At Best Buy's corporate campus in Minneapolis, employees ignore regular office hours, don't show up for meetings and are frequently absent without leave. Management couldn't be happier.

Best Buy is reinventing how people work. Through a home-grown concept called the "Results Only Work Environment," or ROWE, the retail giant has embarked on a journey that ultimately will result in a total corporate culture shift.

In a ROWE, employees are free to work when and where they want, as long as the job gets done. Meeting attendance is optional. All that matters are results. Managers are responsible for establishing processes and setting goals; employees are responsible for meeting them.

To date, some 2,600 Best Buy corporate employees, or about 60%, have transitioned to ROWE. The rest will be on board by year's end. The company reports that productivity for ROWE teams has increased an average of 33%. In addition, there has been:

• A significant drop in voluntary turnover.
• Improved manager performance.
• Greater employee engagement.
• An increase in customer satisfaction.

ROWE is the brainchild of two former Best Buy employees — Cali Ressler, who worked in HR on work-life issues, and Jody Thompson, who managed large-scale change within the company.

"ROWE is a paradigm shift," explains Thompson. "In this new environment, every person views work in a different way and operates against this new belief."

Can't we all just be adults?

Best Buy's journey to a results-only work environment began five years ago when it implemented a flexible work environment as a pilot program for 300 employees. "After the pilot," says Ressler, "Jody and I realized that one of the problems with flexible work was that we were still operating around a traditional work mentality. It was time to change the game. To do this, we needed to change the basic foundation on which work is based. That is how the ROWE concept was born."

Flexible work schedules are "a con game," she insists.

"Companies implement these flexible work arrangements hoping it will finally shut people up about their 'work-life balance' issues. [However,] once you opt to work a schedule outside of the 'norm,' you are immediately stigmatized."

People quickly find out that "flexible schedule" is an oxymoron, Ressler continues.
"A schedule is a very confined sense of time and place — where and when work needs to happen. The definition of 'flexible' can be subjective as well. The employee's definition is: 'I want complete control over how I spend my time.' But the company's definition might be: 'You can make those decisions for yourself between 8 a.m. and 10 a.m., but you need to be here between 10 and 2.' It doesn't work."

"With ROWE, there is one definition — you can do whatever you want, whenever you want, as long as the work gets done. The focus is on performance, and only performance."

Managers determine outcomes for every position and work with employees to determine how performance will be measured. "We've found you can do this in any position," says Thompson.

In fact, Best Buy is now testing a version of ROWE in its retail stores and should have results in about 12 months.

Rethinking communication

Dawn Paulson, a promotion manager for BestBuy.com, says her 20-person team migrated to ROWE in December 2005.

"We've been on this journey just over a year now," she says. "When I first learned about it, I was very excited. I'd heard from other departments about how great it was."

There were also naysayers. "Some people definitely had concerns," Paulson recalls. "We did have to get through some of what we call 'sludge': people saying things like 'Oh, my team can't do that' and 'That person is really taking advantage of ROWE this week.' We had to help them get over that."

Paulson also notes that people must learn a new way of communicating to make ROWE work.

"When the program was rolled out, people felt they had to show they were working, so the amount of e-mail was overwhelming. However, as we saw that we didn't have to keep proving ourselves, we were able to examine how we were communicating as a team and find ways to streamline it."

Paulson credits ROWE with enabling her to achieve a work-life balance even when she had to fill in for two women on maternity leave — her boss and a co-worker. "Knowing that I could say 'I'm maxed out and need to come back to this later' helped me work through the craziness of covering for two people at our busiest time of the year," she recalls.

For managers, ROWE can be frightening at first.

"They have to look at work and how it gets done in a new way," says Thompson. "Instead of measuring time, they only look at results. It takes six to nine months to take a group from a traditional work environment to a results-only one. They have to learn to trust people without the 8:00-5:00 parameters."

Spreading the gospel

Thompson and Ressler now are the principals of CultureRx, a wholly owned subsidiary of Best Buy created to develop and market the ROWE concept. CultureRx, which will be spun off this year as a separate company, is in discussions with several Fortune 100 companies about launching ROWE pilot projects for 300-500 people. In addition, CultureRx will hold its first public workshop on ROWE this month in Minneapolis (visit CultureRx.com for details).

Although every company will respond to ROWE differently, the core tenets are unchanging and "non-negotiable," says Ressler. "What we've developed and copyrighted is the strategy that helps an organization overcome inertia and move forward." The strategy is based on three things: the power of time, the judgments that people make about time in the work environment, and how work needs to happen.
Power of engagement

The CultureRx approach may be radical, but it's right on target for today's employees, says Patrick Kulesa, global research director for ISR, an HR research and consulting firm.

"There's a real need for a flexible program such as this that eliminates stress and engages workers," he observes.

ISR takes the emotional temperature of 400,000 U.S. employees annually and has found that stress is increasing. In 2006, 31% said they find it difficult to balance work and personal responsibilities, compared to 25% in 2005. Forty-three percent now think their workload is excessive, up from 39%, and 46% are bothered by excessive pressure on the job, up from 41%.

"Our data clearly show concerns around stress, workload and work-life balance. This goes to the heart of what ROWE is addressing," says Kulesa.

But while employers need to be more flexible, they also should beware of letting employees become detached. With traditional telework, "There are some risks that workers will feel less connected to the company," Kulesa cautions. The goal should be to keep stress low and engagement high.

"We have evidence showing companies that have taken care of their employees' stress and engaged them in their work enjoy the biggest financial benefits," says Kulesa. "In contrast, companies that just get one of those right — for example, they engage employees, but stress them out — don't realize optimal results."

"Best Buy is [reporting] increased engagement for ROWE participants. That bodes well for their future financial performance based on our research," Kulesa says.

Best Buy also is finding that ROWE is an important differentiator, according to Ressler.

"Job candidates are putting work environment considerations over compensation. People at Best Buy will pass up a promotion if the area isn't a ROWE. What we're experiencing is the wave of the future. This is what people will be looking for.

"We believe ROWE will take care of the collision between the industrial workforce of the '50s and the technology age," she concludes. "It will align things so that people can do work the way it needs to happen today."

"We need answers in this space," agrees Kulesa. "ROWE is a step in the right direction. One size won't fit all, but the spirit of Best Buy's program can be embraced." — L.G.

Company Snapshot

Best Buy Co. is the leading consumer electronics outlet in North America, operating a chain of 940 stores in the U.S. and Canada and employing more than 90,000 people. The company offers a wide variety of electronic equipment, movies, music, computers and appliances. In addition to selling products, the stores offer installation and maintenance services, technical support and subscriptions for cell phone and Internet services. Covering an average of about 42,000 sq. ft., the big box stores are located in 49 states and five Canadian provinces. In addition to the Best Buy brand, the company operates under the names Geek Squad, Magnolia Audio Video (20 stores in the U.S.) and Future Shop (about 120 locations in Canada).

Sources: Best Buy and Hoovers.com