Today I was reading a post by Amber Naslund on working hard and working lot’s and I remembered Dan Pink’s talk at TED, which is one of my favorites. In his talk, Pink talks about ROWE (Results-Oriented Work environment) which is applied at Best Buy. Needless to say I immediately did a google search for ROWE resources and found the site of the two creators of this approach to working better and finally getting control over our time. In the site there was a sample chapter to their book “Why work sucks”.
And really work does suck. ROWE which is a program for treating employees like real adults by giving them control over their time and space where they do the job is the approach all the people working the 9 to 5 want in their lives. Work-Life balance is just a lie if we expect employees to stay at the office 8 hours to do tasks they could do at home or in the Himalayas. But this approach has also a component that could change the world for good.
Not being required to go to work at 9 am will take off stress as you can now do your work and manage to be around your family or take your old hobbies again. This will take a lot of stress load from you helping you be healthy and maybe even give you time to do some exercise which is good for your heart. Avoiding meetings and distractions will also help you focus on your work and start understanding that many of the usual things done at work aren’t needed. Technology has done it’s part in making it less necessary to be in an office to do some work. We have e-mail, shared documents, Saas, IM, Phones, Skype, Mobile Phones, Video Chat and webinar software and many more tools that didn’t exist when the “work environment” was created. With all this software that eases up meetings we don’t need to be in the office all the time and we can focus on our work while we take care of the rest of our lives. We do not often need to be at the office to do something, we can do all of the work at home with our computers. For me it seems stupid to go somewhere to use a computer if you had one at home or if you can be provided with a laptop.
Taking care of family, friends and partners is also very important for our life. How many times have we seen people not wanting a partner in order to advance their careers or making their marriages fail. How many times have we seen kids seeing their parents just on weekends. Is that the kind of family life we want? Are we working to get the money to live, but losing the time to do it? That we need to change as well.
Commuting to work is also a big deal. Taking the bus, car, train or whatever you take to go to work is a waste of energy. If you can work as fine from home or a location close to your home (coffee shop, restaurant or Coworking Space). Avoiding the commute can save precious time to spend with the family, significant other or just doing something valuable to you and it also helps to reduce our carbon footprint and ease it a bit on the planet. Imagine if lot’s of people did this, the impact could be huge. But reducing the carbon footprint is just one side of it. While working close to home you get to build groups like the ones formed around Co-working spaces that can help you further your career and meet new friends. You will still have the social part of work when you need it and you’ll be able to participate in new communities and meet new friend also.
So do you think ROWE will work for your job? Will you implement it on your startup? Will you propose it to your boss?
