Best Buy goes clockless

[Undertoad]

This is not a story about retailing. It's about Best Buy's back office.

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine...0/b4013001.htm

We had a thread about how work can turn into indentured servitude with bad management, but it was a hijack, so I decided to start a new thread for this, which is... revolutionary.

...at Best Buy's Minneapolis headquarters, similar incidents of strangeness were breaking out all over the ultramodern campus. In employee relations, Steve Hance had suddenly started going hunting on workdays, a Remington 12-gauge in one hand, a Verizon LG in the other. In the retail training department, e-learning specialist Mark Wells was spending his days bombing around the country following rocker Dave Matthews. Single mother Kelly McDevitt, an online promotions manager, started leaving at 2:30 p.m. to pick up her 11-year-old son Calvin from school. Scott Jauman, a Six Sigma black belt, began spending a third of his time at his Northwoods cabin.

At most companies, going AWOL during daylight hours would be grounds for a pink slip. Not at Best Buy. The nation's leading electronics retailer has embarked on a radical--if risky--experiment to transform a culture once known for killer hours and herd-riding bosses. The endeavor, called ROWE, for "results-only work environment," seeks 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.

Hence workers pulling into the company's amenity-packed headquarters at 2 p.m. aren't considered late. Nor are those pulling out at 2 p.m. seen as leaving early. There are no schedules. No mandatory meetings. No impression-management hustles. Work is no longer a place where you go, but something you do. It's O.K. to take conference calls while you hunt, collaborate from your lakeside cabin, or log on after dinner so you can spend the afternoon with your kid.

[Griff]

Pete, who is doing contract work, had a meeting with her boss that started something like, "Even though you are more productive than anyone else in the department, the customer blah blah..." ROWE might eliminate a huge annoyance in her life.

[Shawnee123]

I know lots of people whose physical presence not only doesn't prove productivity...it practically sucks any existing productivity out of the air. But they have big mouths, take credit for other's work, and lie a lot...so it's all good.

[SteveDallas]

I'll believe it when I see it... it sounds great, but it won't be successful unless Ineffectual Middle Management Suckups can change their attitudes. It's easy for the upper management to say the company is going to be flexible, but what happens when a supervisor has to decide which of two subordinates is worthy of advancement, and one lives at his desk, and the other volunteers a couple mornings at the local library?

I also find it highly ironic that this is happening at Best Buy, which doesn't seem to exactly be a paradise as far as actual store employees are concerned. (Of course that's probably true for any large chain retailer.)

[Shawnee123]

Originally Posted by SteveDallas

I'll believe it when I see it... it sounds great, but it won't be successful unless Ineffectual Middle Management Suckups can change their attitudes.

Absolutely!

[lookout123]

it works damn well in my firm. as long as i'm legal, ethical, and profitable it's all good. i work an average of 20 fewer hours every week than my peers. why? because i can. at this point in my business i view anything over 25 hours a week inside my office as a break down in my productivity. i know some of the guys work 60-70 hours a week. they make more money than i do, but so what? i see them as having 2 decent paying full time jobs. i have one full time job that pays me well enough. and i'm happy. tuesdays and wednesdays i'm gone by 2 - so i can coach soccer. fridays i go in late so i can help in my son's classroom. i don't work saturdays. ever.

[9th Engineer]

I think it'll make the decisions regarding advancement easier, not harder. Whether or not someone is at their desk 4 or 12 hours a day is not applicable to the decision anymore. The employee who is more productive with less working hours is the better employee now, no more lounging around wasting time so you can stay late to make the upper management think you're working hard.

[xoxoxoBruce]

It's a trick. Change the thinking from hours to productivity then assign goals and deadlines that require most people to work 50 or more hours every week. But nobody can complain about the hours, they're working, because hours have disappeared from the company vocabulary.

[9th Engineer]

Well the best way to do it would probably to assign more work than can reasonably be done on regular time, and then let people do more, less, or toe the line as they see fit. That way it'll be obvious who can be cut and who deserves a raise.

[Undertoad]

At one of my previous jobs it took me 10 hours to accomplish what the 50 hour people were grumbling about. It was so hard to look busy. Would have been much easier to look busy at home.

[JayMcGee]

ah..... not a clone thread..... sorry.....backs out slowly...

Originally Posted by Undertoad

At one of my previous jobs it took me 10 hours to accomplish what the 50 hour people were grumbling about. It was so hard to look busy. Would have been much easier to look busy at home.

Same here, and I got bitched at about it a lot. Every time I would say... "I do more work than X1, X2, X3 & X4... if you want me to do more, pay me more or promote me, it is their fault I am more efficient." I got promoted and had the same issue with my new boss.