Back in February I wrote a blog post about companies that offer their employees unlimited paid vacation time. The unlimited paid vacation time concept is a part of a greater concept called Results-Only Work Environment, which I intend to explore further in this post and in a follow-up post tomorrow.
Many of us have experienced working with individuals who while they may seldom leave their desks and may even be the first to arrive and last to leave, don’t seem to accomplish much work. While most organizations pay great rhetoric to the importance of employee results, many traditional organizations fall into the trap of rewarding face time over results. As this video mocks:
Pioneered by consulting group Culture RX and in practice at Best Buy’s Minneapolis headquarters, a Results-Only Work Environment (ROWE) is a management philosophy focused on employee results over presence. With ROWE employees are free to come and go as they please and do whatever they want, so long as work gets done and deadlines are met. As the authors of the book ‘Why Work Sucks and How to Fix It: The Results-Only Revolution’ Cali Ressler and Jody Thompson explain:
For a ROWE to be achieved there should be unlimited paid vacation time, no mandatory meetings, no schedules and employees should have the freedom to come and go as they please without judgment from their coworkers and managers on how their day is spent.
ROWE enables organizations to create an environment of trust, which quickly helps to differentiate the employees that are getting work done from those that aren’t. This concept is most suited to knowledge work environments, which are task and project focused. It is unlikely to work in a service environment.
Here are a couple of examples of how employees can use ROWE:
Example 1: Jane works from 8-12 in the morning before spending the afternoon enjoying the nice weather at the park, before logging back in to her computer to work from home in the evening.
Example 2: Joe completes an entire month of work in 2 weeks and apart from checking in with work by e-mail or cell phone, enjoys the rest of the month with his kids who are on break from school.
So what do you think of this concept? Share your thoughts in the comments section below and look out for my next blog post on the benefits of ROWE tomorrow.
Marie Wiere's Blue Sky Management Blog 
Great post Marie! I’ve heard of ROWE before, but never knew exactly what it was. I’m sure it takes some guts and whole lot of trust for a company to implement this type of work environment, but I’m sure you could also end up with some very satisfied, committed, and productive employees.
Keep up the great blog!
Thanks Ian for taking the time to comment.
I had heard of more results focused work ideas before, but didn’t come across the exact definition of ROWE until a few days ago when I read an article on Fast Company on it, which led to me discovering Culture RX and how great this concept could be.
I think as MBA students a ROWE is definitely the type of outside the box work environment many of us would like to work in one day.
Marie,
I had never heard of ROWE before. But this is an extremely interesting concept. The first video is quite funny. And it was great to see the two authors in action in the second video. They are innovators.
I love the idea of focusing on results. I know some companies separate vacation days, sick days, personal days, etc. But my attitude has always been, if you’re not there, does it really matter why you’re not there? However, the ROWE concept takes that even further by just focusing on the results and not worrying about when the employees are there.
Thanks for sharing.
Thanks Greg, for your interesting comment.
I like your point regarding companies that feel the need to define why an employee is off. You are right it really doesn’t matter.
I am fascinated by the ROWE concept and think it could the way of the future. Cali Ressler and Jody Thompson have definitely come up with a game changing concept.
Marie,
I completely agree. I personally would definitely prefer to work in a place that implements this rather than the typical work environment.
LOVE this.
Thanks Danny, me too!
I’m using ROWE in my motivation presentation for my summer course. You might enjoy the TED presentation that one of my team members found by Dan Pink – http://youtu.be/rrkrvAUbU9Y on motivation. He mentions ROWE toward the end.
That’s great Heather! Thank you for the TED video link, I will definitely check it out.
[…] year I wrote several posts on the results-only work environment concept and the benefits of this approach. To recap a Results-Only Work Environment (ROWE) is a […]