Rowe is me.
April 3rd, 2007 by Matt
I’m not what you’d call “Fan Numero Uno of le Buy de Best.” Why? Because no other fool but me would mix English, Spanish, and French into such an awful language melting pot of goop. (By the way, I call this new amalgam language Spenglench.)
But seriously, Best Buy, while treating some right, has treated me a little wrong. If you’ll humor me, allow me share a little tale.
My VCR broke down about a year ago, and, you know, I’ve got a closet full of video tapes (and not that kind of video tapes, you perv). So, I’m checking out and, as Circuit City as my witness, the clerk said: “Why the hell are you buying this? Don’t you watch DVDs?” I finished my purchase, but my rage lingered around like a rash on one’s unspeakables. So, the next day, I returned the sucker.
But (and this is an elephant-sized one), Best Buy might be changing my mind. They’ve developed a new work program called Rowe (results-only work environment), which was highlighted in a recent issue of Business 2.0. And this ain’t your old man’s flextime program. Rowe works (no pun intended) like this:
The boss has no say in scheduling and can judge employees only on tasks successfully completed — even if none were done in the office.
And under this system, currently used by Best Buy for 60% of the folks working in the corporate headquarters “employee productivity has increased an average of 35 percent in departments covered by the program.”
And they’ve got plans to use Rowe in their stores as well. Makes sense to me. I’ve had at least four jobs where I spent a good part of my day creating the illusion of work, or simply taking so many bathroom breaks that, even though I was pretending, I started to wonder if I had a potty problem.
I could see a bit of trouble brewing — the tasks could simply rise and rise some more, demanding more and not an equal amount of work from employees. Still, it’s an intriguing bit of work policy, one that could truly benefit workers and employers.
So let’s keep our fingers and VHS tapes crossed, mon good amigos.
Photo by this work-a-holic.
Share This
Add this to your favorites