On February 6, 2011, Harveys Industries corporate office (maker of the Original Seatbelt Bag) migrated to a ROWE. Sharon Thawley, HR Manager at Harveys Industries, was kind enough to share their story.
After six months of preparation, we are proud to say that our transition to the new environment is working out well! Prior to the actual transition, there were many questions about how individual positions were going to be able to embrace this new environment. It seemed that some departments, such as Marketing, Sales and Design, were very well suited for this change, while others, such as Customer Service and Operations, were not.
These initial impressions were misleading!
What we discovered is that changing our attitudes and beliefs about the way work needs to happen made our transition successful. So we armed ourselves with new project software, and moved forward with the idea that everyone in the corporate office would be successful. Our COO made key changes to our phone system and computer network, which enabled us to do our work when and where it made sense to achieve results.
As the HR Manager, it has been very interesting for me to watch the successes and challenges unfold. The department that had the most trepidation was our Customer Service department. The Manager of this department lives about an hour away from the office (up to 3 hours on a bad traffic day.) She now works from home the majority of the time and has been able to significantly increase her quality and quantity of work. When we sit back and really analyze our job and scrutinize that which is essential and that which is “wasting” time, we can all see great opportunities for improvement.
We had our All Team Forum (a ROWE adoption session) last week to check in and see how everyone was doing. We met with staff only (no management). I wanted to give staff an opportunity to be candid about our new environment, both good and bad. When polled on how true the 13 Guideposts were to each employee at this point in time, I found that the average was in the 6 to 8 range (on a 1-10 scale: 1 being ‘Not living the Guidepost at all – Guidepost not true’ and 10 being ‘totally living the Guidepost – Guidepost is true’). The majority of the issues that kept everyone from feeling as if all they were truly living all 13 guideposts came down to logistics and could be easily solved.
Conversely, when I polled the key management team the next day, they felt as if they were living 8-9 out of the 13 Guideposts in such a short time. They felt they were on their way in working toward all of the guideposts. They were grateful to hear about the challenges their staff was having and more than willing to try and help solve the issues and celebrate successes.
“ROWE provides our employees with the opportunity to take their position to the next level,” said Joseph Citizen, President of Harveys Industries. “It allows us to cut the superfluous activities from our day and gives us the opportunity to concentrate on what matters most: meeting and exceeding our results.”
