How Best Buy Realized That Productivity Doesn't Necessarily Mean Being In The Office At 8am
from the they-just-got-this? dept
For many years, we've been surprised when companies freak out about things like personal web surfing at work or how companies used new technologies to simply take over larger amounts of an employee's non-work time, rather than better balancing their work-life balance. The key in all of this is that if people are productive and getting their work done, does it really matter if they're surfing the web occasionally at work? Among many tech companies (especially young ones), this seems like the natural state of being, and many have no problems with more flexible work programs. However, for more traditional companies, the idea is apparently still foreign. Business Week has a cover story this week about how Best Buy has completely changed their corporate environment, embracing an exceptionally chaotic plan to let people do whatever they want whenever they want. This means if people only want to work nights, they can. If they want to leave in the middle of the day to watch a movie, that's great. If they want to work from home or a coffee shop or a fishing boat, that's perfectly fine. No meetings are mandatory. All that matters is whether or not people get their jobs done. Living in Silicon Valley, this doesn't sound too out of the ordinary, but it seems more fitting for companies that grow up that way, and before "experienced" managers come in and put more processes in place. However, Best Buy figured out a way to not just implement it widely, but they did it from the bottom up, not even letting the CEO in on the fact that much of the company had embraced the idea until about two years after it began.It will be interesting to see how well this goes over long term. While the article quotes lots of people talking about the productivity gains that came from the switch, it's not always easy to tell if it's because of this change, or just because there was a change. In other words, just the fact that the usual grind changed, could bump up productivity -- but if the new method becomes "the grind," changing back could be just as effective. However, part of what this really highlights is that companies often judge productivity by the wrong measures -- such as hours at a desk. If you want a system like this to really focus on productivity, there needs to be a clear (and correct) understanding of what productivity actually means for the workers at that company.
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is this new ?
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Re: is this new ?
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Nice to see...
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best buy vs. old school
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Candy coated puff piece
That hidebound Beast can't stop tripping over its own feet. Its only success comes from volume: they buy such piles of stuff from their vendors that they get huge discounts. Its nothing but volume and momentum, but the foundations are rotten to the core.
Fast flowing money covers a lot of ills. Once the growth falters, Best Buy will implode.
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Best Buy
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Re: Candy coated puff piece
Get over how smart you think you are. BestBuy isnt going anywhere. Society is completely consumer driven and BestBuy is my favorite place to go blow all the extra cash I have from being self employed and extremely productive due to a less stressfull work environment.
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Re: Candy coated puff piece
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IT journalism
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You can't get the same interaction time with fellow employees if you don't have the same schedules, or you aren't there. Cell phones are great, but they can't replace face to face conversation.
And if you are trying to impress your boss, or just trying to exceed expectiations, this loose scheduling might be just the thing make you sacrifice too much to accomplish your goals. That may be fine if only one guy out of twenty does it, give them what they want. But if everyone wants to move ahead (and who doesn't) then you've got a race scenario that involves everyone working harder than everyone. Yukk. I like that fact that my company pays me for overtime. Not because I make more money in crunch scenarios, but because it means I still know my family.
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What difference does it make whether I work in an office, at home, or at the beach? None, but attitudes like yours believe that it does.
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I've yet to find that environment. Perhaps I should climb to the top of Mount Everest.
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As long as we do our 40 hours, and let them know approximately when we will be there, they generally are fine about it. If you need to take off for a family event, or just some personal running, just let everybody know.
Nearly the best place I have worked, ever. Short of self employment.
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That's it. There is no big issue. Also, all this stuff about "leaving in the middle of the day to watch a movie" is total bollocks. We can leave whenever we need to take a lunch and arn't busy. Lunches for us are 30 minutes, no one can watch a feature film in 30 minutes.
Yes, Best Buy is changing. We're changing from a company that sells product and happens to sell a bit of service to a service-driven company that happens to sell product. If you don't understand this, then the trash garbled article you just read is right within your intelligence level and you should click the "Back" button on your browser right now to prevent yourself from learning something.
If you think I'm some top-level manager trying to make Best Buy seem great, I'm not. I'm a new employee who hasn't even recieved training yet, and I already know more than "Mike" about corporate, policy, and Best Buy in general. And even the knowledge that I have is a million more times limited than Best Buy expects of its employees.
I'm not really sticking up for them, but in a way I am. Because they're not some evil money-sucking corporation. Now, they do sell products and services, and that is the purpose of Best Buy. But simply selling a customer something is no fun, at Best Buy we like to have fun on the job -- it makes for happier employees. Best Buy will differ from store to store and even customer experience will differ with the person, but no one is out to get you. People keep forgetting that these "big corporations" and "higher up CEOs" don't actually work in the stores. We, the employees do. And we, the employees are regular people like you who know what bad customer experience is like and don't want you to have to go through it too.
Stop bashing big corporations. Regular people work for them, and you might find out that they arn't charging you near as much as you think. For isntance, we lose -$200 on every single laptop we sell. That means that after cost and delivery, our laptops cost us money to sell them to you. But if we didn't have laptops, people wouldn't think we're fun or cool and would more than likely not shop with Best Buy.
This article is bogus Mike. I usually like your stuff but this time, like a few before, you did little to no research and have even less personal experience. If you're a writer you should take the time and responsiblitiy to be professional. Don't just bang your delapidated head on the keyboard and assume that the half-garbled trash that shows up on MS Word is publishable.
-Davis
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Re: Davis's comments
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You're an idiot! The article applies to Best Buy CORPORATE, not the retail stores. Obviously every retail establishment has a corporate headquarters it reports to and receives instructions from. As was mentioned in the article, ROWE is a new program that has been instituted at the corporate offices in MN. While the guys at corporate are trying to figure out how they could roll it out to stores (if even possible) it is currently not available there.
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Re: previous post
Not only that, but it's clear YOU were the one who didn't really comprehend Mike's commentary. Take the time to actually read it before posting a long diatribe.
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And your comment (which is lacking in any argumentative value at all) doesn't make up for the loss of sources or leigitimate and unbiased fact.
Like I said, usually I am a fan of Mike's work and I let him know. But when it sucks, it's only fair to point it out. Harshly, yes, but don't jump on your high-horse about it. You didn't even write the article, and I'd be willing to bet, know less about the situation than Mike or even Business Week's writer.
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No, I don't think you did comprehend the article. TFA clearly states that management is working on a way to roll this out to the retail employees.
As a member of the "geek squad precinct", you are a retail employee. Those IT folks that support Best Buy (website, systems, etc) are back-office. For now, ROWE applies to the back-office.
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Best Buy
Though it sounds like the CEO doesn't have control over his company, and is kind of a dick. Imagine, having to "sneak around" to try this trial program?!
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Direct quote from TFA...
"So they met in private, stealthily strategizing about how to protect ROWE and then dribble it out under the radar in tiny pilot trials."
If this doesn't constitue sneaking around, I don't know what does.
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ummm no
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like DST said. This is not the store employees. Theres no way store employees could walk out whenever they want. This applied to the desk jobs in the big tall building with the nice elevator.
You are a peon like myself.
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Sweet Jesus...
Please do not read this article or the article linked to it by Mike, because your head will explode.
Understanding the difference between a RETAIL job and a back-office CORPORATE job seems to be excruciatingly difficult and nearly impossible for most of you guys. NOT EVERYBODY AT BEST BUY WORKS IN A STORE!
Please either stay in school or keep in touch with your former manager at McDonald's.
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Retail Employees
DigitalBomb (Davis): You need to read more and comment less, I haven't been more embarrassed for a poster until I read your rant. When you get older or smarter and maybe actually get out of retail then maybe you should post on these subjects.
poundsmack: OMG!! If those are your writing skills, your gonna be in retail for a while, hit the books buddy.
As far as the article goes: I agree with the sane people here, the flex work environment works well. I'd love to hear some comments from actual Best Buy CORPORATE employees though.
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I have been with Bestbuy for over 7 years now. All of you new hires get feed that line of bull and believe it for a while.
I also work in the geek squad as a DA and trust me ill never go back to being in the store again.
I hate to break this to you man but Best Buy is a company, company's want one thing and that to be profitable. End of story.
Once you figure out how all they care about is there numbers and you are just one of them you will understand.
Sorry to bust your bubble bub.. but its the truth.
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I don't know about you... but home is where the wo
It's always nice on a work-at-home Friday to have all my work in order and a clean apartment. Since my computer is right across the room from me, I can also be get to work in around 10 seconds after getting up while working from home.
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Chaos is good
The problem is that some managers would rather avoid that confrontation. Instead they complain to upper management that "things are not working" and that "things need to change". Then, something that works almost all the time and is liked by the employees is changed to something that will likely be broken and not liked by the employees, all because some managers could not manage.
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Best Buy corporate culture change
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New philosophy at best buy.
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