ROWE: A New Work Paradigm

Do you work 9-5, or do your employees do the same? You might want to reconsider. The old paradigm of slogging through eight or more hours of work per day, commuting two hours a day, going home for a few short personal hours, are no longer necessary for many organizations. Now more than ever, smaller and even larger companies are ditching the 40 hour workweek at a desk in an office.

The change comes in an ongoing shift in the way we work. Our two BIG Business contest winners, Software Testing Solutions (STS) and Premier Christian Cruises, have embraced teleworking for their employees. But the new outlook on work is not merely working from home, but smashing the preconceived notion of working a set schedule with set hours and embracing new ideas of productivity.

Best Buy may be one of the highest profile corporations to embrace a new work paradigm, offering what it calls results-only work environment (ROWE), which demolishes the business dogma that equates physical presence with productivity. The idea is simple: have employees work wherever, whenever and measure performance output instead of hours. Work for Best Buy employees under the ROWE schedule is no longer a place you go, but something you do.
Best Buy’s work experiment seems to be working, with productivity up an average 35 percent in departments that switched to ROWE. Employee engagement at Best Buy, which measures employee satisfaction, is up too, according to the Gallup Organization, which audits corporate cultures.

Two of the co-creators of ROWE now promote the new work paradigm with an assortment of products to make the shift, including a book, “Why Work Sucks and How to Fix it.” In the book they say with ROWE
      
•    There is no need for schedules
•    Nobody focuses on "how many hours did you work?"
•    Nobody feels overworked, stressed out or guilty
•    Work is not a place you go, it's something you do
•    People at all levels stop wasting the company's time and money
•    Teamwork, morale, and engagement soar
•    There's no judgment on how people spend their time

Increased job satisfaction, higher productivity, a greater work-life balance, employee retention and happy employees make ROWE worth considering. ROWE changes may not be easy, but they are based on common sense. The creators of ROWE ask simple questions:
 
Isn’t it funny that we rush to work everyday and then spend the first hour at our desk reading the paper and drinking coffee?
Isn’t it funny that if you’re done with your work for the day at four, you can’t just leave?
Why do you have to stay that extra hour and pretend to be busy?
 Why do we assume that time = productivity instead of talking about the kind of results the person is actually getting? 
    
Once employees challenge the paradigm of the traditional workplace model, they begin to realize they can deliver results on their own terms and be just as productive if they become self-disciplined. STS is a smaller business that has embraced this model before it became vogue with Best Buy and has found it to be an excellent model. The company's worker's are satisfied and productive and the company saves money on office overhead. While ROWE may seem like a radical transformation, it is merely rethinking how we work and in the process can help us become more successful and happier. 

For more information about ROWE, check out: http://www.culturerx.com/rowe/