Best Buy’s Right Idea on Results
Walking the aisles of Best Buy, with its glaring fluorescent lights, migraine-inducing bass from the car audio department (known as “car-fi” to insiders), crowded aisles and spirited staffers, one would hardly guess that the company is on the forefront of changing the way we all work. The big box store hardly exudes an atmosphere of corporate revolution and next-generation work environments. However, that’s exactly what’s happening at the corporate headquarters at Best Buy.
In 2006, Best Buy instituted a program known as a “Results Oriented Work Environment,” or “ROWE.” For details, you can read the Business Week article from December of 2006 entitled “Smashing the Clock”. The basic idea, however, as described by the BW article, is to “demolish decades-old business dogma that equates physical presence with productivity. The goal at Best Buy is to judge performance on output instead of hours.” And what an obsolete dogma it is.
With technology and globalization, core hours are 24/7. Likewise, employers need to realize that life needs to fit in, too–as “life hours” are 24/7 as well. The idea of working 9 to 5, Monday through Friday with lunch at noon is an antiquated relic from the dawn of the industrial era. Workers had to be at machines in one place, often worked by natural light, and their “long commutes” were mile-long walks to the factory, mine, cornfield, shipyard or dock.
These holdovers have ended up wasting countless productive hours forcing employees to sit in traffic and adjust to routines that defy their circadian rhythms. According to a study by the University of Surrey, humans naturally fall on a spectrum of two types of rhythms: “larks” and “owls.” (http://www.surrey.ac.uk/SBMS/lark-owl/timing.html) Owls naturally are not morning people, and they are most productive late into the evening and night, often hitting their stride after midnight. Larks, on the other hand, get up at the crack of dawn, and to quote an old Army slogan, “do more before 8 a.m. than most people do all day.”
Naturally, most folks fall somewhere in between those extremes. (You can test yourself via this url: http://www.circadian.com/sleep/index.html. Personally, I’m an “extreme owl.”) Forcing people to wake up at times their body tells them they should be sleeping further decreases productivity and increases healthcare costs due to added stress and time away from family.
Yet many businesses stick to the strange notion that “early morning hours” are more valuable than the hours spent by an employee whose rhythms make them most productive working 11-7 versus 7-3. Arguments against flexible schedules include ideas that rigid hours equate to discipline, and that skipping vacation and overworking to the point of burnout implies dedication. In my opinion, however, discipline is a quality that should be sought out during hiring and assessed in interviews and through references - and both discipline and dedication are proven through one thing only: results. Like time, obsolete concepts concerning location continue to drag down US businesses. Despite rising gas prices, torturous commutes, and constant reminders of environmental concerns, telecommuting and virtual branch offices have yet to truly take off in American business.
Pressure to always be in a central office where people can “see you working” and concepts such as “face time” have US workers taking less vacation time than ever, resulting in more tension at home, burnout, and working while sick or tired, resulting in costly mistakes and employees who dread going to work.
Rules can’t force an undisciplined or non-dedicated employee to become a paragon of productivity. As an employer, if you find yourself trying to change staff direction and motivation, you’ve probably got the wrong person for the job. If you do have someone who is skilled but unmotivated, rules won’t fix that either, but improved quality of life and incentives will.
Too many employers seem to take a “my way or the highway” approach. As employers, however, we need to remember that the one asset we have that’s as important as our customers are the people who serve those customers. Both need to be happy, and both need to find working with us as a rewarding experience–economically and in daily life.
If customers are happy, employees are happy, and the company is getting results–that’s all that matters. Hire the right team, trust them, and craft your workplace to allow your employees to do their best.
– Chris Todd
Update - 11/21/07: In related news, the American Psychological Association says that telecommuting is good for you - physically and financially, whether you’re an employer or an employee.
