We need to make a statement: Right now, on Sept. 22, 2008, we have perfected ROWE for office environments.  Big, small, mid-sized - if you’re in an office, the process for migrating to a ROWE has been proven and is ready for you.  We have not experimented in any other environments yet (research into the health care industry begins in 2009 - stay tuned).

We presented at the Twin Cities HR Executive Forum last week.  The group was lively and very fun (could have been that they were eating hors d’oeuvres and sipping wine during the presentation).  When it came time for Q&A, the most popular ROWE question revealed itself as Question #1 for the 23,456th time: “It sounds like ROWE would be great for offices, but have you done this yet for store environments?”

For the previous 23,455 times, insert any of the following for “store environments”: manufacturing, hospitals, bus drivers, teachers, zoos, sports associations, freight services, broadcasting, pilots and flight attendants, or restaurants.

In fact, we began a recent speaking engagement by specifically saying that we have not experimented with ROWE outside the office setting.  What was the first question?  “So how does ROWE work in a manufacturing setting?”

We recognize that there are other environments that suck just as much as offices.  It is our strong belief that there are foundational elements of the office ROWE that can translate into other environments - trust, schedule control, and elimination of Sludge are a few.  And just because we haven’t tested ROWE in those environments doesn’t mean you can’t try some of these things…if you’re read Why Work Sucks and you have ideas for how to improve your manufacturing or retail environment, for example, go for it.  We’d love to hear about it - and so would other readers in your industry!

Now for the contest: This is a call for the most insanely non-ROWE policy you can find in your Employee Handbook.  Policies like these (taken from a Fortune 1000 medical diagnostics company):

1. Hours of Work - The Company’s normal workweek is Monday through Friday.  Work days are eight hours each.  Nonstandard workweeks exist for some positions and departments.
2. Rest Periods - There are two scheduled ten-minute rest periods during each eight-hour work shift - the first approximately two hours after the beginning of the shift and the second approximately two hours after the lunch period.  Your supervisor will inform you about the rest period schedule in your area.

Post your policy in the Comments and the winner will receive a signed copy of Why Work Sucks and a Work Sucks bumper magnet.  Go for it - wipe the dust off that Handbook and start searching!

We promised things would get better for Tim and Kara, and they do.

In our fantasy world, all of you that have read Why Work Sucks would give it to your managers, and they would read it and immediately fall in love with ROWE.  It’s good to have fantasies, right?

Tim’s story is an example of the reality that some, or many of you, may be facing.  You’ll see in today’s videos that Tim ended up reaching a point where he talked about ROWE with his manager and CFO, and stated that he needed to be evaluated on his results, not the amount of face-time he put in at the office.  Tim’s higher-ups responded with “ROWE is a great idea, but it won’t work here.”  Despite this, things have become better for Tim since he voiced his unhappiness and talked about the kind of work environment he needed.  He does think that management heard what he said, and although they won’t become a full-fledged ROWE, he’s happy he stood up to the status quo.

Kara, too, is happy - she has her husband back.  The kids have their father back.  After reading Why Work Sucks, Tim made the decision to draw the line on what he’ll accept in a work environment and what he will reject.

Ultimately, ROWE starts with you.  It takes a lot of courage to do what Tim did, and it’s a decision we all have to make…continue to be eaten alive by the status quo or stand up for a better way.

Video #1: Tim stands up

Video #2: Tim’s words of inspiration

Video #3: Kara sees change

This installment of “People on the Street” involves a husband and wife: Tim and Kara.  We’ve learned from experience that when someone thinks their work sucks, it doesn’t just affect them - it affects people around them, too.  With that in mind, in this post, you’ll hear Tim’s account of his entry into a new work environment and how the focus on time progressively became too much to handle.  You’ll also hear Kara’s account of what she was witnessing as Tim became more and more dissatisfied.

In Part 2 on Friday, you’ll hear how reading Why Work Sucks affected Tim and Kara’s life and the life of their family.

Video #1: Tim’s new job

[About five months ago, Tim got a new job.  Shortly after entering the work environment, he was reprimanded for coming in 2 minutes "late" and leaving 2 minutes "early". He was also "checked on" by his boss no less than 12 times a day.  And the stress level began to rise...]

Video #2: Tim: My work sucks

[Tim went to HR to express his unhappiness and was told to go back to the grind.  He continued to be reprimanded for how he used his time - to the point of feeling guilty about going to the bathroom.]

Video #3: Kara’s view of Tim

[Immediately after the new job started, Kara noticed that the Tim she knew was slipping away.  He was withdrawn, crabby, cold, and short-tempered.]

When you’re in a less than stellar work situation, how do your relatives/friends perceive you?  Or, if you have a relative or friend in a stressful work situation, how have you seen them change?

It gets better for Tim and Kara - we promise.  Stay tuned for Part 2…

First, thanks to ABC News for the helpful tips found in What to Do When You’re Out of Sick Days. We will do our best to not shake hands, avoid contact with co-workers and wash, wash, wash.

But is it enough? We don’t think so. Here are some ideas for staying healthy (and employed) during cold & flu season.

Train for it

In an uncertain, hyper-competitive economy, you can’t afford to get sick. Ever. That’s why you need to dedicate your life to staying in top physical condition. Pound the vitamins, get plenty of rest, cut down on the sugar, and work out like an Olympic athlete. You won’t have much of a life, but you’re more likely to have a job.

Invest in protective gear

A quality biohazard suit will not set you back financially as much you might think. We like the service and selection at ApprovedGasMasks.com. Also, if multiple people at the office are already sick, set up a Team-building Quarantine Zone. Isolating cross-functional sick people is a great way to get things done.

Use performance-enhancing drugs

There are going to be days when you’re simply too ill to move. While we’re not advocating illegal drug use, there are a number of over-the-counter (not to mention herbal) solutions to tiredness, fatigue, nausea, heavy sweating, labored breathing, seeing spots, and mental incoherence. Find the right cocktail for you and get yourself back in the game.

Automatically assume your vacation days will be used as sick days

You didn’t have plans for that time anyway, right?

Don’t ask questions

Even if your company’s sick policy is outdated, unrealistic and inhumane, you’re not doing yourself any favors by questioning the status quo. Bottom line: it’s just as important to appear that you’re working as it is to actually get things done. Keep your head down, power through, and look busy. You can look forward to feeling good when you retire.

We recently did a keynote address at an event sponsored by Ideation Consulting and the Twin Cities Human Resource Association.  We love talking about ROWE and encouraging people to get on board.  Following the event, we spoke to several attendees who had ideas about which leaders they were going to talk to in their organizations to bring ROWE in-house.  Unfortunately, we know from experience, their excitement about ROWE often gets shot down by management as soon as they return.

Here are some of the mistakes leaders make when their employees approach them about what they’ve learned about ROWE:

1. They assume that ROWE is a squishy HR program that’s not good for business.  Might sound like: “This sounds like something that will take a lot of work and we just don’t have the bandwidth to look into it now.”
2. They become defensive about the current environment, which they’ve worked hard to reinforce.  Might sound like: “We’re very flexible here.  I let people go to doctor and dentist appointments when they need to, and if anyone needs to come in later or leave earlier, they just need to clear it with me.  I don’t see how ROWE is any different.”
3. They may immediately equate ROWE with complete chaos and make it clear that the conversation will go no further.  Might sound like: “That kind of thing works somewhere like Best Buy, but it wouldn’t work here.  We have critical customer needs and 85% of our corporate office population works in a matrix organization.  ROWE isn’t for us.”
4. Sometimes, they laugh or show complete indifference.  Might sound like: “I heard about that program and it doesn’t work (chuckle).  It’s being touted as something much greater than it is.”

Tell us: What kinds of responses are you getting?  Are you motivated by what you’re hearing or do you feel stalled?  What are your leaders’ main objections?

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.

For our first installation, we have a reader named Jessica Heiken, an employee of a Fortune 250 company. Here’s what she has to say:

C&J: After reading Why Work Sucks, tell us what attracts you to ROWE.

Jessica: “People at all levels stop doing any activity that is a waste of their time, the customer’s time, or the company’s time.” This is what attracts me to ROWE the most. The idea that we can push aside all the nonsense and get really clear and focused on the things that must get done. I started my career in sales, which is one of the few places where the ROWE mindset exists in traditional companies. I was set up with a home office, given a specific geography, and had a very clear objective to meet every quarter: my sales number. My company didn’t care how I got there but they cared very much if I didn’t. In the last 18 months, I have switched gears and companies. I am passionate about the new work that I am doing, but for the first time, I have to report to a corporate office. I don’t miss working from home, but I wasn’t prepared for all the unwritten rules of the office, all that Sludge stuff. I definitely wasn’t used to having people keep tabs on me. Sludge is such a waste of energy, and I love that the first step of a ROWE migration is to eradicate Sludge.

My experience gives me insight into all that would be wonderful and all that would be challenging about life in a ROWE. Work is still work, no matter where or when you do it. I know how difficult working from home can be, and how much energy it requires to provide structure and motivation for yourself. I know that results-only is demanding. I know that ROWE will not improve the lives of people who hate their jobs. But I also know that we need ROWE. Our companies are full of people that are very good at tasks, but don’t have a clue how to define and achieve specific results. It’s a waste of potential. In a global economy, we cannot afford for our employers to get less than the most impactful results out of the work we put in.

C&J: You’ve said that the company you work for is very results-oriented, but that there’s a big difference between “results-oriented” and “results-only”. Explain.

Jessica: Within my organization, “results-oriented” looks like this: people in leadership positions are judged almost entirely on their results, while the individual contributors are judged on their tasks and their effort. Leaders are very clear on their objectives and what success will look like at the end of the year. Unfortunately, when you get down to the individual contributor and middle management levels, the focus is still on the task. This is not to say they aren’t trying to focus on results, but they’re going about it the old-fashioned way. Setting performance objectives is a very formal, HR-driven, annual process that everyone in the company participates in. It’s all about the process; the culture remains unchanged. Too many employees see it as an annoying task to complete once a year and then not look at again until next year. The process fails to produce results because they haven’t committed to really changing the culture.

C&J: Which of the 13 Guideposts from the book do you think Corporate America is furthest from? Why?

Jessica: “Nobody talks about how many hours they work.” I think we are furthest from this Guidepost because measuring work in units of time is so easy - for managers and for employees. In talking to people about ROWE, I’ve found that the idea that work can be done anywhere is very easy for people to accept. They have seen enough remote work arrangements to understand that concept. What is much more difficult for people to accept is the idea that work should be measured and not time. They do not have a model for that. They don’t know how you can tell if people are doing enough unless you know how much time they’ve spent working. There seems to be a fear that other people will not do enough work in a ROWE. And the flip side of that is the fear that employees will be asked to do too much without the contraints of a 40-hour work week.

Part 2 of Jessica’s interview coming on Wednesday…

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Event news: A reminder that we’ll be speaking this week, along with Marcus Buckingham, at an event in the Twin Cities hosted by Ideation Consulting. For more information and to register, click here.

Media news: We interviewed with the Rick Gillis Employment Radio show over the weekend. To hear the podcast (which includes references to beer drinking, Fantasy Football, and a fun Sludge Fest), click here and scroll down to the podcast section.

J.A. Counter & Associates is one of the proud companies that is officially ROWE - and by that, we mean they’ve gone through the ROWE migration process.  They are an insurance and investment firm in New Richmond, WI, and have been a ROWE for about five months.  Just three months post-migration, ROWE was one of the foundational changes that caused them to experience:

• revenue per full-time employee up 18%
• profit per full-time employee up a whopping 250%
• accuracy rates in the Personal Markets Department up 14.45%, effectively eliminating reprocessing at both the rep/admin and compliance/supervisory levels

We wanted to give you a glimpse inside their ROWE migration through the eyes of Jill Luken, one of their employees:

C&J: How were you first introduced to the fact that J.A. Counter was considering migrating to a ROWE?

Jill: I was somewhat “recruited” to interviewing at JAC, as they had an opening and a friend of mine told JAC about me and they wanted to interview.  From there, I was very hesitant because I really liked my job and wasn’t looking for a new one.  My friend told me I might as well just interview, so I did and I found out about ROWE.  That was the only part about my current job that I had a hard time with - the lack of freedom between 8:30 a.m. and 5:00 p.m.  I had 1/2-hour lunches and was considered late at 8:32 a.m.  When I heard about ROWE and researched more about it, it became one of the reasons I decided to go with JAC!

C&J: As JAC started moving toward ROWE, what were some of the challenges for the entire group and for you personally?

Jill: I think it always resulted back to personal guilt.  Not being at the office, or at least at home working during “normal work hours”, was hard to change.  Our customers and contacts still work normal work hours.  I was still fairly fresh out of college - a year or so - therefore, it’s similar to going to class, going home for some lunch, doing some homework and going back to class later.  Go to a meeting, do work at the office, run home and work from home awhile, maybe head back for another client meeting and just get done what needs to be done (which sometimes takes more than 8 hours).  I think it was a challenge to understand we don’t work any less; you just aren’t “chained” to the desk anymore and required to work there.

C&J: How did you work together to overcome the challenges?

Jill: We really focus on the team aspect and helping/stepping in for each other whenever needed.  We told each other when we were “Sludging” and really started to focus on our own jobs, results, and actions - and made sure we had our customers’ best interests in mind at all times.  A lot of brainstorming!

C&J: What is a day in a ROWE like for you?

Jill: Pretty much the same as a day in the life of non-ROWE but with a sense of freedom, which makes all the difference!  If I need an extra 20 minutes one morning to eat my breakfast, I take it and I have my computer up and my calls transferred and am working while I eat.  I never feel like I am being watched like a hawk, which is a fabulous feeling.

C&J: We know you get a lot of questions about ROWE.  What is your response to anyone who says “A ROWE would be complete chaos.  There need to be guidelines put in place like core hours to make a ROWE run smoothly.”?

Jill: If they say that, they don’t get it.  That would probably be my response!  If you’ve taken the time to understand how ROWE works, you would realize that it has nothing to do with forcing people to do things.  Instead, if we have an issue, we brainstorm and fix it.  Implementing ROWE doesn’t have anything to do with employees not working 8 to 5.  It’s all about having control over what you do at all times of the day.  Your customers come first and in our situation, they work 8 to 5.  We all work to help them during the times they need us, but now instead of not getting services at 5:05 p.m., they can work until 6:00 p.m. and potentially still get serviced!  I’m happy and they’re happy - it’s a win-win.

There are several other companies implementing ROWE and we’ll be coming at you with more stories from the trenches…

If you had to guess, what would be your team’s/department’s biggest challenge with implementing ROWE?

One of the common criticisms we hear about the idea of a Results-Only Work Environment is that it’s anti-relationship. Focusing on results is cold and formal, and the autonomy people have means that they aren’t in the office forming those important (and often intangible) social bonds that make a strong organization tick.

The corollary to this idea is that if you’re not in the office raising your profile, you become a nonentity in the organization. You may deliver results, but you’re a ghost. When it hits the fan, you’re the forgotten one.

We’ll take the second one first. Having control over your time doesn’t mean you go it alone. In a Results-Only Work Environment, people still meet, collaborate, chat, get sidetracked, refocus their efforts, and even have fun.

The difference is that people don’t have to engage in any of those activities in an office during regular busines hours. Quite often, they do. But it’s not required. If you’re the kind of person who puts a premium on interpersonal relationships in the workplace, a ROWE doesn’t make fulfilling your face time dreams harder, just different.

Which brings us to a larger point about how we live today. This article on MSNBC about social networking in the workplace cites a U.K. study that says that workers spend an average of 30 minutes a day on Facebook and MySpace.

[Pause for a moment to judge these people as "slackers".]

Now that we’ve done that, let’s look at what those social networking users are really doing: they’re building relationships. The social impulse that critics of ROWE want to preserve in the workplace is the same impulse that drives people to ”waste time” on MySpace.

We’re social beings. We have to interact to survive. That strong social impulse isn’t something that can be turned on and off at will, or directed toward only constructive activities. Before Facebook, people met at the watercooler. In the future, when whatever strange (and possibly disturbing) technology replaces Facebook, watch as people think back to the “good old days” of social networking.

Technology has changed our world in ways we’re still struggling to comprehend. But no matter what happens, we’re always going to be people. A ROWE makes work look and feel different, but it can’t change who we are.

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ROWE and Why Work Sucks were the topic of an interview we did with PBS Nightly Business Report that aired the other night.  Check out the interview here.

Love this story coming out of Victoria, Australia. Starting today, employers have to make sure they do not “unreasonably refuse” to accommodate an employee’s need to work in a non-traditional way to fulfill their personal responsibilities to their families.  Although we’d like to see the law extend to anyone, whether or not they have family responsbilities, we’ll comment on things as they stand today.

As the last line in the article says, “[w]ork-life balance is a frequently used but not always honoured catch-phrase. From Monday that catch-phrase will be given teeth.”

While we applaud this news, we don’t believe that it’s a magic bullet. It’s one thing to enforce better treatment of employees. It’s another to give those same employers the tools they need to live up to the change.

Here are some thoughts for the good people in Victoria:

1. Don’t panic

Some employers will respond to this news by thinking that the law will open the floodgates for employees to take advantage. Relax. There will always be people who are out to defraud their company, but that’s a small percentage of the population. Most people want to do their jobs and live their lives. Don’t punish the many for the sins of the few.

2. Communicate, communicate, communicate

We hope this law encourages employers and employees to communicate better about expectations. People who work “non-traditional hours” still need to get their work done. If the expectations are clear, then they are more likely to succeed, in their lives and in their work. Good communication is the cornerstone of clear expectations.

3. When things go wrong, talk about the work - not the schedule

Even in a traditional work environment, things rarely go smoothly. But if managers are looking to the schedule to fix what’s broken, they will miss out on an opportunity to focus on the work. After all, you can’t solve a problem just by throwing more time at it.

4. Trust people and you will be rewarded

Any kind of discussion about work-life balance is ultimately a discussion about trust. You either trust people will deliver outside a traditional schedule or you don’t.

Our challenge to employers is to take a look at their relationships with their people. If you can’t trust people to deliver without watching them, then what does that say about how you run your business?

If you can trust them to deliver, good for you. Then the question becomes how to maximize that relationship. How far can you take them?

And for those employers who aren’t sure where they stand with their employees, then understanding that relationship should be #1 on your list. Whatever you do, don’t ignore the trust issue. Like it or not, it’s the invisible engine that drives everything.