“Results Only Work Environment” at Best Buy

8 comments

Bestbuy
BusinessWeek published at great article last week regarding the massive transformation (using transformation in its greatest sense) to drastically change its workforce culture, performance and environment at Best Buy.  Best Buy’s strategy is simple in nature.  As the article states, "…the official policy for this post-face-time, location-agnostic way of working is that
people are free to work wherever they want, whenever they want, as long
as they get their work done." 

"…At most companies,
going AWOL during daylight hours would be grounds for a pink slip. Not
at Best Buy. The nation’s leading electronics retailer has embarked on
a radical–if risky–experiment to transform a culture once known for
killer hours and herd-riding bosses. The endeavor, called ROWE, for
"results-only work environment," seeks to demolish decades-old business
dogma that equates physical presence with productivity. The goal at
Best Buy is to judge performance on output instead of hours."

My take…this program sounds quite progressive and dangerous at the same time.  Time will tell which thinking here is correct.  I do, though, think only a very few companies could even consider this program as an option.  What makes Best Buy’s efforts possible is its embracing of outsourcing and technology to enable process improvement and innovation.  Best Buy has been in process of a multi-year HR transformation which included outsourcing its core and some strategic HR functions to Accenture back in 2004 (under a 7-year, $800 million contract).  To be successfully, Best Buy must continue to develop a new style
of leadership required to support their flexible workforce and ensure process compliance internally and externally.  I applaud the CEO for taking a bold yet ambitious step to accomodate workforce change, and the employees for testing the grass-roots effort and getting enough momentum and courage to present to the CEO. 

It should be noted…I am a big fan of Best Buy and if you saw all of the gadgets on my desk (2 Blackberrys, 2 iPods, 1 MP3, 2 cameras, and 2 external storage drives) it would become well apparent!

UPDATE: Workforce Magazine was actually the first to write about Best Buy’s program [free subscription required] a few months ago and does a great job providing further insight.  (thanks John!)

  • http://www.workforce.com John Hollon

    Yes, this was a good article on Best Buy. Too bad it didn’t mention that Workforce Management had it as a cover story on September 5 (‘Flexibility to the Fullest — Best Buy frees corporate employees to work wherever they want, whenever they want, as long as they reel in results.”)

  • http://www.humancapitalist.com Jason Corsello

    Thanks John. I have updated the post!

  • Phil Fersht

    While Best Buy continues to be a leading protagonist of HRO, I recently noticed that their customer care outsourcing strategy is taking on an interesting angle. I have been trying to find out about what to do with the multiple thousand reward-zone points I have collected over the years (greedily eying that new Sony HDTV). The only way to access this service is to call up their care service to get set up with an online account. I am not kidding, it took me three failed attempts over a two-hour experience to finally get routed through to a rep somewhere which sounded suspiciously like China. After a futile attempt at an English converation which lasted a painful 5 minutes, we had to agree to give up the dialog and I hung up. I know China is the new haven for outsourcing, but shouldn’t we at least wait for the reps to learn English first before we loop the calls through? Or is this a cunning ruse to stop us cashing in the frequent flyer points?

  • http://www.thelearningforum.org Brian Hackett

    If the Results Only Work Environment is for real – why are the two women who championed it now on their own as consultants? Why have no other companies adopted it? Why is customer service still so bad at Best Buy?

    I’m afraid this is just another fad. Just more “management by magazine” where HR folks see a so called “best practice”, but never research it enough to see if it actually helps with business reselts.

  • Rex Card

    To the previous poster. Wanted to point you to some hard evidence of this type of work environment thriving. The university of Minnesota alongside the NIH did a full fledged study of this work environment and came up with some findings that counter your comments. The study can be found here: http://www.culturerx.com/downloads/FWWB_Fall07.pdf

    When you are able to go into the workplace, research, observe and report on this system your comments will solicit more merit.

  • http://www.scottsemple.com Scott Semple
  • http://www.microsourcing.com Karen Cayamanda

    The strategy of Best Buy is effective for people who doesn’t want to have a specific schedule of work everyday. You can easily work depending on your preferred time and place as long as you finish your task.

  • http://www.rowejobopenings.com Rick

    I’m a software developer and for as long as I can remember my best work happens at 10pm.

    The only problem with working like that is that going to bed at 2a and getting up at 6am is brutal plus, to sit my butt in a chair just because someone needs to see me there has always been off kilter in my world.

    I love the ROWE movement and can’t want for more companies to step aboard, infact, I love the idea of ROWE so much that I created a job board for ROWE “rowejobopenings dot com” so ROWE companies please sign up your jobs.

Previous post:

Next post: