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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
"...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.
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.
I am one of those mindless drones in a call center, and I approve of this message.
Living With a Nerd
...this is opposed to the old standby "Work All Days Evenly". A new ROWE vs WADE.
FLR
If you read the entire article you would know that they are only doing this at the corporate headquarters not at store level, yet. It will be interesting to see how this works at the store level where the Sales Associate's job is to be available. This could be partially adapted to retail by allowing the employees to write the work schedule, within certain guidelines of course.
You seems to be one of those wonderfull customers that really make the life of underpayed workers easier.
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
I guess its a good thing Best Buy isn't a development environment then, huh?
~Rebecca
Best Buy has employees?
You mean those blue shirted people who just stand around?
They *work* there? :-o
okay, first of all, i am all for telecommuting. if you need an office, fine go to the office, if you don't.. save the company a dollar or two and stay at home. second, meetings? they're mandatory. if you want everyone at a meeting at 8am, give 24 hours notice and specify if they have to be present or merely on the phone (exceptions expected, don't bitch if it happens.. you get to work from home, better than 90% of the world). third, make sure everyone is reachable between certain hours. you will have a happy workforce. you will also have an obedient taskforce, since a job where you can telecommute is rare and high in demand and i'm sure a telecommuter would not want to give up his/her job to return to a 8-5 cubicle hell position.
one of my previous jobs were like this (fortune 100 company) and productivity was high. as my company grows larger i plan on implementing the same policy and save money in the process.
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.
I have to differ with you on this. I work in a evelopment environment were each member of the teamis in a diferent state. Though I have a office building I can go to to "work" I work mostly from home. I collaborate with colleagues using phone, IM, or remote connection to demostrate. We sher files, code, and ideas without the need for the traditional face to face. While I would like to meet those I "work" with in person it does not impact my ability to network and do my job. These days I am less a manager and more a developer, but I see how my manager has adpated to this new environment and has gotten good results from his people. maybe there are folks who cannot work from home because of distractions (I am not one), but performance is measured not by the time I keep in a cube, but how well I meet my deadlines, satisfy my customers, and help improve the bottom line of the company. Considering the crapping work conditions of my company office, I do better by working at home. I will admit I am old school enough that I try to maintain a regular schedule, but flex does not stop the ability to schedule meetings either live or phone. it is about time the IT industry move to the 21st century and changed management styles to take advantage of the technologies that allow people to work from any where and still get the job done.
Life is a great ride, the vehicle doesn't matter
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.
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.
If nothing needs to be done, then nothing getting done really isn't much of a problem. Of course, this wouldn't apply to the sorts of tasks where being there is half the "job".
Information wants to be free.
Entertainment wants to be paid.
You just want to be cheap.
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.
haha, you poor sap.
I was on a team thet worked three years on an 80 million dollar project, seldom had meetings, most people worked very flexible, and the project was damn succesfull. to quote the Sr. VP "It saved us more money then we could have possible imagined."
SO meetings are very seldom needed. Most business meetings can easily be handle via email, IM or telephone.
Design meeting are usually best in person for creating the frame work, after that features should be easy to conceptualize.
I'll say it again: "Meeting are hardly ever needed, and always too long."
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
...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.
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?
"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.
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!
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.
The problem is the conception that if you can't see someone then they are not there. That means the boss several levels higher than you might axe your employees when he is looking to reduce costs. After all who is this mike guy he never sees and why am I paying him?
/. like for example "... I let Fred telecommute until I got home later that day and saw he logged into his Xbox360 account. His priveldge was revoked..". I for one like the idea of meeting in an office most of the time and spending a day or two at home occasionally doing work if too many distractions are in the way. Many people such as myself have add/adhd and can focus more with people around us at work.
Also many employers tend to slack more at home and sleep in more. Not all but I have read stories here on
http://saveie6.com/
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.
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?
...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
With the huge amount of stores, inventory, and employees they have to manage, BB's corporate office most certainly is a development environment.
A post a day keeps productivity at bay.
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!
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
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.
I couldn't disagree more. Open-source products are built by people all over the planet collaborating on different timezones and sleep schedules with wikis, email, IRC chat, IM, and bug tracking tools. And, newsflash, open-source software has higher quality than corporate spaghetti code created by enslaved clockwatching programmers (who may be great developers on open-source at night, actually). The companies will need another 1000 years to understand that freedom is the only way to motivate people and make friends.
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.
if the company needs to buy a laptop every few years, pay for broadband, pay for other communication tools, etc
Why would they need to do that? For most positions that companies would consider allowing telecommuting for, I think it's reasonable to expect the employee to have their own computer. Just don't bother them about having porn on the same computer they do work on.
Rule No 7: Nobody talks about fight club.
Lodragan Draoidh
The more you explain it, the more I don't understand it. - Mark Twain
Who's fault is it that the telecommuters were allowed to telecommute and upper management didn't know? Who's fault is it that upper management axes their best developer after asking lower management "who is Mike?" Mike could be the quiet, introverted guy who never shows up at company gatherings but dillegently plugs away in his cube. How safe is he from getting fired then?
Second, if you're telcommuting and you're expected to be doing work.. there's a reasonable assumption that catching you logged into xbox 360 will get you fired. COMMON SENSE. This goes for things such as posting to slashdot at work, making personal calls on the company dime, etc.
Secondly, I am highest up in my chain. So I let my employees work from if they want to. They have to supply their own broadband connection and pc. If they don't, they get to come into the office every day. Is that fair? I think so...
Possible flamebait follows.. read at your own discretion.
Finally, i will reiterrate a previous point. IF YOU FEEL THAT YOU NEED TO BE AT WORK TO DO WORK AND THEY OFFER TELECOMMUTING, THEN KEEP GOING IN TO WORK. No one has a gun to your head saying "work from home". or, IF YOU ARE OFFERED A TELECOMMUTING POSITION, DON'T TAKE IT. I can't believe how many people have posted comments like this. I mean I know opinions are like assholes, but does it have to happen every single time? I like orange juice, should i tell you how delicious orange juice is compare to your crappy choice of cranberry juice? </flame>
Um... at no point did I say that I was against telecommuting. I'm against flex hours. There is a difference... one is where you work from home, the other is where you're only guaranteed to be available to collaborate with your co-workers for about 3 hours per day.
Why would they need to do that? For most positions that companies would consider allowing telecommuting for, I think it's reasonable to expect the employee to have their own computer. Just don't bother them about having porn on the same computer they do work on.
If you allow the employees to supply their own machine, who is on the hook when it doesn't work? Can you discipline an employee for buying sub-standard tools that are required to do their job? Who pays for the software? Who pays for the court costs if pirated software is found (probably the employee).
The closest corollary I can think of is mechanic's tools. Mechanics supply their own tools (I think) but I think there are also monthly allowances for the replacement/purchase of new tools.
Personally, I draw the line based on whether the person is a contract worker (paid hourly or piece-work fashion) or a salaried employee. For salaried employees, we supply the hardware and software just as we would if they were in the office. For contract workers, they're required to have their own tools.
Wolde you bothe eate your cake, and have your cake?
Can you discipline an employee for buying sub-standard tools that are required to do their job?
Yes, absolutely. That's not a terribly stringent requirement these days. You would need to provide tech support to a wider variety of machines, though, and that is a downside.
Who pays for the software?
I think you could work out a license so that X number of your employees can install software on their own computers.
Who pays for the court costs if pirated software is found (probably the employee).
I would expect the employee, unless they were directed to do it by their manager.
The closest corollary I can think of is mechanic's tools. Mechanics supply their own tools (I think) but I think there are also monthly allowances for the replacement/purchase of new tools.
Do you mean car mechanics? I don't know that field so well, but a good friend of mine is a machinist, and he had to struggle early on to build the large set of tools he had to own for work, and no, there was no assistance from any of the 3-4 companies he worked at through that period.