I just read Why Work Sucks and How to Fix It: No Schedules, No Meetings, No Joke–the Simple Change That Can Make Your Job Terrific. Now that’s a mouthful of a title, isn’t it? It’s about Cali Ressler and Jody Thompson’s concept of a Results-Only Work Environment (ROWE), where employees can do whatever they want, whenever they want, as long as the job gets done. Come in to the office on a Saturday, see a movie at noon on a Tuesday, work from the beach…whatever, it doesn’t matter, as long as the job gets done.

The idea is that time is what matters to employees. It’s the stuff life is made of, so we want to control it. But an employer should want to buy our results, not our time per se. Spending a lot of time in our chair doesn’t necessarily help them, but producing good results does. So let’s give everyone what they want by letting employees have control over their time, and holding them accountable for producing results.

That doesn’t sound so extreme, does it?

Some of my readers have already experienced ROWE, usually as a freelancer.

Amanda says:

“I guess ROWE is what I do – as a freelance writer, and a contracted-by-the-hour ESL teacher – and it puts into a neat acronym why I love this combination of jobs. There’s no sitting round at work fiddling on the internet and feeling unproductive – my time is MY TIME and what I do with it affects me. I’m either writing, or I’m teaching, and if I’m not doing either of those I’m not working, and nobody cares but me.”

Exactly, your time should be YOUR TIME. If you can’t be productive at a given time (whether it’s because you haven’t been given a task to do, or you’re having a mid-afternoon slump after a big plate of pasta, or you’re just thinking about how you’re missing your kid’s school play), you’re not helping anyone by pretending to work. Do what you have to do, and work when you can be productive.

Ali Hale says:

“Like Amanda, I’m a freelance writer — and I love the fact that I get paid for output, not just for hours spent sitting at my desk!

One of the reasons I left “traditional” employment was because I hated the fact that, however productive I was, I still got paid exactly the same as colleagues who’d spend the day messing around on Facebook. If anything, the 8-5 system *encourages* people to be unproductive, as the only reward for getting through your work early is being given more work.

Whereas now, I know that the more productive and effective I am when writing, the more money I can make — or the more free time I can have.

And on that note, I should get on with my next article…”

Don’t even get me started on how the current system punishes the strong and rewards the weak. Ali’s in the U.K., but here in the U.S. we seem to get the bad aspects of socialism without the good ones. We’re afraid universal healthcare would destroy the country, but we’re happy to see everyone get paid based on their title and years of experience instead of performance.

Dot says:

“On one of my earliest jobs, I knew I was accomplishing a great deal, yet was given only a $10/week raise. I protested and described all that I did. Nothing was done. When I left, they ended up having to hire two people to do what I did.”

I can only wonder if they ever realized it would have been better to give you a decent raise and keep you, instead of hiring and training two brand new people.

Marelisa says:

“I worked for the Panama Canal Commission and my boss was a lawyer from Iowa named Jay Sieleman. Since I produced results Jay basically let me do whatever I wanted. For example, the workday started at 7:15 a.m., but I’m a night person and would usually stroll in around 9:30 a.m. However, I would stay late and would come in during the weekends when there was a complicated case that needed more attention. We had a great working relationship because he would set clear goals and I would meet and exceed those goals within the established time limit. If that meant that sometimes I ate lunch at my desk while other times I took a two hour lunch, he didn’t care.”

And why should he care? You were giving him exactly what he wanted. By treating you like an adult who’s perfectly capable of managing your own time, he was getting results and you were enjoying your life.

But is ROWE always desirable? Could it makes sense for some people to be paid by the hour?

Steve C says:

“I think it all depends on the nature of the work whether ROWE is effective. For example, if you are a lawyer, then billable hours is an excellent measure of results.”

I’m not a lawyer, but I think this is probably right. Lawyers are effective with every hour billed (no Twitter at work for them), and their hourly rate reflects their results. Plus they’re billing clients separately for specific jobs, and they have to know exactly what to charge them.

At Best Buy (where ROWE originated), there are some hourly employees on ROWE. They fill out a timesheet and get paid by the hour, but they still enjoy most of the benefits of ROWE.

Dot says:

“Another question arises from my current job. As a floater who fills in for those who are out, I have days when everyone’s in and can handle their workload. Under ROWE, would I get paid zero, even though I was there M-F 9-5?”

As a ROWE worker on a salary, your pay would be constant regardless of the amount of work on any given day. However, neither you nor the company would want you to ever be bored, so they might expand the scope of the job so you could always be productive. You could also be an hourly ROWE worker if the job didn’t require a full-time effort.

But there’s another issue here about needing to be there at specific times, and I’ll address that in a separate post.

I still have one big question that wasn’t really answered in the book. The idea is that you can do whatever you want, as long as the job gets done. But in a job where we’re not judged by time, what constitutes getting the job done?

As Maria says:

“In most jobs there are no real metrics beyond ‘seat time.’ Frankly, most job performance instruments suck major eggs.”

Let’s say you have a non-ROWE job making widgets. You work for 40 hours a week, but you have no idea how many widgets you make (why would it matter, if you’re only judged by time?). However, you decide to measure your performance, and you see that you make about 40 widgets a week. Now let’s say you switch to ROWE, where your hours don’t matter, as long as the job gets done. And your boss says they want you to produce 200 widgets a week.

Well, that’s a problem. You’ll gain some productivity by having control of your time, so maybe you can now make 50 widgets a week with the same effort it used to take to make 40. But 200 is a lot, and people who don’t get the job done in a ROWE get fired.

If ROWE means getting control over your time but having five times the work piled on, I don’t think it’s remotely worth it. But I don’t think that happens. From the book:

“The good news was the people did not report an increase in work hours. Some people worry that because a Results-Only Work Environment ignores time as a measure, either employees would feel more pressure to work longer hours, or employers would try to squeeze more time out of people. But that wasn’t the case. What did change was that people felt a big increase in work-schedule fit…their work schedule fit their life better…more time to take care of all aspects of their life…increase in sleep…increase in energy…less pressure to work overtime and do unnecessary work…fewer work interruptions.”

So I’m not clear on how you set fair performance expectations, but somehow it works out just fine.

This is related to Steve’s (Brip Blap‘s) comment:

“I’ve read a lot about ROWE and I think one of the primary objections will be on the part of many employees, oddly enough. When companies start realizing that they had 8 people sitting around browsing the web 7 hours a day and working 1 hour a day, they’ll be able to start cutting employees. I know as a consultant I’m expected to be on-site simply to satisfy the client’s desire to know I’m “working”, when in reality I can complete most of my consulting work in a couple of hours a day. But as long as companies expect “core hours” they will build inefficiency into the system AND overpay employees (and consultants). Would most people be happier working in a ROWE environment? Sure – if they are paid a salary. If you’re in my shoes and can only bill 2 hours a day in a ROWE environment, but 8 if required to be onsite – I don’t know how many people would happily agree to that.”

One thing we know for sure is that ROWE will not be a welcome change to useless employees who don’t do anything but still manage to survive in the current socialistic system. Under ROWE, they’ll be found and eliminated.

A chart in the book shows the changes in voluntary turnover and involuntary turnover for three teams from FY 05 to FY 07. Voluntary turnover dropped by 90%, 52%, and 75% because nobody wanted to leave. But involuntary turnover rose by 100%, 78%, and 56% because nonperforming employees were fired.

Or you could say that involuntary turnover shot up because the company realized they didn’t have enough work to go around in a ROWE, and decided to downsize. This concern seems valid, and I don’t know how much downsizing occurs when a company implements ROWE. The book might have mentioned this, but I don’t remember, and they certainly didn’t make it seem like there’s much to worry about. I have to think that eliminating inefficiency is a good thing, because there’s enough work to go around out there, even if some jobs will be eliminated.

ROWE is certainly extreme by today’s standards. It’s possible that one day it will be the norm and we’ll wonder why there was ever an alternative, but for now, good luck saying “Hey boss, let me tell you about this great new way to work.” My main thought after reading this book is “Sounds great, but what can we do about it?”

Not a lot, really. The average person is powerless to fight the system. We might be able to get a tiny piece of it implemented by convincing our boss that it doesn’t matter whether we get to work at 8:00 or 8:15, but the authors say that you don’t really get the benefits unless the whole thing is implemented. What benefits are we talking about?

“We’re still waiting for the study that looks at the long-term effects of ROWE, but anecdotally we have evidence that it makes substantial changes in people’s lives. Javier’s story about taking care of his mom during a family crisis is not atypical. Scores of employees have extraordinary stories about how a ROWE has allowed them to go back to graduate school, take care of sick loved ones, or spend time with relatives in other countries. We’ve also heard everyday, but equally encouraging, stories about people spending more time with their kids, their spouses, even their dogs. When we say that a ROWE gives people their life back, we really mean it.

Giving people control over their time isn’t a magic bullet. People aren’t automatically going to become trim and fit and stress-free (although one person did note that their skin cleared up after their team migrated into a ROWE). People will still have to improve their own lives. But at least a ROWE gives them that chance.”

If you have a secret Santa thing at work, try giving a coworker a copy of Why Work Sucks and How to Fix It. Spread the idea, and one day its time will come.

• Why Jobs Don’t Need Core Hours
• Why Work Sucks And How To Fix It
• The Lie Of The Lie Of The 4-Hour Workweek
• Darkworker Supervisors Want Doctor’s Notes
• ROWE Vs. TOWE
• The Liberation Revolution
• Making And Breaking The Rules
• Being Emphatically Wishy-Washy
• The Fire Fly Manifesto, And Career Renegade
• 8 Reasons Your Dream Job Isn’t At CTU