ROWE – I’m Intriqued, Skeptical and Finally Familiar with this Concept

When I read about ROWE (results oriented work environment) I was immediately intrigued. According to Wikipedia ROWE is: a management strategy created by CultureRx and used by Best Buy where employees are paid for results (output) rather than the number hours worked. The goal is to keep workers who deliver results while firing those who are not productive.

ROWE in practice means “each person is free to do whatever they want, whenever they want as long as the work gets done.” Employees control their own calendars, and are not required to be in the office if they can complete their tasks elsewhere.

Exactly how I’d like to work. Mostly because I put more pressure on myself to produce quality work, than most of my superiors ever have. However, I see the downside to this as well. I’ve definitely worked with those who needed their hand held through the process and without direction would not have achieved high results, but that also doesn’t mean they should be fired.

So I’ve been thinking about how ROWE can realistically work in the real world when I thought of a common experience most of us have had with ROWE….college. Don’t get me wrong, there were those professors who noted everyone’s attendance or absence in a lecture, but there were far fewer who paid attention to that. When I think back, in college I had much more autonomy for my time and the results were solely my responsibility. If I didn’t understand something I needed to ask the professor. If I needed to spend more/less time on a subject it was up to me to make that happen. There was no one looking over my shoulder daily to be sure my work got done or that I didn’t spend too much time on my social life. It was all up to me.

I do understand that I was paying for college and I wasn’t getting paid to attend. I also understand that if I had failed a course or two it would not affect anyone else but me. But many of us in the professional world attended college and spent 4 years in the college version of ROWE. We had our successes and failures and learned our work habits there. Shouldn’t we take from that, that ROWE is definitely a workable solution in today’s workplace? Shouldn’t we also expect to be treated in our workplace at least as responsibly as we were treated in college? And couldn’t our college transcript serve as a good way to measure how effectively we could work in a ROWE?

I’m no longer intrigued. I’m a big fan who will happily send my college and graduate school transcripts along for your review.