ROWE system gives greater flexibility to employees

Posted by: Dana Hunsinger, Indy Star Reporter, Saturday, August 20, 2011 7:00 am

There are people who firmly believe work only happens in the office at a desk. Sam McKinney laughs heartily at that. His work almost never happens there.

McKinney comes into the office only when he wants to. Some days he wakes up and doesn’t feel like doing any work at all, and that’s OK with his boss.

Just Wednesday, his makeshift office was filled with animals as he spent the day with his 2-year-old daughter at the Indianapolis Zoo doing a little work here and there.

This is the life of a ROWE (Results-Only Work Environment) employee. It’s the newest trend sweeping the workplace, and it makes telecommuting and flextime look super strict.

With ROWE, employees are simply expected to get their work done. It doesn’t matter where or what time of the day.

“You don’t even have to ask. You don’t have to take a vacation day,” said McKinney, a Web developer with SpinWeb. “I don’t have to pretend like I’m sick.”

In Indianapolis, SpinWeb about three years ago became the first company to enact ROWE. A second, Small Blessings, just started ROWE Monday. Others are hoping to follow suit as they sign up for a ROWE boot camp that takes place next month.

With ROWE, the philosophy is that workers who have control of their lives and time are more productive. And that workers will like the autonomy so much they become ultra loyal to their company.

For bosses, the approach takes the weight of babysitting and micromanaging off their shoulders — if they can let go.

There are no hours to track or personal leave to dole out. Just setting goals and then measuring results. Employees who don’t meet goals risk being shown the door. Those who do? Management couldn’t care less where they are.

“This completely throws time out the window and measures people completely on productivity,” said Michael Reynolds, owner of SpinWeb.

It’s a novel concept but is exactly what ROWE creators Jody Thompson and Cali Ressler had in mind while working at the corporate headquarters of Best Buy.

It was 2003, and they were charged with figuring out how to retain the company’s best employees and improve productivity.

“We basically looked at each other and said, ‘The way that work is happening today is broken. We need to change the game,’ " Ressler said.

ROWE was their answer. Best Buy finished implementing it in 2005.

Since then, other big companies such as Gap Outlet and Banana Republic have signed on.

Nationwide, there are 40 ROWE companies, which may not seem like many. But to go ROWE can be a scary thing for management, Ressler said.

“It’s much easier in any organization to manage time and physical presence of employees,” she said. “With this, the rug is going to be ripped out from under people. That safety net will be gone.”

ROWE employees, for instance, often do things other than work at times when work traditionally should be done.

Ressler has heard stories of employees following bands around the country, taking on hobbies they thought would have to wait for retirement and even starting their own business on the side while working a full-time job.

At SpinWeb, Reynolds said productivity at his company has doubled since ROWE was implemented. Employees often tell him they never want to leave the company.

Why would they? They are crafting their entire schedule to fit their lives.

One employee, Tony Williams, had an itch to move to Atlanta. So he did, and he kept his job at SpinWeb in Indianapolis.

“In other jobs, I felt like I was on lockdown and on an assembly line,” said Williams, 29, a designer. “Now I’m in control.”

Williams is the extreme example of using ROWE.

There is also the example of the not-so-extreme in Adam Weber, director of business development, who has worked at SpinWeb six months.

He calls ROWE life-changing for him but in a simple way.

“I went to the dentist today,” he said Tuesday. “I can’t tell you how impossible it has been to go to the dentist at other jobs.”

On Monday, he spent the day at home with two sick children.

“I wake up and let the day decide what I will do,” he said.

Employees, of course, love the ROWE system.

But there aren’t many critics to be found anywhere, even in the world of human resources. Management is quickly learning this is the type of workplace companies are going to have to create to retain their top talent.

“Workplace flexibility is the next business imperative,” said Lisa Horn, co-leader of the Society for Human Resource Management’s workplace flexibility initiative. “It’s the way work is going to get done going forward.”

ROWE, however, doesn’t work for all employees, Horn said. It is geared toward employees who are exempt from minimum wage and overtime requirements.

“If an organization has a significant nonexempt population,” she said, “this may not work for them because of wage and hour restrictions and concerns of running afoul of the National Labor Relations Board.”

ROWE advocates argue it can still work, that ROWE isn’t only about being away from the office. It’s about giving employees more freedom to do their jobs how they want.

Small Blessings, a child-care provider in Indianapolis, is a perfect example.

Teachers, of course, have to be in the classroom, but owner Lee Ann Balta thinks the system will help her 35 employees take an ownership role.

She used to spend her days trying to coordinate everybody’s schedule. That will be the employees’ job now.

Even on Small Blessings’ second day of ROWE last week, workers were already coming up with new ideas on how to get things done.

Balta said it gave her, the director, a sense of freedom.

“Every time someone broke a rule, you had to add something to the handbook,” she said. “Now we are getting rid of all the policing stuff. We can just trust.”

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