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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.
It's my experience that this is the case in most places.
My boss, a COO (COO == a CIO who also has machines that get actual grease on them under his authority), worked a big 3 days this week, including one day that was 11-6...I think I worked 9-8 on the same day.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Not really, the Techs may make $10-$12 an hour, but regular sales reps make under $9 at best. I worked at a BB for 3 years and I started at $7 and finally got up to $8.50 or so before I quit.
no, no clocking in... from TFA:
Note rule 7.If more companies in a set area went to a flexible schedule, I wonder how much that would fix traffic jams
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The City of Houston thinks it will help alleviate traffic problems. It's actually city policy to encourage flex time for this reason, and this policy has specifically caused one of the (very large) aerospace contractors I work with to implement a generous flex time policy.
http://www.houstontx.gov/flexworks/flexinthecity/
Worst...sig...ever!
ROWE works best in environments where you have a lot of little tasks with very small overlap (highly parallel in nature). For our group, most projects involve between 10 and 60 hours with about a dozen sub-tasks. Which means that each of us will typically be the only person working on a particular project, but that others can easily step in and finish other sub-tasks when we're behind. We'll also typically be juggling anywhere between 2-4 projects at the same time, in various states of completion.
Our coordinator typically does "leveling" every 1-3 days where we take a quick look at what tasks are due soon, what projects need priority in the queue, and what expected ETAs are. He also sets the final decision on what gets priority and what can be shuffled off to another day.
An example would be my current week where I just finished up a 60-80 hour job. As far as we know, there's nothing else big in the pipeline until after the holidays. So after taking a day or two to recuperate and run errands, I get to put on one of my other hats and work on system administration tasks. I might end up doing another small 8 hour job next week, but I should be able to spend most of my time setting up the new DB and web servers.
We've been doing ROWE-style scheduling for almost 7 years now. Having 100% telecommuters helps in changing the focus from seat-time to result-oriented. Off-hand, I'd say that 25%-33% of our workforce works from offsite at least once a week and about 20% work offsite the majority of the time (or full-time). And I'm constantly working on implementing technologies that allow us that flexibility without giving up security.
Communication tech is pretty critical. Home workers need a dedicated phone number (either dedicated line, distinct ring, or cell phone). Broadband is also a requirement. A corporate chat server (Jabber/XMPP), e-mail server (IMAP, WebMail, and POP3) are needed to allow for instant communication without using the phone or using e-mail for unsynchronized communication. Some workers can make do with dedicated desktop machines at home, others will require laptops, others can simply remote into their work machines.
Another tool that is very useful is some sort of project / task tracking system. There needs to be a way that people working on a project (and mgmt) can see where a project stands. Version control systems (Subversion, etc) are also very important because they decentralize file storage while keeping people in sync.
I don't know that you ultimately save money with telecommuters. It's typically a very large gain for the employee because they're not wasting 30-120 minutes per day in traffic. But if the company needs to buy a laptop every few years, pay for broadband, pay for other communication tools, etc, the cost savings can be marginal. The budget for a remote worker will be somewhere between $200/mo and $500/mo, depending on technical needs. But frankly, I think that's a reasonable price to spend to get a huge morale boost.
(I guess it depends on what you pay for office space and how much wastage time you think there is due to office distractions.)
Wolde you bothe eate your cake, and have your cake?
Corporate offices, dumb fuck.
Well, don't forget, if you are on 24/7 'call'....make sure and get paid for it. If it involved people with 'beeper time'....you get paid when carrying the beeper even if not working.
That is the price for them having the ability to intrude on your time.
Remember...NEVER work for free.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
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?
When I worked as a contractor For TWC, I was paid per foot of fiber that my crew hung. We received $0.18/foot, and that was split between 3 guys, New guy got 20%, Lineman got 30%, and supervisor received 50%. We could hang ~5-6000 feet a day, so it worked out nicely. We were able to work when we wanted, as long as the project was finished in time.
-William
God is everything science has yet to explain.
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...