Best Buy Institutes Extreme Flex Time

s31523 writes "The company I work at has a flex time policy where basically, you can come in and leave within a window of time, as long as you are in the office during 'core' hours (10am-2pm). Best Buy has gone extreme, they have completely banished traditional views of office hours. Citing a preference for results over time invested, the company has completely done away with schedules. No mandatory meetings. No impression-management hustles." From the article: "Another thing about this experiment: It wasn't imposed from the top down. It began as a covert guerrilla action that spread virally and eventually became a revolution. So secret was the operation that Chief Executive Brad Anderson only learned the details two years after it began transforming his company. Such bottom-up, stealth innovation is exactly the kind of thing Anderson encourages. The Best Buy chief aims to keep innovating even when something is ostensibly working. '[The 'results-only work environment'] was an idea born and nurtured by a handful of passionate employees,' he says. 'It wasn't created as the result of some edict.'" Sheesh. I work from home and even I have a schedule. Here's hoping it catches on.

In the end the only thing that matters is:

[by Anonymous Coward]

Best Buy still sucks.

Re:In the end the only thing that matters is:

[HikingStick (878216)]

Best Buy Stores may (as you say) suck, but the corporate offices are looking like one sweet gig here in Minnesotah--yah der don'tcha know...

Re:In the end the only thing that matters is:

[steveo777 (183629)]

Minnesotah--yah der don'tcha know...

Dude, I've lived in Minnesota most of my life and if I ever hear you talking like that to outsiders again I swear I'll slap you upside the face with a hockey stick! No hotdish for you!

Re:

[Greventls (624360)]

Best Buy Stores may (as you say) suck, but the corporate offices are looking like one sweet gig here in Minnesotah--yah der don'tcha know...

Does the Best Buy corporate offices use the geek squad for their IT support?

Re:In the end the only thing that matters is:

[kimvette (919543)]

Probably not, because they want their computers to WORK.

Re:

[MikeFM (12491)]

But what if your customers were using this ROWE system. How would you cope?

Re:

[cayenne8 (626475)]

"My solution would be to set "On Call Hours" and work from home. Or carry a good cell phone and try not to leave serviced areas. Someone has a problem, they call, and if you can't solve it over the phone, you go. You're done, you go back to what you were doing, or the next incident."

Well, don't forget, if you are on 24/7 'call'....make sure and get paid for it. If it involved people with 'beeper time'....you get paid when carrying the beeper even if not working.

That is the price for them having the abili

Depends on the people

[Nos. (179609)]

For some (hopefully most) people, this is ideal. They'll work when they find themselves to be most productive, which in turn, makes the company more productive. However, you'll always get a few individuals who take advantage of such a policy, and in some environments, they spoil it for the rest of us.

Re:

[eln (21727)]

Sure, it's fine so long as you never need to do any real-time collaboration. I don't do flex time, but my company does have a sizable office in India, and the people on my team there work during the Indian day (US night). It makes collaboration very difficult, since if you need some piece of information you either need to wake someone up in the middle of the night or send an email and wait until the next day for an answer.

I suspect anyone that collaborates with anyone else is going to end up essentially w

Re:Depends on the people

[notbob (73229)]

Solution here is simple... fire the people in India and go back to being a real American company with American workers.

They'll eventually fire more Americans the longer you help them support the bastards in India.

Just say no to out sourcing.

Re:

[cayenne8 (626475)]

"Solution here is simple... fire the people in India and go back to being a real American company with American workers. They'll eventually fire more Americans the longer you help them support the bastards in India. Just say no to out sourcing."

Damn...why is this marked flamebait? It is a valid opinion and plea IMHO.

Moving jobs that the GP posted saying they were obviously made difficult due to collaboration being near impossible due to time differences. If they moved them back closer to home....that w

Re:Depends on the people

[aeoo (568706)]

It doesn't matter if Best Buy pays for the results. Who cares if someone spends the hours or doesn't? You got results, you got paid. You, as Best Buy, are willing to pay for some amount of results. How these results get accomplished is not really your concern as long as the consumer experience is not hurt in the process. If consumers are happy and the results they want are accomplished, then it really doesn't matter who did what when, and in fact, it's one less thing you need to manage.

Re:

[kinnell (607819)]

It doesn't matter if Best Buy pays for the results. Who cares if someone spends the hours or doesn't? You got results, you got paid. You, as Best Buy, are willing to pay for some amount of results.

This reminds me of a story I heard about the first accountant to try Visicalc [wikipedia.org]. His reacton was somethng like "This is great - now I can do my entire week's work in an afternoon, and spend the rest of the week with my wife and kids". We all know how that worked out.

Re:

[Simon80 (874052)]

no, no clocking in... from TFA:

It was only this past summer that CEO Anderson got a full briefing, and total understanding, about what was happening. "We purposely waited until the tipping point before we took it to him," says Thompson. Until then he wasn't well-versed on the 13 ROWE commandments. No.1: People at all levels stop doing any activity that is a waste of their time, the customer's time, or the company's money. No.7: Nobody talks about how many hours they work. No.9: It's O.K. to take a nap on a

Re:

[Simon80 (874052)]

Yes, but what is the point of "reporting" hours if you work away from work? How is anyone going to know if you're working as many as you're reporting? Why waste the effort even trying to track how many hours someone is working? As is specified in the article, hours worked != productivity. Too many seem to confuse the two without even realizing it (I'm not saying that about you, just people in general)

Re:

[kd5ujz (640580)]

When I worked as a contractor For TWC, I was paid per foot of fiber that my crew hung. We received $0.18/foot, and that was split between 3 guys, New guy got 20%, Lineman got 30%, and supervisor received 50%. We could hang ~5-6000 feet a day, so it worked out nicely. We were able to work when we wanted, as long as the project was finished in time.

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[grumpyman (849537)]

That's why communism didn't work.

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[misleb (129952)]

What would ruin the system for me is not having coworkers available when you need them. Say what you want about the 9-5 grind, but at least you know your coworker will be there when you need them. (unless they are sick or on vacation, of course). With flex time, especially "extreme" flex time, work is often delayed because so and so doesn't come in until noon or they can't finish a project with you because they leave at 2pm.

That said, it sure would be nice if more companies adopted this so that traffic woul

Re:Depends on the people

[slashbob22 (918040)]

Ducks, Eagles and Wood? Good grief, you sound like a certain Simpson:

One way to get rid of them is to tell 'em stories that don't go anywhere. Like the time we went over to Shelbyville during the war, I wore an onion on my belt....which was the style at the time...you couldn't get those white ones, you could only get those big yellow ones.................now where was I........oh yeah, the important thing was I was wearing an onion on my belt, which was the style at the time, you couldn't get those... (trails off)

Is it just me...

[Bryansix (761547)]

or does it sound like the CEO was basically forced to go along with this idea or it would look like he was a victim of mutiny? I mean he already heads up a company where employee theft or "shrink" as they like to call it is extremely high. Given the chance I bet any employee of Best Buy would gladly stab anyone at the Top just to make a quick buck.

Re:Is it just me...

[Overzeetop (214511)]

The first thing I thought was, "how can a CEO of a major corporation go for two years without knowing what is going on in the day to day operation?" Of course, then I wondered how it is that he couldn't have been fired for such a lack of knowledge. Finally, I realized he must be one slick bastard to keep his job while the entire company was running on a different schedule without his knowledge. Either that or he has a special file with pictures of all the board members doing horrible things to/with farm animals.

Personally, I'm betting on the farm animals angle.

Re:

[coldtone (98189)]

Please let me rephrase

Everyone at the C level has been on extreme flex time for year. It's hard to notice your staff isn't working 8 - 6 when you aren't.

Re:Is it just me...

[SatanicPuppy (611928)]

It's my experience that this is the case in most places.

My boss, a COO (COO == a CIO who also has machines that get actual grease on them under his authority), worked a big 3 days this week, including one day that was 11-6...I think I worked 9-8 on the same day.

Re:

[Shawn is an Asshole (845769)]

It'd be really nice if more people used 24 hour time. I've had my watches set to that since I was in elementary school (mid 20's now). Still, many people get confused when you say it's 19:08 rather than 7:08 pm.

I'm assuming the grand parent meant he worked from 09:00-20:00.

Re:Is it just me...

[RyoShin (610051)]

Given the chance I bet any employee of Best Buy would gladly stab anyone at the Top just to make a quick buck.

Yes, but they'd only make money if they mail in the rebate with a photocopy of the original stabbing impliment and the original bloody suit.

More Hours?

[cliffhanger407 (974949)]

The weird thing to consider is how much people end up working. I've found what when I'm working hard on a project and I approach it without a schedule, I end up working for a few extra hours without even noticing. It means that people keep their morale up while still maybe being willing to work more hours. Basically, this is taking salaried work to a whole new level: they acknowledge that people have responsibilities to maintain and judge them based on whether or not the job is done, rather than whether or not they are in the office at a given time. I say bravo. What will be weird is seeing if they can implement this in retail stores like one of the later paragraphs suggests.

Funny

[TrappedByMyself (861094)]

The local best Buy has gotten crappier over the last few years.
They've gone from almost always having what I am looking for to almost never having what I am looking for.
A simple USB mouse? Nope, just wireless and the $70 gamer mice. Off to Staples
A new PC game? Nope, ours never seems to have games on release. Off to Eb Games
A cheap cable? Nope, just a $50 Geek Squad version. Off to Wal-mart for the $10 version

It only means....

[LibertineR (591918)]

Employees will have time to chase you into the parking lot in a desparate attempt to get you to agree to that extended warranty. Hell, they might even follow you home, bitches!

We are doing something similar

[Wiseleo (15092)]

I hate rigid schedules. They create traffic jams.

Re:We are doing something similar

[cyclone96 (129449)]

If more companies in a set area went to a flexible schedule, I wonder how much that would fix traffic jams

The City of Houston thinks it will help alleviate traffic problems. It's actually city policy to encourage flex time for this reason, and this policy has specifically caused one of the (very large) aerospace contractors I work with to implement a generous flex time policy.

http://www.houstontx.gov/flexworks/flexinthecity/i ndex.html [houstontx.gov]

Re:

[Wiseleo (15092)]

Same here.

I hated rigid schedules to the point that I quit and started my own company. I saw it as an obsolete business model. My office building choice was primarily based on proximity to public transit. I wanted to be located directly adjacent to a BART station http://www.bart.gov/ [bart.gov]

I am paying a premium price for it, but it takes cars off the road and gives people some extra time during commute to actually be productive rather than wasting time in traffic. In the long run, this will probably create a heada

A.K.A.....

[no_pets (881013)]

ROWE, Results Only Work Environment. A.K.A. "Git-R-Dun". I'd be more efficient if I could leave sooner.

Re:

[SydShamino (547793)]

I'd be more efficient if I could leave sooner.

I'm not sure that's the right angle to take. This implies that you have a fixed set of tasks, and that you would do those tasks faster if it meant you could leave work when they were finished, regardless of how long they took to complete. It also means that your boss has already examined the tasks, examined you, and decided that they would take you a full day to do. (If this wasn't true, they would have given you more tasks.)

In contrast, I think most self-dri

'Results only' is bull

[boldtbanan (905468)]

I can't count how many times I've heard lip-service paid to 'results-only' performance reviews. It's a bunch of crap. Managers will still reward people they like and punish people they don't, regardless of performance. Schedules and 'face-time' will always have a huge impact on performance reviews and rewards, simply because if you work 8pm - 4am and work miracles, nobody will know that you were the one doing everything. For all they know (regardless of any paperwork saying you were responsible), it was the office gnomes that with their magical faerie dust that did all of the work.

Like a lot of things, 'results-only' is great in theory, but almost impossible to implement in practice due to human nature.

Not my cup of tea, I'm afraid

[Control Group (105494)]

Good for them; it sounds like it's working out so far, and if the employees like it, then roll with it.

But, at the risk of sounding like one of the old fogeys the article talks about, it's not for me, and for the reasons those old fogeys mention.

a) I work better when at work. I don't like to work at home; one of the nice things about my 5 mile commute is that, if I have to get any significant work done "after hours," I can drive to the office and do it. My focus is better when I don't have my fiancee, my cats, my 360, my Wii, my stereo, my television, etc. around all tempting me to spend time with them, instead. Moreover, I don't want to be available for routine work 24/7 - I'm already "on call" for crises all the time, but it's with the understanding that I'm only to be bothered if it really is a crisis.

b) There is a value to meetings - at least, some of them. We'd all love to completely ditch the useless all staff meetings that are pretty much just a productivity black hole, but some meetings are valuable. In my office, we have one weekly meeting just of the technology team - it's a tight group and a focused meeting. It's on the schedule from 1:00 - 2:00, but we've only actually been in the meeting until 2:00 once since I've been here. We all have pretty specialized jobs, but they all inter-relate. I'm the DBA, for example, and Dave is the storage architect. It's good to touch base on a regular basis to keep up with what's going on outside our fairly narrow areas.

c) I'm not good on the phone. My hearing isn't what it could be, and I spend too much mental power on making sure I'm hearing what the other person is saying to really be processing well. Face to face, I can use rudimentary lip reading and body language to "fill in the gaps" without the mental effort.

This, of course, is just the way I work - for people who don't have my hangups, this is a great system. But I'd end up working somewhere else, most likely.

Research

[maverick_starstrider (1005987)]

I usually work in research and I find this paradigm to be extremely appealing. The 9-5 think in research is complete bull. You don't get more insightful or innovative while being force to sit at your desk staring at a screen

Bah, I'm already doing it.

[SocialEngineer (673690)]

I work at a local newspaper, and we've already got this implemented!

I work as late as necessary, as long as I work 8 hours (starting at 9 AM or earlier). Heck, the day before thanksgiving, I got to work from 9 AM until 12:20 AM Thanksgiving day! YEAH! I even go to SKIP MY LUNCH BREAK! As long as the paper gets done, they don't care how late I work! Well, if the paper is done, they usually want me to leave, or clock out, since they really don't want to pay overtime..

Sarcasm aside, this is great. Wouldn't work in my industry, seeing as how we are usually pretty crunched for time as is.

This can work great if done right

[by Anonymous Coward]

This seems ideal for programmers like myself. I've got regular hours now, but in the beginning we had no set hours. That didn't mean less hours--often it meant 12+ hour days, but there was no question about when the time at which the work was done, as long as it was done in a timely manner. I've never experienced extreme flex where hours were not insane for other reasons.

Anyway, it seems like this would work well as long as there are still some deadlines--get that new module coded by the end of the month, and it shouldn't matter that you finished in 3 weeks and took the last week off. Management can consider that last week a reward for effective work. They might decide you can handle more work on the next cycle, which can create an incentive for you to "fill out the month". So, management has to understand that dynamic, and not punish people for efficiency.

On the other side of the equation, workers have to not deploy "filling out" and other obvious means of abuse. It seems like this has a better chance to work well if the employees are incentivised with something other than salary; namely, stock options. Then they are only hurting themselves if they hurt the comnpany, in theory. Of course, we all know that a division of a large corporation can perform well while the company overall performs poorly. That dilutes the stock option incentive, so it seems like incentives for a whole department could help (complete that upgrade in a week, the whole division gets extra pay or options).

In order for it to work well, you need mature, self-directing workers.

You also need workers with output that can be measured. I suspect that there are an awful lot of workers with no real output in our economy, or output that can't be measured (I'm pointing the finger at you, mid-level PHBs). A system like this could weed those guys out! OTOH, you can't apply a system like this to jobs like call-center technicians, floor sales, or even sales managers. A big part of those jobs is simply "being available". The fact that a sales rep hasn't taken a call or helped a customer for a few hours doesn't mean he wasn't doing his job--there was just no input he could act on to creat output.

I can see it now...

[Cytlid (95255)]

...this is opposed to the old standby "Work All Days Evenly". A new ROWE vs WADE.

Where?

[Quiet_Desperation (858215)]

Best Buy has employees?

You mean those blue shirted people who just stand around?

They *work* there? :-o

The way it should be

[by Anonymous Coward]

I'm posting this anonymously because I'd rather not have what I'm about to say get back to where I work:

I don't do jack shit at work.

I'm a beginning programmer at my place of business (a facility that's part of a Fortune 500 company). I manage and build small web applications for internal use. I'm given a general time table for when it needs to be done, and pick a date within that time table to have it done by. My projects are done on time, and usually have more useful features than intially requested. But I only work maybe four (on average) of the eight or so hours I have to be at work. The rest of the time is spent fiddling around on Slashdot and other places, while looking behind my back to make sure I'm not being watched.

Personally, I find it to be a complete waste of time. Sure, I could pick up some extra projects, or do some research on the side, or move my due dates up by weeks, but I don't see much of a future with this company (maybe two or three more years, at best), so I have no incentive. I would, however, work harder at work if I knew I wouldn't be there so long.

This is the way I see it: If a person is paid salary, why do they have to be there for exactly 40 hours a week? If they can do all of their work in 20 hours, why force them to stick around? If an employee has more freedom to choose when they come and go, they'll have higher moral and thus better work output because they feel they have more control over their job and life (and they would). If they wanted to take a Friday off to see a kid at their sports game, they wouldn't have to worry about filling out forms or requesting time off- they just make sure their work is done the first four days, and inform people they'll be gone the fifth.

Obviously, this kind of situation wouldn't work for all industries. Sales reps, for instance, would probably need to be in during certain hours so they can work with other companies and customers that still do the 9-5 shtick.

But in this age where information can be shared instantly, where cell phones allow us to be reached almost anywhere and laptops to work from a range of places, why should we be constrained to one desk for a specified set of time if we can be as, if not more, productive without those chains?

I hope this experiment works.

Cats

[Impy the Impiuos Imp (442658)]

The company I do programming for has a similar policy. I can start work any time of the day I want as long as I get in the full 16 hours.

job

[robpoe (578975)]

I worked at a regional hospital chain for 2 years.

What really blew was that they expected you in your seat .. 8 hours a day. Didn't matter if you worked or not -- you just had to be there.

Some weeks I worked 40 hours. Some weeks I worked closer to 65. Nights, weekends. Anything to get the projects / fixes / whatever done.

Problem was, in my 40 hour week, there were times that I only WORKED 15-20 hours. The rest of the time was walking from place to place, moving candy from a dish in one department to another, playing on the 'net, or just doing nothing at all and trying to keep from falling asleep.

Towards the end, I started coming in when I wanted. I still got ALL my projects finished on time, helped my co-workers on stuff - and only worked 15-20 hours a week.

Boss called me in and fired me .. Why? Because I wasn't there. No matter that I started being 65% more productive working FEWER hours..

Aah well he was a jerk (still is, from what I hear)..

Re:They have yet to address...

[COMON$ (806135)]

Umm if they had actual knowledge I highly doubt they would be working the floor at a best buy for minimum wage.

Re:

[kthejoker (931838)]

But how hard would it be for them to offer bonuses, incremental pay raises, or free loot for employees who passed some basic knowledge-assessment tests?

"Take the High-Definition Assessment Test, Earn $100"

"Learn the Difference Between Macs and PCs, Get a 25 cents / hour raise"

I could go on and on, but the point is, it's not hard to offer incentives for your employees to learn. They're just too cheap to do it.

Re:

[smallfries (601545)]

I've worked in this kind of environment for about five years. It started during my PhD, and then continued when I decided that I would stay within academia. The most important thing is how you measure output; measuring time in the office is a shitty metric that doesn't gain you anything. The article sounds as if Best Buy have this angle nailed, so they can measure productivity even if their staff are flitting in and out. In academia it's easy - you keep an eye on how many papers someone delivers.

Meetings ca

Re:

[dknj (441802)]

okay, first of all, i am all for telecommuting. if you need an office, fine go to the office, if you don't.. save the company a dollar or two and stay at home. second, meetings? they're mandatory. if you want everyone at a meeting at 8am, give 24 hours notice and specify if they have to be present or merely on the phone (exceptions expected, don't bitch if it happens.. you get to work from home, better than 90% of the world). third, make sure everyone is reachable between certain hours. you will hav

Re:

[WuphonsReach (684551)]

ROWE works best in environments where you have a lot of little tasks with very small overlap (highly parallel in nature). For our group, most projects involve between 10 and 60 hours with about a dozen sub-tasks. Which means that each of us will typically be the only person working on a particular project, but that others can easily step in and finish other sub-tasks when we're behind. We'll also typically be juggling anywhere between 2-4 projects at the same time, in various states of completion.

Our c

A retail employee rant (Re:Geek squad is a fraud.)

[Vardyr (947047)]

"One member of a geek squad was insulted when I said that the person who does a diagnostic should be qualified to do one -- not someone who just came in from the parking lot from collecting carriages."

I work in the warehouse for an electronics retail store, and I'm the one who "collects carriages." I consider myself a geek and do quite well with repairing computers; I simply prefer not to deal with people who have no respect for other human beings. I'd rather push carts than walk in circles trying to conv

Re:A retail employee rant (Re:Geek squad is a frau

[paeanblack (191171)]

There are no cheat-sheets or sales manuals listing the products in a department, and there are few brochures, if any. ...and the people with the initiative to dig out the manuals from the floor-display boxes or download them from the manufacturer's website to read them on their lunch break aren't willing to work for the wages Best Buy offers.