The following share from Joel, an employee at CMHC, really grabbed our attention. It’s worth noting, the entire organization began its ROWE journey in September of 2018.
Of course, we are always grateful for positive feedback. But this goes much deeper than a “feel good” testimonial. We’ve also seen and shared the business results of organizations that have gone ROWE, but this. This is about life.
"Transitioning to a ROWE has given me incredible confidence in my ability to be successful in both my career, and as a father and husband. Until now, I always felt like one was going to make me compromise the other, and I was afraid that I would eventually fail at one of them. With ROWE, I can take ownership of my life to make sure that I can give the best of myself to my family, and to my work. I can now see myself sustaining a long, successful career as a leader at CMHC while also continuing to be a devoted husband and father of six.
So far, there have been little things that have changed in my routine that, although they may seem small now, will accumulate and compound throughout the course of my career at CMHC and will have a significant impact on the quality of my life. It's things like being able to hold one of my infant twins while I eat lunch on days that I work from home to make sure I savour these fleeting baby months, or being able to pick up my girls off the bus at the end of a school day, or making sure that I'm available to my family for the very chaotic hour before dinner. I can accomplish all these incredibly valuable things without any impact to my work and the results I need to achieve.
What has really impressed me has been how quickly my kids have adopted the ROWE mentality themselves. Without any of the deeply rooted notions about work that we have been exposed to for so long, they are so much more easily able to understand that work is something you do, and not somewhere you go. My two year old son asks me almost every morning "Daddy, tu travailles à ton bureau, ou en bas? (Daddy, are you working from the office or the basement?)" To him, it's the same thing. If a two year old can figure that out, anyone can!"
~ Joel G., Senior Manager, Financing Operations Investment and Loan Processing at CMHC