«
»

OMG. WTF? Pt. 3

May 31, 2011 » by Jody

A company that adopted a ROWE decided to not be ROWE anymore.

Ok – sorry. Is anyone laughing hysterically?

If you’ve been watching our ROWE Approved Companies page, one logo disappeared. We won’t name the company, but you may know who it is.

Their case study was AMAZING!! Here’s a snippet:

Work Performance Indicator Findings

  • The percent of employees reporting “good” or “great” “focus when working” increased from 54% pre-ROWE to 95% ROWE.
  • The percent of employees reporting “good” or “great” “productivity when working” increased from 58% pre-ROWE to 98% ROWE.
  • The percent of employees reporting “good” or “great” “efficiency when working” increased from 54% pre-ROWE to 98% ROWE.

Employee Satisfaction Indicator Findings

  • The percent of employees reporting “good” or “great” job satisfaction increased from 44% pre-ROWE to 100% ROWE.
  • The percent of employees who report that “ROWE makes me less likely to look for another job elsewhere” is 100%.
  • The organization’s voluntary turnover rate has decreased from 16.25% to 9.75%, saving the company approximately $25,000 annually.

Now I can see why they’d want to get everyone ‘back in the office’ with their ‘butts in chair’. Why would we want people to be more focused, productive and efficient? Why would anyone want to reduce voluntary turnover, increase loyalty and SAVE MONEY??

This leadership team definitely deserves the first OMG WTF Award.

Here’s what they’re telling their employees by ‘taking ROWE away’:

  1. Focusing on results only isn’t as important as seeing you in the office everyday
  2. Putting in time – in the office – makes me think you’re actually working
  3. I don’t trust you
  4. You are not adult enough to use common sense to manage your life
  5. I don’t care if you were a better employee before – I need to control your time
  6. I feel uncomfortable not seeing you looking like you’re working
  7. I want  you to waste time and resources showing up here every day
  8. I want you to waste gas driving to the office when you could be more efficient and effective not driving into the office – I like it when you make a negative impact on our environmental challenges
  9. I like living in the past
  10. Because I’m the boss, that’s why

ROWE is not a ‘flexibility, slacker, don’t do any work, screw the man’ program.

IT’S ABOUT RESULTS, RESULTS AND ONLY RESULTS.

(sigh)

Tags: , ,

  • Lily

    Good recap on an oh-so-sad company.
    It would be interesting to know the results of the next employee survey – if the administration is brave enough to do one. And if there are any of the same formerly happy employees left there to fill it in.
    Is this what Oprah would call a “Doh!” moment?

  • http://www.slaughterdevelopment.com Robby Slaughter

    There is at least one extremely serious, almost fatal flaw with ROWE. I believe this case may have uncovered that problem.

    ROWE prevents companies from being able to manage solely from a position of authority.

    Now, this might not seem like a weakness. And indeed, it’s a major problem in the same way that democracy is a major problem if you like being the king.

    I would venture to say that not only most, but *almost all* organizations and *almost all* managers think that companies are primarily about hierarchy and authority, not about division of labor and actual results. When you’re suddenly focused mostly on progress instead of mostly on monitoring, there’s not so much for these managers to do.

    Although the R in ROWE means “results,” it’s clear it also means “radical respect.” Most organizations pay lip service to their “most valuable asset” in every way except actually allowing them to get work done.

    • Cali

      Robby – this comment is kind of a post in and of itself…love it! Definitely provokes some thinking. Could not agree more with your last sentence…organizations talk and talk and talk, and when ROWE stares them in the face, so many basically say “Wow – I’m not *really* ready to trust people *that* much!” or “Focus on what? Results? But does that mean we’d actually have to identify what those are?”

      Can’t wait to see what readers have to say about your thoughts…

    • Lily

      Well said, Robby!

    • Dhanam Prakash

      Well said!

      And it is a wise king indeed who is willing to give up his power and privileges for the good of the kingdom and the people.

      A few months ago management asked us to articulate our thoughts and give suggestions on “How to make the company better”.

      some of my suggestions included fewer meetings, not spend so much time and effort on filling out timesheets, ways to improve communication streams within the company, consider ROWE (yes i did make this suggestion :) altho’ it fell on deaf ears unfortunately).
      of course all these suggestions made it into a giant spreadsheet and were never more seen.

      last week our manager says “If you have suggestions on how to make this company more ‘fun’ to work in please let us know. The CFO is planning to allot $10000 in order to make this happen”. they will probably buy some couches or something and call it good.
      (how about fewer meetings, more time spent on actually getting things done and less red tape. That would certainly make it a fun place to work.
      )
      i believe management periodically asks these questions so that they can feel good that they “care” about employees without actually doing anything about it.

      they love the control and the power and will not easily relinquish it.

      This is a big challenge for the ROWE movement to overcome.

  • Shelly Drymon

    Sigh is right. I was afraid this would happen when Jessica left. :(

  • kat coolbaugh-steiner

    GGGGRRRRRR!!!!!!!!!!

  • Paul

    Some exec must have felt the need to flaunt their ego and go on a power trip.

    • Cali

      Too bad the power trip isn’t about having the best results in the industry, but instead about having the most control over people’s time!

    • Alexandra

      That’s EXACTLY what happened. Only it wasn’t an “Exec”. It was a power hungry and spiteful board president.

      Welcome back to the world of the mediocre employee. I no longer feel the need to excel.

      • Cali

        Thank you, thank you for sharing your thoughts on what happened…and how it’s affecting your motivation (or lack thereof) today. We completely hear what you’re saying – you went from “We trust you and expect you to achieve excellent results every single day – using your own common sense” to “We don’t care about results – we’re all about time, hours, physical presence, presenteeism, game playing, and living in 1952.” Awful. Keep us posted…

  • JACH

    Although I like the idea of ROWE very much (I don’t work in a ROWE :( ), I think it would be interesting to hear the reasons behind this decision. Maybe the resons are not logical in a strict sense (or no more than the logic we use to choose a car over another and then we justify our decision), but they might prove useful

  • http://blog.conmergence.com Ed Dodds

    Robby is spot on. I saw these two headlines this a.m. via LinkedIn:

    Google’s Schmidt: ‘I Screwed Up’ on Social Networking http://gorowe.com/2011/05/31/omg-wtf-pt-3/

    Polycom Acquires HP’s Videoconferencing Unit For $89 Million In Cash http://techcrunch.com/2011/06/01/polycom-acquires-hps-videoconferencing-unit-for-89-million-in-cash/

    after seeing VMware Acquires Enterprise Microblogging Platform Socialcast http://techcrunch.com/2011/05/31/vmware-acquires-enterprise-microblogging-platform-socialcast/

    yesterday and it just re-enforces my conviction that C-Suites just don’t get the power of collaboration and open innovation in any consistent manner. Until ROWE activists buy stock in publicly traded companies, vote in a block for pro-ROWE policies, I don’t see the general business landscape changing (perhaps bit by bit given Cali and Jody et al persuading firms in a one by one fashion). It is a shame because High Performance Computing, Cloud Computing, global broadband (both fiber and 3G/4G wireless), venture capital, mHealth, mPayment, government open data, semantic web and a ton of other global trends are all just waiting to converge are stifled if the management culture stands in the way. Further, if you think about it, it is a disabilities rights impediment because folks who could be knowledge workers are kept out of the work force in those cases where accessible transportation is too expensive/unavailable.

    • http://www.aquickbrownfoxwriting.com PersephoneK

      I agree with what everyone’s already said here, and loved Robby’s comments, but one thing Ed said stuck out for me that I’d like to comment on. He said, “Further, if you think about it, it is a disabilities rights impediment because folks who could be knowledge workers are kept out of the work force in those cases where accessible transportation is too expensive/unavailable.”

      Ed, you’re completely right about that. I actually have Multiple Sclerosis, and while I am actually doing very well, I know there are many more people out there who are not, not to mention people suffering from many other illnesses. With MS specifically, its the kind of disease that is often hidden from others. Its not always easy to tell how a person with it is feeling unless they’re on the extreme end of the spectrum. It causes fatigue, and many other symptoms that affect each person completely differently, and can affect the same person in different ways from day to day, even from hour to hour. There are times when I’ll feel awful for part of a day, and great the next part. I always get through it and usually people never know anything, but how amazing would it be if I could take a break for a while as long as nothing is pressing and come back to it when I’m at my best? Forcing people to be at their best between the hours of 8am to 5pm is just stupid, ignorant, and financially wasteful. And there are so many people out there doing so much worse than I am who might even be taking disability payments who want to work, but can’t cope in a traditional work environment, but if had the opportunity to work in a ROWE would thrive and truly offer their employers something amazing.

      • KellyK

        I think this is a hugely important point.

        I also think (and perhaps I’m too optimistic) that in a ROWE, illnesses and disabilities would be less likely to be things people need to keep quiet. Not that it would fix everyone’s attitudes, but if you’re already working with the mindset that hours aren’t relevant and *what* you accomplish matters more than *when* and *where,* there might be fewer assumptions about whether people with disabilities could do a given job.

        Plus, between getting rid of tracked sick time and vacation, disability accommodations would be less conspicuous. If one person with, say, MS, needs to leave early on occasion in a time-focused environment, that will be noticed. But if their coworkers are taking a mid-afternoon movie break or volunteering at their kids’ school one morning a week, going home to recharge stops being noticed.

  • http://blog.conmergence,com Ed Dodds

    PersephoneK and KellyK: I, of course, can only nod my head with agreement. I saw “Five Worst Cities for Teleworking – http://advice.cio.com/shane_oneill/16172/five_worst_cities_for_teleworking” just before I check in here again today. I am concerned because we have two “cultural” forces strongly competing (unnecessarily, I think) — performance and tradition. I try to encourage venture philanthropy thru vc4africa.com / vc4africa.biz (shameless project plug) but think, too, about folks with disabilities (Deana my wife is Ex Dir of UCPNashville, nuther shameless plug), rural economic development (Tennessee has supercomputing clusters in Knoxville, Gigabit Ethernet in Chattanooga, dark fiber in many places–with no strategy/tactics to interconnect them). The traditional “cutting edge” way to think of economic development is clusters and corridors (geographic groupings of people with similar skill sets, manufacturing plants, fabs, think Silicon Valley, Wall Street, etc.) At the same time, there is all this hype about supercomputing in the cloud, high performance computing in the cloud, distributed development, iClouds, on and on. But then model companies (one rhymes with oogle) build huge campuses (for the food???) rather than taking advantage of (and demonstrating the business case for) ROWE enabled work processes. Granted, geo-locking jobs makes sense in some DC industries (eg, where a lobbyist needs to be within payola envelope arms length of their rep or senator ;-) , but if I see another global mobile phone / smart phone build out will save the world thru eHealth and mPayment article I think I’ll burst. I know the big temptation of the bosses in the emerging Africa “cloudspace” will start building their call centers and cubevilles cause that’s how they do it in “the States”– ya gotta drive on in. In short, it is a global “waste”. Maybe the case to be made is you can no longer claim your company is GREEN if you haven’t at least attempted to implement ROWE…

  • Eddie

    I don’t work in a ROWE environment (yet), so I was pretty pysched to read about it, but something in this post is a turn off. I can understand and appreciate the data you post about feedback from the employees, but you speculate on what message is being sent by taking it away.

    Did the company share reasons with you? While the employees liked it, did the company see a decrease in other areas, pushing them to the decision? True, maybe their leadership doesn’t trust the workforce, but maybe several members of the team did something to take that trust away. Where they client-centric, and not being in the office hurt that culture? There are an infinite number of reasons to change their mind, none of which are shared in this post. As you say, it’s about RESULTS, and maybe they aren’t seeing them.

    I’m all for promoting your management philosophy on your website, but by not sharing the real reasons – which you may not actually even know – it puts you on the defensive since you can’t speak to the actual decision. Personally, I find that off-putting, but that could just be me, and I want to like it.

    • Cali

      Hi Eddie – glad you’re psyched about ROWE and want to like it :) Here’s the thing: ROWE isn’t something you can take away. Period. It’s an environment focused on getting the work done in the most productive, efficient ways. With that being the case, if the work isn’t getting done or customers aren’t being served (or other types of results aren’t there), then the people that aren’t performing need to be addressed…and in some cases, they need to be let go.

      In this particular case, we don’t know all the details behind what happened, but we do have some. However, in the end, it’s not about any reasons why – because again, ROWE is a shift in culture from putting in time and just going with the status quo because that’s the way it’s been forever to having complete control and getting the job done using common sense.

      In a ROWE, you take away specific people’s jobs if results aren’t being achieved – not the air everyone breathes.

      Hope this helps a bit – and hope you might still be on the road to liking ROWE?

      ROWE fans and practitioners – feel free to jump in and share your thoughts :)

  • Lcccyndi

    It’s not gotten any better – worse in fact.  The receptionist is now recording what TIME anyone comes or goes, and there’s even someone who walks around the office several times a day seeing who is/is not at their desk.