A Results Only Work Environment (or Results Oriented Work Environment), is a radical management strategy in which employees are paid for what they achieve rather than the number of hours they work. In simple terms, think numbers of widgets made rather than number of hours spent making widgets and apply that concept to all types of work.
This resonates with the Nomad view of work being an ‘activity’ rather than a ‘place’.
In a ROWE, people do whatever they want whenever they want – as long as the work gets done. Employees control their own calendars and are not required to be in ‘the office’ if they can complete their tasks elsewhere. In the park, in a coffee shop, at 3am or on Sunday. Whenever and wherever.
Pros:
- Flexible work hours help participants to better balance work and home life
- Less demanding work environments and an end to the long hours culture reduces stress and contributes to a healthier workforce
- Demonstrates a positive and trusting employer/employee relationship that can lead to greater employee satisfaction and loyalty
- Teamwork, morale and engagement can soar
Cons:
- Output measurement is harder for some jobs
- Management can be challenging (culture change)
- Some people have a harder time working with others without face-to-face interaction
- Can be destructive for individuals who don’t have the discipline to hold themselves accountable for what they should work on
- There is potential for unreasonable expectations to be set that by default demand employees to work at all hours just to conform, perversely blurring the boundaries between work and family life
Why Work Sucks by Cali Ressler & Jody Thompson
In the States, Cali Ressler and Jody Thompson, are leading advocates for the movement. Check out their book or caliandjody.com or the ROWE Facebook page for more detail.
The ROWE methodology was most famously implemented at Best Buy, a Fortune 100 company.
There’s a fascinating write up over at BusinessWeek, entitled, “Smashing the Clock” which begins,
“One afternoon last year, Chap Achen, who oversees online orders at Best Buy, shut down his computer, stood up from his desk, and announced that he was leaving for the day. It was around 2 p.m., and most of Achen’s staff were slumped over their keyboards, deep in a post-lunch, LCD-lit trance. “See you tomorrow,” said Achen. “I’m going to a matinee.” Under normal circumstances, an early-afternoon departure would have been totally un-Achen. After all, this was a 37-year-old corporate comer whose wife laughs in his face when he utters the words “work-life balance.” But at Best Buy’s Minneapolis headquarters, similar incidents of strangeness were breaking out all over the ultramodern campus.” continued…
Fully implementing a ROWE in the UK public sector would be challenging. However, we need to embrace the principles and begin to adjust our thinking and our approach. Lean and effective 21st century public services require new thinking and visionary leadership. Perhaps we should loosen our ties, release control a little and try some new approaches. The days of the workhouse are long gone and study after study confirm that we are not best served by legacy ‘command and control’ management styles.
I’m utterly in favour of this method of working from the point of view that we should be paid for what we achieve, not asked to achieve more if we excel. I’ve almost always been fortunate to work in environments where I am salaried and, as long as I produce the results demanded, management have been flexible about how they are achieved.
However, in my current role in education, I’m cautious about this approach. Results can mean very different things to different people and the education field is riddled with this issue. It’s particularly true for the adult and community learning field which, incidentally, is one that is normally run entirely by the local authority. Results are normally measured based on recruitment, retention and achievement on courses. This entirely misses the vast community benefits to social and informal learning, something that really should be at the heart of community learning. Additionally, results are often added based on the current funding agenda. So, until recently, progression into work and a level 2 qualification was the buzzword. Of course, many people achieved great things who could not work or were retired. Many people worked all their hours to get to a level 1 qualification and would not have wanted to attempt a level 2.
The same argument is banded about with pre-16 education when it comes to league tables. Results don’t always measure the real quality output and the pressure to achieve targets can sometimes seriously undermine the efforts of the practitioner.
Of course, none of these arguments go against the model for ROWE – it’s just that we have to be very careful about what we mean by results.
Points very well made. I think this is about choosing outcome measures carefully and sensibly. That is inevitably going to be alot harder in some areas than in others. I actually think in some disciplines we lack the skills to do this – that’s different to saying it couldn’t be done. We need to have a better understanding of ‘value’ and ensure that social and other benefits are fully considered. It’s all too easy to take a simplistic view and to set targets based purely on outputs rather than the real quality outcomes we seek to achieve.
There’s also an awful lot of cultural baggage hanging around these issues and I think traditionally many leaders and managers have been reluctant to challenge and innovate (and in some cases have actually used this to ‘block’ change).
At the extreme, we also see output measures used in desperate ways by unskilled managers keen to demonstrate that they themselves are performing well. I’ve a lot of time for John Seddon’s views on these issues to be honest (www.systemsthinking.co.uk).
There aren’t many salaried public servants who are as fortunate as you in terms of being allowed to ‘get on with it’ I’d wager [pardon the pun]. That’s the kind of trusted relationship we should be seeking to deploy more widely. Unfortunately, the bean counters and doom merchants all too often believe that time accounting and ‘attendance’ are reliable measures of performance and most of our systems and controls are predicated upon those flawed beliefs. We can change that though – right?!
Hello there, just doing some browsing for my Minneapolis 4g website. Amazing the amount of information on the web. Wasn’t exactly what I was looking for, but good site. Take care.
This would be a brilliant scheme if we could find a way to make it work.Public sector jobs obviously couldn’t adopt this approach but for a business environment i believe it could work exceptionally well.People are busier than ever now with family commitments, and emergencies come up from time to time for everybody,it would be so much nicer to not get grief from employers if you need personal days or a few hours to not miss something you really wanted to do.To many people raise children and have to work ridiculous hours to keep them financially too,it would be so nice to not have to miss a football match or dance recital or nativity for the sake of financially supporting your family.
Absolutely Natalie!
I think maybe the main issue stopping this working in the public sector (apart from Kevin’s cautions around ensuring the correct outputs are measured) would be the reputational risk regarding public perception. Sad really, as the public sector employees ARE the general public also!
It would be interesting to see if any studies are available with stats to prove the effectiveness of this method compared to traditional methods of staff management.