People on the Street - Part 2 of Jessica Heiken

Here are more thoughts from one of our Why Work Sucks readers, Jessica Heiken…

C&J: What is the most common piece of Sludge that you hear where you work?

Jessica: The most common forms of Sludge I hear are comments about work hours.  “Just getting in?” and “Leaving already?” and gossip about “so-and-so is working from home again.  She’s so lucky.  I wish I could slack off like that.”  The other thing I see as a form of Sludge is that ROWE does exist in my company, but only for certain people.  As I said before, the leaders of my company are judged on their results and no one questions where they are or what they’re doing.  They live the ROWE life.  The Sludge of this situation is that the freedom to decide how, where, when best to get your work done is a privilege for a certain caliber of person.  It is certainly not for the masses.

C&J: We often use the analogy that ROWE is like college, and you’ve said the same thing.  Talk to us more about what this means to you.

Jessica: I was the boss of my whole life in college, not just parts of it.  Life was much less compartmentalized then; my roles as student, employee, volunteer, and friend didn’t start and stop as rigidly as they do now.  Study time could also be social time, night time could be work time, errands could be run when stores were least busy, and work was filled into the empty spaces.  Life feels much harder to balance now because I only have ownership over half my time.

C&J: As you know, we need people to take action for ROWE to become the status quo.  What are you doing to help promote ROWE as the new game for living and working?

Jessica: I’m a sales person, so I’m always selling ideas that I love.  I have shared the book and the idea of ROWE with everyone who will listen.  My boss, my HR generalist, peers, friends, family.  When the book first came out, I spent a few hours interrogating a good friend that works at Best Buy and has worked on a ROWE team for several years to find out what it’s really like, and to find out if it lives up to the hype.  It does, she assured me emphatically.  ROWE is worth at least $40,000 in salary plus a promotion to her.  Talk about a selling point!

Every time people talk about work/life balance, I bring it up.  Every time someone talks about retaining talent, I bring it up.  Every time someone talks about getting things done, I bring it up.  I am motivated by two things:

1. I want ROWE for myself.
2. I don’t think my company will be able to compete effectively in the next two decades without ROWE. 

I love my company.  I want them to attract and retain the best and the brightest and to succeed in the important work we do.  I don’t expect things to change overnight, but the Best Buy success story definitely gives me hope and a model for change.

For those of you that want ROWE for yourself and your team/company, what are you doing to promote it or get support?  Let’s hear it.

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