, I spent a frustrating summer supervising a college intern. It was frustrating because the kid was an incredible talent, but had not yet grasped the concept that businesses – especially ones like ours that are highly deadline-driven – rely on employees who routinely show up at agreed-upon times each morning.

One day our intern might come flip-flopping into the office by 8:15, the next day not until 9:50 – no phone call, no apology until confronted about his tardiness.

It was one of the happiest days of my professional life when the staff gathered around a cake and wished our intern lots of luck as he returned to college for his senior year.

So I was skeptical when I learned about electronics retailer Best Buy’s super-laid-back attendance policy. The radical endeavor, called ROWE, for “results-only work environment,” seeks to judge performance on output instead of hours. There are no schedules, no mandatory meetings. Work is no longer a place where you go, but something you do. Say you need to leave at 2 in the afternoon because Junior has a soccer match, no problem. It’s deer season so you’ll be working from home in the evenings? Sure thing.

By the end of this year, all 4,000 staffers working at corporate will be on ROWE. And – this is the most baffling part -- the company is taking its clockless culture to its stores.

How in the world could such an unstructured environment possibly work in retail? Certainly not in any garden center I’ve ever seen. On a Saturday morning in May, you absolutely, positively have to know that bodies will be on the sales floor. On the evening of your big holiday open house, the last thing you need to worry about is whether Kelsi will make it in to man the gift-wrap desk, or will she be attending her boyfriend’s winter formal?

Best Buy says it already has seen lower turnover and improved employee morale in its corporate office. Company execs are confidently predicting the same results in its stores.

I’m skeptical, buy maybe Best Buy’s plan is the best bet. Would it work for you?

-- Kevin

Comments

[trey]

In the past I would have agreed with you that there is no way this is going to work but nowadays I am not sure. The last paragraph of the article said that "It's not about being free to come and go but being free to come and go based on getting the work done, so covering the show floor will necessitate coordinating with others. It's a revolutionary idea." So the way I understand it if you’re scheduled to man the floor between 10 and 3 you will have to find somebody else to fill that slot before you can take that time off. So the floor will have salespeople on it when needed.

The people who are there to fill in and get the job done will eventually be the winners.

We are entering a new era of personal responsibility. If sales and productivity go up because of these measures then it will spread.

This is kind of like the Harry Potter pre-release. Someone posts on the internet the end of the story. Harry Potter fans get upset because this will ruin the ending for them. But wait, you don’t have to go on the internet and find out the ending. Do you have the ability to deny yourself something now for a better result later? We will see how the Best Buy plan works.