Best Buy Goes 100% Flextime

If anything could persuade me to move back to Minnesota, this might be it. Business Week reports in Smashing the Clock
that the nation's leading electronics retailer, Best Buy, is expanding a successful experiment to give ALL employees at its corporate office 100 percent flexibility and the company plans to roll out the clock-free world to its retail stores. So far, productivity of employees living the new work environment has risen about 35 percent.

The Minneapolis-based company calls the move ROWE, for "results-only work environment." The policy -- the brainchild of two HR people "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," reports Business Week. "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."

What's great here is that flexibility is offered to everyone, not just parents or top management or highest-grossing sales reps. This is fair -- and a smart way to avoid grumbling by child-free employees who resent "picking up the slack" for parents who leave early citing kid responsibilities. Everyone can do as they please, no questions asked, and they're judged by results, not facetime.

"Best Buy did not invent the post-geographic office," Business Week goes on to say. "Tech companies have been going bedouin for several years. At IBM, 40 percent of the workforce has no official office; at AT&T, a third of managers are untethered. Sun Microsystems Inc. calculates that it has saved $400 million over six years in real estate costs by allowing nearly half of all employees to work anywhere they want. And this trend seems to have legs. A recent Boston Consulting Group study found that 85 percent of executives expect a big rise in the number of unleashed workers over the next five years. In fact, at many companies the most innovative new product may be the structure of the workplace itself."

This trend is good news for parents -- and for everyone -- seeking to integrate work and life on our own terms.

By Leslie Morgan Steiner |  December 11, 2006; 7:00 AM ET  | Category:  Flexibility
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