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Honeymoons Are Better In A ROWE

Feb 22, 2011 » by Jody

Life is interesting. Each day is new, and wonderfully unpredictable. That’s why flexible work schedules suck. Flexible schedules are inflexible and ‘flexible schedule’ is an oxymoron. But I digress.

SUNTELL adopted ROWE after their 1-day Fastrack Migration on August 31st, 2010. A few months later, one of their employees, Ryan, went on his honeymoon and got to experience the liberating feeling of being in a ROWE firsthand.

Here’s his story.

Ryan lives in Kansas and he and his wife were excited for their trip to Jamaica. However, the day they were expected to depart, the south got hit with a huge winter storm so their plans were delayed by a day. Just one measly day.

Fortunately, Ryan was able to extend his reservation at the destination resort to include an additional night and change flights. While he was making these changes, he did not once stress out about work.

Not so much for Ryan’s wife. She spent their time at the Charlotte airport stressing out about work. She was in nail-biting mode wondering what she would need to do to cover the additional day. She was wondering if it would be okay. All she could think about was work and how the weather had thrown her perfectly planned time off . . . well, off.

Ryan, however is in a ROWE.  In a ROWE, everyone has everyone else’s back. It’s respectful, and there’s NO SLUGE (Oh, Ryan just wants another day of vacation. Now WE have to cover him. What a Slacker that Ryan is!) So when they arrived in Jamaica, Ryan simply emailed his team to inform them that he would be unplugged an additional day. Easy peasy.

Life throws us curveballs. Life is wonderfully unpredictable. And in a ROWE, you can take care of your LIFE without feeling guilty or stressed out.

In a ROWE, having a team isn’t about sitting together in an office every day. In a ROWE, teaming isn’t an ‘activity’. In a ROWE, you don’t have to go through silly team building exercises to trust each other or get to know each other so that work can happen.

In a ROWE, you actually EXPERIENCE the power of a team.

In a ROWE, life really does matter.

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  • jennifer

    AMEN FOR ROWE!! I am getting married next May and I’m already freaking out about not having enough vacation time to travel to the wedding venue (I’m getting married like 8 states away from where I live), have the wedding festivities and then go on my honeymoon. Where I work we accrue vacation time a little with each paycheck, so in order for me to have enough vacation to cover the wedding and honeymoon, I’m pretty much not going to be able to take a day off for the rest of this year or next leading up to the wedding. Pretty lame…

    • Cali

      *Completely* lame. I won’t even go into how extremely different this scenario would be in a ROWE – with all the pretty, relaxing details – because I don’t want to make you cry! But just from this post, you get the picture.

      Perhaps your employer will see the ROWE light before the wedding takes place?!

  • http://www.myopenworkplace.com Patty Tanji

    Which makes me wonder why all workplaces aren’t ROWE’ing. Our culture has an opportunity to revisit our pre-industrial revolution roots. I do know the answer to why every workplace doesn’t focus on results — but that doesn’t mean I have to like it nor will I stop trying to change it.

    • Cali

      Right on, Patty! It’s pretty scary that there are very few organizations that actually focus on results. They’re focused on monitoring, and talking about, everything *but* results…and they don’t even know it. So don’t ever give up on trying to change that!