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Best Buy Institutes Extreme Flex Time
s31523 writes "The company I work at has a flex time policy where basically, you can come in and leave within a window of time, as long as you are in the office during 'core' hours (10am-2pm). Best Buy has gone extreme, they have completely banished traditional views of office hours. Citing a preference for results over time invested, the company has completely done away with schedules. No mandatory meetings. No impression-management hustles." From the article: "Another thing about this experiment: It wasn't imposed from the top down. It began as a covert guerrilla action that spread virally and eventually became a revolution. So secret was the operation that Chief Executive Brad Anderson only learned the details two years after it began transforming his company. Such bottom-up, stealth innovation is exactly the kind of thing Anderson encourages. The Best Buy chief aims to keep innovating even when something is ostensibly working. '[The 'results-only work environment'] was an idea born and nurtured by a handful of passionate employees,' he says. 'It wasn't created as the result of some edict.'" Sheesh. I work from home and even I have a schedule. Here's hoping it catches on.
Best Buy still sucks.
For some (hopefully most) people, this is ideal. They'll work when they find themselves to be most productive, which in turn, makes the company more productive. However, you'll always get a few individuals who take advantage of such a policy, and in some environments, they spoil it for the rest of us.
or does it sound like the CEO was basically forced to go along with this idea or it would look like he was a victim of mutiny? I mean he already heads up a company where employee theft or "shrink" as they like to call it is extremely high. Given the chance I bet any employee of Best Buy would gladly stab anyone at the Top just to make a quick buck.
All of my business is service related, my customers work 8-5, so I have to work 8-5...... No big deal, I'm in field service, I'm out of the office 80% of the time anyway.
From the bottom up? So does this mean the clerks at best buy can come in whenever now? And have been for years? Somehow I think this definition of 'bottom' is ... innaccurate.
Also, some info missing from the summary.. Zonk's schedule follows:
8:00 am-4:00 pm - Bash Sony.
if nobody is keeping any kind of regular hours, and you can't schedule a meeting, how can any sufficiently large group of people collaborate on anything? Maybe they use wikis or something else without the need for immediacy? (What would that do to the corporate culture?)
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
The weird thing to consider is how much people end up working. I've found what when I'm working hard on a project and I approach it without a schedule, I end up working for a few extra hours without even noticing. It means that people keep their morale up while still maybe being willing to work more hours. Basically, this is taking salaried work to a whole new level: they acknowledge that people have responsibilities to maintain and judge them based on whether or not the job is done, rather than whether or not they are in the office at a given time. I say bravo. What will be weird is seeing if they can implement this in retail stores like one of the later paragraphs suggests.
Now, if only their in-store employees would do the same thing, then we'd get some REAL deals merchandise. What's that? Nobody at the cash register? Oh well, I'll just pay later...
...that improv actors can make better Best Buy employees than most people on their pay-roll, I can't say I'm surprised.
The local best Buy has gotten crappier over the last few years.
They've gone from almost always having what I am looking for to almost never having what I am looking for.
A simple USB mouse? Nope, just wireless and the $70 gamer mice. Off to Staples
A new PC game? Nope, ours never seems to have games on release. Off to Eb Games
A cheap cable? Nope, just a $50 Geek Squad version. Off to Wal-mart for the $10 version
Help me take back Slashdot. When did 'News for Nerds' become 'FUD and Conspiracy Theories for Extremist Nutjobs'?
Employees will have time to chase you into the parking lot in a desparate attempt to get you to agree to that extended warranty. Hell, they might even follow you home, bitches!
I hate rigid schedules. They create traffic jams.
Leonid S. Knyshov
Find me on Quora
ROWE, Results Only Work Environment. A.K.A. "Git-R-Dun". I'd be more efficient if I could leave sooner.
"A government is a body of people, usually notably ungoverned." - Shepard Book Quoting Malcolm Reynolds
...that little issue when I go in there with my step-dad to get him a laptop and I know more than the guy selling it to us.
1. They need to ensure more than one register is open when there are 20 people on line.
2. They need to ensure that the people they hire for the different departments actually know something about what they are selling. Not what they memorized from the training. Actual KNOWLEDGE.
Living With a Nerd
Whilst I see significant merits in this system, surely this discourages collaboration between workers? Perhaps in some environments this is not essential, but particularly in research environments the ability to collaborate with others is essential. If everyone else in your department is working midnight=>10am as their main time to get work done, and you choose to work during the day, it has to hamper your ability to get real-time feedback on queries you have? It would seem to me to be great in a company where each employer had a high degree of autonomy, but I don't see this being helpful in many of the environments that require high levels of collaboration.
In this capitalistic society for some reason, long hours equates to higher productivity in manager's minds. I work in the gov't (please hold back the boos, the holidays/vacation days flat out stomp any organization in this part of the country). So as badly as I want to move to private sector I just cant because taking the cut in holidays isnt worth it. And the last job I found at a university with similar benefits paid a laughable $11-$13 an hour for support. However the flex time kinda sucks as it is 8-5 40 hour weeks. 8 sharp, 5 sharp. Sure the 40 is nice but I think I would be happier working 12 hours here, and 6 hours there as the schedule demanded. What is it like in the private sector (I am in the midwest).
CS: It is all sink or swim...oh and did I mention there are sharks in that water?
I can't count how many times I've heard lip-service paid to 'results-only' performance reviews. It's a bunch of crap. Managers will still reward people they like and punish people they don't, regardless of performance. Schedules and 'face-time' will always have a huge impact on performance reviews and rewards, simply because if you work 8pm - 4am and work miracles, nobody will know that you were the one doing everything. For all they know (regardless of any paperwork saying you were responsible), it was the office gnomes that with their magical faerie dust that did all of the work.
Like a lot of things, 'results-only' is great in theory, but almost impossible to implement in practice due to human nature.
Good for them; it sounds like it's working out so far, and if the employees like it, then roll with it.
But, at the risk of sounding like one of the old fogeys the article talks about, it's not for me, and for the reasons those old fogeys mention.
a) I work better when at work. I don't like to work at home; one of the nice things about my 5 mile commute is that, if I have to get any significant work done "after hours," I can drive to the office and do it. My focus is better when I don't have my fiancee, my cats, my 360, my Wii, my stereo, my television, etc. around all tempting me to spend time with them, instead. Moreover, I don't want to be available for routine work 24/7 - I'm already "on call" for crises all the time, but it's with the understanding that I'm only to be bothered if it really is a crisis.
b) There is a value to meetings - at least, some of them. We'd all love to completely ditch the useless all staff meetings that are pretty much just a productivity black hole, but some meetings are valuable. In my office, we have one weekly meeting just of the technology team - it's a tight group and a focused meeting. It's on the schedule from 1:00 - 2:00, but we've only actually been in the meeting until 2:00 once since I've been here. We all have pretty specialized jobs, but they all inter-relate. I'm the DBA, for example, and Dave is the storage architect. It's good to touch base on a regular basis to keep up with what's going on outside our fairly narrow areas.
c) I'm not good on the phone. My hearing isn't what it could be, and I spend too much mental power on making sure I'm hearing what the other person is saying to really be processing well. Face to face, I can use rudimentary lip reading and body language to "fill in the gaps" without the mental effort.
This, of course, is just the way I work - for people who don't have my hangups, this is a great system. But I'd end up working somewhere else, most likely.
Reality has a conservative bias: it conserves mass, energy, momentum...
I usually work in research and I find this paradigm to be extremely appealing. The 9-5 think in research is complete bull. You don't get more insightful or innovative while being force to sit at your desk staring at a screen
mmmm, am I the only one that was reminded of a Dilbert episode when I raed this? /me waits for stock crash and then buy a controlling share of the company
I work at a local newspaper, and we've already got this implemented!
I work as late as necessary, as long as I work 8 hours (starting at 9 AM or earlier). Heck, the day before thanksgiving, I got to work from 9 AM until 12:20 AM Thanksgiving day! YEAH! I even go to SKIP MY LUNCH BREAK! As long as the paper gets done, they don't care how late I work! Well, if the paper is done, they usually want me to leave, or clock out, since they really don't want to pay overtime..
Sarcasm aside, this is great. Wouldn't work in my industry, seeing as how we are usually pretty crunched for time as is.
"Better to be vulgar than non-existent" -Bev Henson
So basically, employees can clock in and out as they please? Sounds good but what about slow times? Say EVERYONE wants to take lunch at the same time. It's now Mexico at 2pm. How's that productive?
I'm sure it feels good though.
I might also comment that this WON'T work in every field. For the mindless drones, say in a call center, this could be a welcome oppurtunity.
"...how can any sufficiently large group of people collaborate on anything?"
Do they anyway?
/* No Comment */
From my experiences Best Buy employees lack the cranial capacity to be able to do anything for themselves, just try asking a question whose answer isn't in the product's sales pitch.
They don't deserve the name geek. They like Windows. They say that the hard drive is bad when you get a message, "Windows can't operate this drive." Anyone calling themselfs a geek should know better.
One member of a geek squad was insulted when I said that the person who does a diagnostic should be qualified to do one -- not someone who just came in from the parking lot from collecting carriages. Of course she never disputed the qualified bit.
Fight Spammers!
You betcha!
Well, this explains why you can't get prompt, knowlegable help at Best Buy. Even those folks who are "working" are mainly interested in talking to each other and ignoring customers.
other people called it, "MonkeyBoyThom gets fired."
This seems ideal for programmers like myself. I've got regular hours now, but in the beginning we had no set hours. That didn't mean less hours--often it meant 12+ hour days, but there was no question about when the time at which the work was done, as long as it was done in a timely manner. I've never experienced extreme flex where hours were not insane for other reasons.
Anyway, it seems like this would work well as long as there are still some deadlines--get that new module coded by the end of the month, and it shouldn't matter that you finished in 3 weeks and took the last week off. Management can consider that last week a reward for effective work. They might decide you can handle more work on the next cycle, which can create an incentive for you to "fill out the month". So, management has to understand that dynamic, and not punish people for efficiency.
On the other side of the equation, workers have to not deploy "filling out" and other obvious means of abuse. It seems like this has a better chance to work well if the employees are incentivised with something other than salary; namely, stock options. Then they are only hurting themselves if they hurt the comnpany, in theory. Of course, we all know that a division of a large corporation can perform well while the company overall performs poorly. That dilutes the stock option incentive, so it seems like incentives for a whole department could help (complete that upgrade in a week, the whole division gets extra pay or options).
In order for it to work well, you need mature, self-directing workers.
You also need workers with output that can be measured. I suspect that there are an awful lot of workers with no real output in our economy, or output that can't be measured (I'm pointing the finger at you, mid-level PHBs). A system like this could weed those guys out! OTOH, you can't apply a system like this to jobs like call-center technicians, floor sales, or even sales managers. A big part of those jobs is simply "being available". The fact that a sales rep hasn't taken a call or helped a customer for a few hours doesn't mean he wasn't doing his job--there was just no input he could act on to creat output.
Here http://malfy.org/
...this is opposed to the old standby "Work All Days Evenly". A new ROWE vs WADE.
FLR
I tend to attend lectures if I happen to be awake, otherwise not so much. This doesn't obviously work @ exam weeks, but apart from that I pretty much live w/out a schedule :)
As a programmer turned project manager, I can tell you this is an absolutely insane idea for any type of development environment.
Collaboration with peers and meetings are critical to making a project work. (As much as I hate meetings, they are a necessary evil wherein key decisions are made and critical information exchanged.)
The problem with flex time is that is pares down the number of hours in a day when everybody is actually AVAILABLE. People take early/late lunches, which means 11:30-1:30 is out, so that only leaves 3 hours in the day for cooperation. That's just not enough.
I'm not surprised to hear this. The high school kids and slackers who work in the stores are pretty unknowledgable, but as a Minnesotian, I really admire BestBuy. (No I don't work there, nor have I ever worked there!)
I went to school with some people who now work as logistics at best buy. They rave about it; there was a big layoff that took place a about a year ago, but my friends say the exec who was behind a bunch of money losing plans also got the hatchet, which made the employees happy. I have had a tour of the HQ, and its very nice. In addition to flex time, BB workers at the corporate HQ can workever they want in the building; they all have wireless laptops and phones, and there are plenty of places to work all over the building. BB throws private concerts with huge acts like U2 in their in house theater for their employees, has a row of xbox and ps2 (probably xbox360 and ps3 now) machines on the first floor for workers to try out, pool tables, foozeball, a discounted company store, etc.
BestBuy also contributes plenty to local charities and Minnesota Public Radio. Good for them!
Anyway, this must sound really over the top, but I thought it was worth mentioning to people who only see the untrained/unknowledgeable sales staff side of best buy. I wish all workplaces were are good to their employees as it sounds like BestBuy is. Good for them.
In my job, technically our company has core hours from 9am to 3pm but on Friday, management basically looks the other way. The place is a ghost town before 12 Noon. Occasionally, we have executives who like doing a 3pm Fri afternoon meeting and management has to go aorund the day before and threaten us if we don't show for the meeting. I still ignore the meeting since I have other plans and they usually announce the meeting the day before. I use "kids" as an excuse to blow off the meeting.
This model is only as effective as the employees you hire. (Really, every company is only as effective as the employees they hire, but I digress.)
In the end you still have to fire your useless employees, and concentrate on hiring the useful ones. The ones that won't apply just to take advantage of the system.
-Rob
Biblical fiscal responsibility
Best Buy has employees?
You mean those blue shirted people who just stand around?
They *work* there? :-o
Probably it is not wise to focus the corporation's creative energy on making everybody's headquarters job nicer while the stores (and customer service) crumble.
PS. I haven't been in a "Best Buy" for several years. The last time I was there I spent many minutes stuck in a line while a clerk failed totally to deal with a customer problem. No one of the many staff walking by seemed to notice the long line of customers stuck behind the floundering clerk.
Possibly they were implementing a bottom-up policy of "every customer for himself and the devil take the hindmost".
I left my stuff, walked out and have never been back.
A few years ago I worked for an engineering office that had something similar. Boss didnt care when we came in, just had to work at least 8 hours a day. It was pretty nice to be able to sleep in when I wanted to, and still have a job that paid better than $20/hour.
While I can't vouch for the effectiveness of Best Buy's system, I work for the federal government (Canada) and the work hours are pretty flexible. I can begin work anytime between 7am and 9am, and finish between 3pm and 5pm. This translates to everyone being available during the core hours (9-3) for meetings, etc., but the time you start / finish beyond that is at your discretion. It's very convenient, makes working a steady job less routine, and helps you avoid the 9-5'er traffic rush :)
For he today that sheds his blood with me shall be my brother.
If we can get a few people in one department in one store to treat their customers right, it just might spread.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Am I the only one wondering how the CEO can be innovating things that he doesn't know are going on. It seems pretty odd to me. How can he promote "stealth innovation" and expect to keep a handle on what's going on in his business? What if the people innovating sealthfully are idiots? Not that I have anything against this particular idea, but it strikes me as odd. And how can he take credit for this?!?
Core hours are 10am-4pm, if we do more than 8 hours in a day, we can even keep those in a timebank, and use a block of 4, or 8 banked hours for half or full days off.
I'm posting this anonymously because I'd rather not have what I'm about to say get back to where I work:
I don't do jack shit at work.
I'm a beginning programmer at my place of business (a facility that's part of a Fortune 500 company). I manage and build small web applications for internal use. I'm given a general time table for when it needs to be done, and pick a date within that time table to have it done by. My projects are done on time, and usually have more useful features than intially requested. But I only work maybe four (on average) of the eight or so hours I have to be at work. The rest of the time is spent fiddling around on Slashdot and other places, while looking behind my back to make sure I'm not being watched.
Personally, I find it to be a complete waste of time. Sure, I could pick up some extra projects, or do some research on the side, or move my due dates up by weeks, but I don't see much of a future with this company (maybe two or three more years, at best), so I have no incentive. I would, however, work harder at work if I knew I wouldn't be there so long.
This is the way I see it: If a person is paid salary, why do they have to be there for exactly 40 hours a week? If they can do all of their work in 20 hours, why force them to stick around? If an employee has more freedom to choose when they come and go, they'll have higher moral and thus better work output because they feel they have more control over their job and life (and they would). If they wanted to take a Friday off to see a kid at their sports game, they wouldn't have to worry about filling out forms or requesting time off- they just make sure their work is done the first four days, and inform people they'll be gone the fifth.
Obviously, this kind of situation wouldn't work for all industries. Sales reps, for instance, would probably need to be in during certain hours so they can work with other companies and customers that still do the 9-5 shtick.
But in this age where information can be shared instantly, where cell phones allow us to be reached almost anywhere and laptops to work from a range of places, why should we be constrained to one desk for a specified set of time if we can be as, if not more, productive without those chains?
I hope this experiment works.
They don't deserve the name Geek. They like windows. They say that a hard drive is bad when they get a message, "Windows can't operate this drive." Anyone calling themselves a geek should know better.
If in future you are going to bash a group of proprietary software users, try to let your hatred at all things microsoft come through subtley instead of bashing it over people heads like a brick. Also, find a more appropriate outlet, as making statemets at those who use, and fix a tool that they like a tool is a generalization.
It used to be when something came up you'd need to grab a few coworkers from their cubes and huddle round a monitor to get it fixed.
I've been in situations where i'm the only one in a given time zone. It can easily take a day to schedule a meeting with three people in it - that sort of inefficiency isn't good.
That reminds me of a Dilbert strip. Dilbert is in a meeting thinking about personal activities and how that is considered "work". Later he's in the shower thinking about how to solve a work problem and how this is considered "personal time".
The way I would handle ROWE is usually take care of the fixed tasks assigned by my manager during my hours at work. Later, at home, I'd work on more "fun" things that interested me or helped to make my job more efficient.
I can see how ROWE could make me a more efficient worker.
"A government is a body of people, usually notably ungoverned." - Shepard Book Quoting Malcolm Reynolds
i refuse to do any more business with best buy because
1) their return policy sucks, forcing people to take instore credits instead of getting cash back for shit that doesn't work
2) their promotion of geek squad has reinforced the preponderance of low-paying tech jobs filled by idiots who don't know what they're doing that still ends up taking food off my table
3) has best buy ever been honest about the Mac when being an Apple dealer? no.
they can kiss my ass
Remember kids, if you're not paying for the service, YOU ARE THE PRODUCT THAT IS BEING SOLD.
...as a contractor. So I am not on the ROWE program, but most of the full-timers I work with are. It seems to work pretty well for them. Most people are in the office most days anyway. Typically if people take advantage of it they get in late or leave early or whatever. But they still have work to do, and many times that work is best done in the office. There are still plenty of meetings and lots of collaboration. And, when people are out, they're usually available by phone or email. So, to all the naysayers who think this is a terrible idea, you're pretty much wrong.
HOWEVER...
most of the FTE's basically just spend their days either going to meetings, preparing for meetings, or recapping meetings anyway. Lots of the actual "work" is passed on to contractors, so it really doesn't matter if the FTE's are around or not.
"One member of a geek squad was insulted when I said that the person who does a diagnostic should be qualified to do one -- not someone who just came in from the parking lot from collecting carriages."
I work in the warehouse for an electronics retail store, and I'm the one who "collects carriages." I consider myself a geek and do quite well with repairing computers; I simply prefer not to deal with people who have no respect for other human beings. I'd rather push carts than walk in circles trying to convince a customer I know what I'm talking about. I've turned down numerous sales position offers for precisely this reason.
Secondly, if you know so much about computers, why are you visiting the Geek Squad to begin with?
Retail/sales positions are terrible. Not because of management or low pay, but because of rude, inconsiderate and impatient customers. Each day, countless customers approach me--a non-sales employee--asking questions about products in whichever department I happen to be working in at the time (or even walking through while carrying a large, heavy box of some sort.) Nine times out of ten they immediately become visibly irritated when I politely explain that I'm going to find a sales associate to assist them. Sometimes I help them, such as with headphones, CD-Rs, etc. but when someone says "I want to buy a computer" I find the appropriate employee to help them because I have other tasks at hand... and it's not my job to begin with.
Sure, some (arguably many) sales associates are incompetent morons, but I still find it difficult to grasp that customers don't realize it's nearly impossible to know everything about every product in a large department store such as Best Buy. It's difficult enough knowing everything about a single department, much less the entire store. Go ahead and try learning everything there is to know about the 75+ different televisions sold at a given Best Buy location, including remembering the subtle differences between models of the same size and brand. Keep in mind that many of the televisions sold are not on display and you'll probably never see anything but the nearly generic brown boxes they are in, so visual cues are almost useless. There are no cheat-sheets or sales manuals listing the products in a department, and there are few brochures, if any. The same method applies to computers, car audio, etc. I don't envy anyone in a sales position at a retail electronics store.
That everyone is now being paid by mail in rebates.
It might be news for traditional business, but for hi-tech companies this is old.
I come to office at 11am every day.
As a Best Buy employee, working in computer sales, I would like to wholeheartedly agree with this.
Well, with the number of employees at their stores, I think they have enough overlap to allow this for store employees, too.
- RG>
Hey pal, this isn't a pleasantforest, so don't waste my time with pleasantries!
Most successful people put in maximum face time. I.e., they are in the office before & after the boss leaves. Unless you are in a position where you are able to constantly put out fresh new ideas that indicate you are not only doing your job, but adding to the company, this type of "flex time" can make you expendable and move up the ladder slower.
The biggest point I'd make, from someone that's worked on his own schedule and from his own location, is that they need to make available quiet office space for people that want it. Even if people just check into whatever office space is open when they decide to come in and then take everything with them when they leave. It can be difficult to work when you have family members, annoying neighbors, and similar distractions bothering you at home. Not that these are worse than the average work enviroments meetings, interruptions from customers, co-workers, and bosses, ringing telephones, people talking in the background, attractive strangers, etc. You just need to have quiet offices with no windows available for people to work alone or in small groups when they choose to do so.
Other than that point I think this kind of work enviroment is great. I often get my best ideas or work through hard points I'm stuck on when I'm not working. I work better at night than I do during the day. I like having the freedom to pick my own location and hours - it greatly reduces my stress which is itself possibly the biggest distraction.
For workers I'd suggest trying to maintain a schedule but don't force yourself to it to strictly. If you're worrying about paying the gas bill then go pay the gas bill. If you're hungry then go ahead and eat. You're not doing yourself any favors by sitting at a desk thinking about some little worry but you need to make yourself get out of bed and work every day. It's not always easy but you can do it. The freedom is worth the responsiiblity.
For the employer I'd suggest also trying to minimize employee's other stresses. Employees will love you, stick with you, and do better work. In my own experience my biggest worry has been a company that doesn't respect me or my work. Relax dead lines a little when employees are doing an extra good job. Don't punish me for trying something new even if it doesn't work out in this case. Don't punish me for getting done early. Those little issues are important too.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
As a person who is a salesperson for a IT VAR (our product line is FAR more diverse than best buy), I have to say, you have a rather defeatist attitude. My customers would not only expect me to know enough about everything we sell to configure it, but to be able to make sure that they have something that's right over the phone. The first time. Every time.
No, it isn't easy, but with a diligent amount of study, a good attitude, patience, and a fair understanding of how to use the internet to find what you're looking for, it's really not that bad.
Then again, some people have trouble programming their VCR. I think that's the main reason that your customers might be concerned. Not because they don't know that *YOU* fix computers, but the don't if the the guy behind the desk knows a damned thing. It's like taking you car to Jiffy Lube for an engine rebuild.
There are no cheat-sheets or sales manuals listing the products in a department, and there are few brochures, if any. ...and the people with the initiative to dig out the manuals from the floor-display boxes or download them from the manufacturer's website to read them on their lunch break aren't willing to work for the wages Best Buy offers.
The company I do programming for has a similar policy. I can start work any time of the day I want as long as I get in the full 16 hours.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
"Umm if they had actual knowledge I highly doubt they would be working the floor at a best buy for minimum wage."
That's because outsourcing isn't through with IT yet.
My former employer really needs to read that article. I was originally hired by a small toy manufacturer that had a really cool culture and I also had a really good boss that didn't care if I got in at 9:30 or 10:00 instead of 9:00 sharp so long as the work was done. Then they were bought by a much larger, publicly traded corporation and everything went to hell. The office was moved from downtown Chicago (where most employees lived) to the western suburbs (my commute went from seven minutes to an hour), the starting hour was moved up to 8:00 am (7:00 in the summer) and I was assigned to a boss that followed HR's policies to the letter and would complain if I got in fifteen minutes late two days in a row. HR explicitly stated that everyone (except the execs of course) was required to be in the office at the same time so that we were all working together. No consideration was given to people (like me) who could do their work from anywhere in the world (I was responsible for the administration and development of their B2B commerce website) and who met with other groups in the company very unfrequently. My former boss actually gave a colleague of mine grief because he was coming in late due to going through a divorce and having to meet with his attorney in the mornings.
In the end I think those sorts of policies simply encouraged resentment by employees; it didn't help matters that some employees were already quite upset at having to work for new management. My friend who was going through the divorce had enough and just called in one day and said he wouldn't be coming in anymore. I ended up leaving because I was sick of having to get up at 5:30 am to make it to the office by 7:00 when I could have just done my work from my home office. Why should I keep punishing myself to benefit that sort of company when I can easily get another job that is more employee friendly?
I work someplace that's been doing this for more than 20+ years (and for more than 10 of those years they were an IBM division) and I've been with them for more than 15 years so I can tell you from personal experience exactly what happens once everybody "adjusts" to a results-only work environment.
Management stops making schedule commitments that could be met by really good employees working 40 hour weeks. They stop making schedule commitments that could be met by good employees working 60 hour weeks. Because once it *really* sinks in that the employees are being judged on whether they complete the job assigned rather than by how much they accomplish in 40 hours a week, management realizes that they can score themselves tremendously larger bonuses by contracting from customers an amount of work which could only be accomplished in 45 hours a week by twice as many people as they've assigned it to.
Don't be an idiot. Think.
...the guy in the urinal next to me at the movie theater yesterday trying to sell me extended warranties
I worked at OfficeMax for over a year. I feel your pain, comrade.
"Banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies." -Thomas Jefferson
The workers that are prone to laziness will not produce results by giving them more slack. This is the stupidest idea I've ever seen implemented in a business. They might as well let them inventory and sell Best Buy items from their homes. Turn it into an Amway basically.
As bad it sounds, that is absolutely true. Unfortunately, many managers do stress more about selling our services than the computers themselves. Ultimately, I try to know as much as I can about as much as I can to truly help my customers. The company does try to make all the information easily accessible, so if a customer has a question, we don't have to guess, and we can give the customer an informed answer.
I didn't. A friend who lives 300 miles away did.
Fight Spammers!
The OP sounds like he works at Apple ;p
This new policy won't last long.
The policy has already lasted over 2 years.
I've found that people who really like manditory hours tend to be the type that get mega brownie points for coming in a 7am or so. Of course they "skip" lunch and then leave at 3p. These people don't want to lose their brownie points. They haven't figured out how to get points for just being productive. If the boss makes it official that he doesn't care when you get in and leave these people are left wondering how they are going to prove their worth.
The people who like ultra-flex policies are the type who fully understand that they are productive at certain times (many times it's at least after 10am). They don't want to come in at 8am and stare at their monitor with a glassy gaze. It's a waste of their time and their company's time. They'd rather work from 10a-8p.
You can get a ton of work done when everybody else has left (after 6p).
Of course this completely doesn't apply to the actual store ethics damnit. Like we could function... stupid retail. But Best Buy Corp would be awesome to work for in Minnesota. Too bad it's in Minnesota... hehe
of course the slackers aren't going to produce more. They will simply be fired for not being productive. that's the beauty of a results-based system.
This has been my philosophy for years. I once worked for a company where I did more real work in 6 hours than every other employee did in 2 days. The owner of the company still felt that I was cheating him if I wasn't at work for the whole 8 hours despite my results and productivity. There was never a situation that required me to be there when I wasn't And I had remote access. The owner of the company's response to my productivity was to pile on more work and force me to punch a clock.
I have since had several other similar experiences.
the bottom line is, I'm paid to do a job. what does it matter what hours I keep as long as I'm productive and available?
Corporations are locked into this 9-5 mentality. That has bred the clockwatcher.
Clockwatchers generally keep their jobs because the do the bare minimum.
It's always the productive employees who get shit on. Moving to a results-based system means the clockwatchers will have to do more or get fired. This is a win-win situation.
The early-birds get to come in at the butt-crack of dawn and get a jump on things. while the productive people can walk in at the crack of 10 or 11 and do all their work in 5 or 6 hours and go home. Some employees might even opt to work later if their work isn't critical to business hours.
Now, I'm lucky enough to have my own business. My customers see me on my schedule. It's great.
They're using their grammar skills there.
I worked at a regional hospital chain for 2 years.
.. 8 hours a day. Didn't matter if you worked or not -- you just had to be there.
.. Why? Because I wasn't there. No matter that I started being 65% more productive working FEWER hours..
What really blew was that they expected you in your seat
Some weeks I worked 40 hours. Some weeks I worked closer to 65. Nights, weekends. Anything to get the projects / fixes / whatever done.
Problem was, in my 40 hour week, there were times that I only WORKED 15-20 hours. The rest of the time was walking from place to place, moving candy from a dish in one department to another, playing on the 'net, or just doing nothing at all and trying to keep from falling asleep.
Towards the end, I started coming in when I wanted. I still got ALL my projects finished on time, helped my co-workers on stuff - and only worked 15-20 hours a week.
Boss called me in and fired me
Aah well he was a jerk (still is, from what I hear)..
= Grow a brain...
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
I've been doing this myself... I show up when I want and leave when I want. Working in a virtual environment has its benefits I guess.
Now of course if I get slapped on the wrist by management I'll just tell them I was implementing a covert best-practice work-life balance transformation program. Maybe I'll get promoted.
"Best Buy has gone extreme, they have completely banished traditional views of office hours."
So, their employees are not allowed to go to work at the same time in two days of the same week? No, I didn't read the article, I am a slashdotter.
So say we all
... in a Dilbert strip earlier this week - "Anything worth having is worth abusing."
Research shows that 67% of those who use the term "research shows", are just making shit up.
Here's how it works. You can stay as late as you want, so long as you're there by 8 in the morning.
Wansu, th' chinese sailor
Just before the spectacular collapse, the business journals were ohhhing and aahhhing about the work culture in Enron. Articles were eerily similar. Sell BestBuy stock now. or short them. Or buy circuit city stock.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
I never see more than one person in any area.
Many companies present "flex time" to prospective employees as something that's driven by employee convenience and benefit.
Nobody *really* believes that, so there's no surprise when you show up at work and they tell you "Flex time is mutually agreed for the benefit of all involved."
For an ethical company that really attributes some value to employees' well being, it stops here.
For a company that can handle high turnover (BB, WM, CC, HD, etc.), the real policy is that most employees will be be expected to adjust their schedules according to the whim of the manager in charge of staffing.
Taken to the extreme, employees will find they're being called in to help out for an hour or two, then sent home.
For the company, it's the best possible situation.
They can control a staff large enough to handle the maximum workload, but only pay for the staff required for the mean load.
When there's nothing to do, the employees disappear.
Of course, this doesn't apply to BB, since they have a proven policy of treating their employees so well.
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, it doesn't go away." - Philip K. Dick
I used to work for a software company, in "Minnesotah" as it happened, and the programmins staff would start drifting in sometime after noon and would typically work until midnight/2:00am. That worked great, we were productive, got along, did not have to much inteaction with the bean counters, etc., until the owner of the company brought in a new manager who instituted these same core hours with "extreme flex" time, and actually instituted a dress code... 75% of the programmers left within 3 months.
This would of course not work with Best Buy being service oriented, and I hope it works for them. Probably the best lessons here are:
* listen to your employees -- maybe 8-5 is not best for them and some workable arangements can be made to keep everyone happy, and still do what needs to be done in a timely manner.
* happy workers are generally more productive workers, and if not more productive at least more pleasant to be arround.
BTW, my family runs several businesses, both production and service oriented, and our employee retention is bimodal -- if they last the first 10 weeks they are likely going to be around for a decade or two...
The dept. I work for develops software tools (IT/WEB/DATABASE/ETC) and the developers have been on "flex time" and are allowed to work remotely at their own discretion. This is extremely convenient; We are also a small team with a large charter and are consistently top performers and are considered essential and successful to the departments we support. This is a very effective model, but it does require some getting used to, especially since we are a "global" company and office hours are really 24/7. It is very convenient to be able to work from home and be as productive as I am at the office, especially when my car is in the shop (as it is now)... I am lucky to work for a manager that understands and embraces this.
My vocabulary is so huge it's enormous. if only I could think of a word bigger than enormous, like huge.
If you like/need structure than get a job at a company that does it, if you need some freedom then find a job that provides it. Life is too short/precious to be unhappy at your job.
(I do contract IT work for a large IT company in the US (they Spy alot but I've gotten use to the black suits and dark sedeans), part of my job is managing 4 people. I'm in CST, 3 of my team are in PST, and the bulk of my company contacts in EST. So I have to be flexible! And I work from home and I LOVE IT! To each his own, but you can't tell me you enjoy your 45 minute commute in traffic each way!! I know my brother doesn't who just left another large IT firm and worked from home, he loves his new job, but loathes the 45 minute commute in Charlotte, NC traffic.)
The article only mentions 3 of the '13 commandments of ROWE'. Anyone have a pointer to the full list? Or do we have to wait for the 2 Best Buy managers to hawk their book? (Wikipedia, you failed me on this!)
A.
This wouldn't really change anything.
Slashdot is here whether it's night or day, sunny or rainy.
Defining Statistics and Social Research
Why should non employee's "go ahead and learn about all the 75+ TV brands Best Buy Sells." You already pointed out the problem. Knowing that stuff isn't the customers problem (or job), its yours. When you don't know it, they realize yet again, they have to "do it themselves" which is exactly what they are trying to avoid, they already work for a living, what exactl do YOU do then.
Get it? Trying to excuse yourself because "its too much information!" or "It's really hard!" are only paving the road for a poor future, those kinds of excuses don't work in the world of jobs for people over 21.
Also "People are rude or mean to me & unappreciative in retail work"... So. What. People are rude & unappreciative to me everyday, regardless of if I'm at work or not. Get a grip, stop bitching & whining, deal with it. It doesn't matter WHERE you work, you are going to encounter that attitude. Right now its the customers, in 5 years it will be your manager who is unappreciative.
Everybody knows that "flex time" means you have the flexibility to work as much as the company wants you to work! ;)
it's difficult enough knowing everything about a single department, much less the entire store. Go ahead and try learning everything there is to know about the 75+ different televisions sold at a given Best Buy location, including remembering the subtle differences between models of the same size and brand.
Especially when there is no incentive. Bad pay, and for the most part some kid who just wanted a job to pay for gas to the movies, slim profit margins... I used to work for a high-end computer store, just before the best-buy computers, etc. came out with razor thin margins. We charged an arm and leg for computers and what not, but we catered to the people who knew nothing and didn't want to know anything. Everyone knew there stuff about the 75+ models of equipment we had. Everyone was a tech and a salesperson (except for the one weird kid who wasn't allowed to talk to people). We got paid pretty well for what we did, and we got the super discounts on products, plus the store was like a family. This store is now out of business because people stopped caring about the knowledgeable staff and quality help. Its kind of ironic to see people go to best-buy and bitch about the sales people not knowing anything, because they did it to themselves by going there in the first place and putting the little-guy stores out of business.
Rule No 7: Nobody talks about fight club.
Lodragan Draoidh
The more you explain it, the more I don't understand it. - Mark Twain
This has the potential to work really well, until everyone in the company decides to take the day off at the same time.... :-)
Sheesh. I work from home and even I have a schedule. Here's hoping it catches on.
Oh yes... think of the benefits from the traffic standpoint alone ("rush hour" would be obsolete), not to mention that people can work closer to their natural schedules.
I work in visual FX, a profession which also has a relatively small number of "core hours" (especially on long form projects like film, less so for commercials or television), and I've been able to unilaterally work like this for some time.. the focus is on results, not face time.
The next step is to let people work any five days in the week they want... work on Saturday, say, and do your shopping when everyone else is at work and those stubbornly old-style businesses with old-style 9 to 5 hours (like auto shops and banks) are open.