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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.
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.
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.
Best Buy Stores may (as you say) suck, but the corporate offices are looking like one sweet gig here in Minnesotah--yah der don'tcha know...
I use irony whenever I can, but my shirts are still wrinkled...
Dude, I've lived in Minnesota most of my life and if I ever hear you talking like that to outsiders again I swear I'll slap you upside the face with a hockey stick! No hotdish for you!
This sig isn't original enough, it's time to come up with something witty...
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
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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
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
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
Umm if they had actual knowledge I highly doubt they would be working the floor at a best buy for minimum wage.
CS: It is all sink or swim...oh and did I mention there are sharks in that water?
...this is opposed to the old standby "Work All Days Evenly". A new ROWE vs WADE.
FLR
Best Buy has employees?
You mean those blue shirted people who just stand around?
They *work* there? :-o
Probably not, because they want their computers to WORK.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50