Girl Scouts Gone ROWE!

We are currently going through an organizational restructuring to help us meet our strategic goals and deal with the impact that the economy has on us. Out of 48 full-time staff positions, 26 are currently open for both internal and external candidates to apply for. In the last 5 or 6 days, we’ve interviewed over 100 people for those positions - after receiving over 1,200 resumes.

I would love to give ROWE the credit for this massive interest in working for our organization that wasn’t there before, and while I don’t think I can give ROWE all of the credit (the fact that we have a double-digit unemployment rate in our area probably has some influence), I do think ROWE gets partial credit for driving potential candidates to our company.

First, candidates are saying “they’ve heard about us” and our “great work environment”. Before ROWE, no one had ever heard of us. No one even thought of us a place to work. That seems to be different now.

Second, candidates are saying in interviews that they want to work for a company that cares for its employees and that we obviously do because we are a Results-Only Work Environment. Valid assessment. I think it would hard to be a ROWE and not care about your employees.

This feedback is all wonderful, but I’ve started wondering if companies that are Results-Only Work Environments at some point start to experience Millionaire Single Guy Syndrome - lots of employees wanting to work for the company simply because we’re a Results-Only Work Environment (just like women wanting to date a guy just because he’s a millionaire) and not because they believe in what we do or really wanted to contribute to us fulfilling our mission.

To avoid Millionaire Single Guy Syndrome, I think it’s important to build into the interviewing process questions that get to the heart of why the person is interested in the position and in general what type of person they are. Loving our Results-Only Work Environment is part of being a good fit with our company, but it’s not by any means the only thing we’re looking for.

- Submitted by Jessica

June 24th, 2009 | Tags: candidates, employees, Girl Scouts, hiring, millionaire, recruitment, restructuring, Results-Only Work Environment, ROWE | Category: Benefits of ROWE, Challenges | Comments (2)

I was putting the finishing touches on our council’s social media policy tonight and as I was writing the document (which includes such directives as “Bottom line: say something helpful, or witty, or informative. The world doesn’t need to know what you ate for breakfast this morning”), I realized that before our council switched to ROWE, our social media policy would have been boring: a typical dry, corporate policy.

What changed?

ROWE helped us discover and embrace our true organizational personality.

We are a company that laughs a lot together, has offices painted in crazy colors, gets way off topic in management meetings, takes ice cream breaks on the way back from important presentations, has a collective addiction to Laffy Taffy, and really relishes not being a typical company.

Before ROWE, our policies didn’t reflect any of that personality and I never thought I’d be including sentences like “Don’t be a jerk” in an official council policy. But when I sat down to write our social media policy, I realized that it could (and should) reflect who we are as a company – just like ROWE itself does.

June 15th, 2009 | Tags: Girl Scouts, Girl Scouts of San Gorgonio Council, organizational culture, policies, Results-Only Work Environment, ROWE, social media | Category: Benefits of ROWE | Comments (1)

Our ROWE Report was recently posted on another blog (Work Style Design Blog) and it attracted some comments that questioned whether employee-reported outcomes (like increases in productivity) were valid ways for measuring whether ROWE has been successful. 

Here was my response:

As the author of this report, I do understand the problem with the fact that it is basically all self-reported data and there is no real pre/post comparison or control group. If I were an outside observer, I might have some problems with the validity.

But as someone inside the company, I see the behavioral changes reflected in this report every day. If I thought the report was off-base compared to what I witness, then I wouldn’t have published it.

Unfortunately, because our company didn’t have pre-ROWE data and didn’t have any staff that didn’t migrate to ROWE, I can’t do a scientific comparison. We also don’t have the productivity measures in place that many for-profit companies have.

This report reflects where we are after just six months, and when we get to the end of the year and can look at how people have achieved their results we may have better “official” data to report.

In the end, if the only thing we get out of ROWE is insanely happy staff and people working towards, and being held accountable for, results tied to our organization’s strategy, then I’m good with that.

- Submitted by Jessica

May 8th, 2009 | Category: Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Interested in knowing whether ROWE actually works?

Check out this snap shot of data from our ROWE Report: Analysis of the Impact of a  Results-Only Work Environment Six Months Post-Migration.

You can find the full report here.

Work/Life Balance Indicator Findings

• The percent of employees reporting “good” or “great” “control of time” increased from 29% pre-ROWE to 100% post-ROWE.
• The percent of employees reporting “good” or “great” “work-life balance” increasedfrom 18% pre-ROWE to 93% post-ROWE.

Work Performance Indicator Findings

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

May 2nd, 2009 | Tags: performance, productivity, report, results-only, ROWE, work life balance | Category: Benefits of ROWE, Employee Testimonials, Girl Scouts Gone ROWE, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

I woke up this morning and it felt like Saturday.

It’s Friday.

That’s how ROWE is supposed to work. Every day should feel like Saturday. You should always have choices. To do laundry? Or not to do laundry? To work from home? Or to work from Panera? You get to choose how to best use your day.

Yes, you have to be a grown-up and make good choices. And yes, you will make bad choices now and then. I’ve learned that no matter how much I want to believe that I can work just as productively while watching The Hills or House Hunters, I can’t. I love how ROWE puts all of that control in my hands.

- Submitted by Jessica

May 1st, 2009 | Tags: results-only, ROWE, work from home | Category: Benefits of ROWE, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

To me, the core aspect of ROWE that makes it stick is that it creates organizational culture change. It’s not just “another new policy” - it completely changes how a company looks at its employees and how the employees view the company. The power trip that companies are often on is gone - instead, employees feel trusted and respected, and know where they stand: they have to meet their results. Period.

Policies such as telecommuting and flextime actually have the opposite effect - they reinforce the concept that the company has the power, and that they use that power to give employees benefits as they see fit, and then take them away when they feel like it.

-Submitted by Jessica

April 29th, 2009 | Tags: company, culture change, employees, flextime, ROWE, telecommuting | Category: ROWE Basics, Uncategorized, Why We Need ROWE | Leave a comment

Last week I wrote about some concerns we were having relative to new employees and ROWE. Even though we want all employees to have complete freedom and control over their own time, it is still necessary for them to get the work done, something they can do only if they know how. Knowing how requires spending the time to familiarize themselves with the organization’s operations and, in particular, what is expected of them in their roles.

Plus you can learn a great deal about new employees in their formative weeks within the organization. In general, I think ROWE offers people the opportunity to either be great or to totally take advantage. So, I think it makes sense to set tighter rules for newly hired employees. Stricter rules during the initial “training” period could help us to week out potential problems.  

And they don’t call it the “Introductory Period” for nothing!

- Submitted by Daniel

April 14th, 2009 | Tags: Employee Rules, Equal Opportunity, Human Resources; Results-Only Work Environment, Introductory Period, ROWE, Training | Category: Challenges | Leave a comment

I overslept this morning. I was supposed to get up at 6 and I woke up at 7:15. If I wanted to get to work in time for a 9 a.m. conference call, I only had 15 minutes to get ready. I was just about to enter into panic mode when I stopped myself.

Why did I need to be at the office for a conference call? I had my computer. I had my phone. Nobody needed me at the office.

I was about to practically kill myself getting ready and waste 30 minutes sitting in traffic for no reason whatsoever. Instead, I got to go back to sleep for an hour, skip getting ready, and settle in to a comfy chair for my conference call. So much more efficient. So much smarter than the old-school, non-ROWE way.

A good reminder that truly being ROWE requires that you constantly ask yourself “why”.

- Submitted by Jessica

April 7th, 2009 | Tags: Results-Only Work Environment, ROWE | Category: Challenges, ROWE Basics | Leave a comment

One of the biggest challenges the Council has experienced with ROWE lately is how it is applicable to new employees. If everyone is free to do what they want when they want as long as the work gets done, then how is it possible to properly train new staff members if they don’t feel like performing work at the same time as the person responsible for training them?

Most people who are new to an organization do their best to demonstrate to the employer that the decision made to hire them was the best possible choice the company could have made. That said, there are occasionally new employees who see ROWE as an opportunity to take advantage, forgetting completely about the part of ROWE that says that the work must still get done.  

I feel confident that we’ve been handling this issue appropriately by managing for results versus managing time. It’s just a real challenge to explain this way of working to new staff who appear to be attempting to take advantage of an already great opportunity.

- Submitted by Daniel 

March 31st, 2009 | Tags: alternative work, benefits, challenges at work, Human Resources, new employees, ROWE | Category: Challenges | Leave a comment