The following article was originally posted in The Canadian Business Quarterly about the transformative effects of ROWE at Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC).
“Work is no longer a place where we go, it is something that we do,” said Stéphane Poulin, CMHC’s Director of Human Resources Operations. “People were hesitant at first, but now we see that morale is up, employees are more engaged, and the stress associated with finding a work-life balance has decreased significantly.”
A few years ago, when we adopted our Future of Work strategy, no one could have predicted just how beneficial it would turn out to be.
Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) has long been known for providing affordable housing and mortgage loan insurance, but perhaps less so as a bastion of change and innovation. In 2014, we challenged ourselves to do things differently. We came up with a strategy to make us more modern and more efficient: we called it the Future of Work. Over the course of the next few years, we overhauled our outdated technology and transformed our workspace. We equipped our employees to work remotely. We adopted a Results Only Work Environment (ROWE TM), enabling employees to work where and when it makes the most sense, provided they achieve the desired results. By 2019, all 1900 employees had the tools and training, trust and empowerment needed to work more efficiently be it from any of the CMHC offices across Canada or remotely from their homes or elsewhere.