Best Buy Institutes Extreme Flex Time 300
s31523 writes "The company I work at has a flex time policy where basically, you can come in and leave within a window of time, as long as you are in the office during 'core' hours (10am-2pm). Best Buy has gone extreme, they have completely banished traditional views of office hours. Citing a preference for results over time invested, the company has completely done away with schedules. No mandatory meetings. No impression-management hustles." From the article: "Another thing about this experiment: It wasn't imposed from the top down. It began as a covert guerrilla action that spread virally and eventually became a revolution. So secret was the operation that Chief Executive Brad Anderson only learned the details two years after it began transforming his company. Such bottom-up, stealth innovation is exactly the kind of thing Anderson encourages. The Best Buy chief aims to keep innovating even when something is ostensibly working. '[The 'results-only work environment'] was an idea born and nurtured by a handful of passionate employees,' he says. 'It wasn't created as the result of some edict.'" Sheesh. I work from home and even I have a schedule. Here's hoping it catches on.
In the end the only thing that matters is: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:In the end the only thing that matters is: (Score:5, Funny)
Re:In the end the only thing that matters is: (Score:5, Funny)
Dude, I've lived in Minnesota most of my life and if I ever hear you talking like that to outsiders again I swear I'll slap you upside the face with a hockey stick! No hotdish for you!
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Re:In the end the only thing that matters is: (Score:5, Funny)
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no, seriously there isn't. i think they farmed it out to some other company that doesn't actually do anything.
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Well, don't forget, if you are on 24/7 'call'....make sure and get paid for it. If it involved people with 'beeper time'....you get paid when carrying the beeper even if not working.
That is the price for them having the abili
Depends on the people (Score:5, Insightful)
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I suspect anyone that collaborates with anyone else is going to end up essentially w
Re:Depends on the people (Score:4, Insightful)
They'll eventually fire more Americans the longer you help them support the bastards in India.
Just say no to out sourcing.
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Damn...why is this marked flamebait? It is a valid opinion and plea IMHO.
Moving jobs that the GP posted saying they were obviously made difficult due to collaboration being near impossible due to time differences. If they moved them back closer to home....that w
Re:Depends on the people (Score:5, Insightful)
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It doesn't matter if Best Buy pays for the results. Who cares if someone spends the hours or doesn't? You got results, you got paid. You, as Best Buy, are willing to pay for some amount of results.
This reminds me of a story I heard about the first accountant to try Visicalc [wikipedia.org]. His reacton was somethng like "This is great - now I can do my entire week's work in an afternoon, and spend the rest of the week with my wife and kids". We all know how that worked out.
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no, no clocking in... from TFA:
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The problem is lawsuits.
Take a small company with no HR. If someone is taking advantage of this policy, you fire them. In a large company with an HR, you have the 3 talks before that spoiler is gone....
I hate
Re:Depends on the people (Score:4, Funny)
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That said, it sure would be nice if more companies adopted this so that traffic woul
Is it just me... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Is it just me... (Score:4, Interesting)
Personally, I'm betting on the farm animals angle.
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Everyone at the C level has been on extreme flex time for year. It's hard to notice your staff isn't working 8 - 6 when you aren't.
Re:Is it just me... (Score:5, Informative)
My boss, a COO (COO == a CIO who also has machines that get actual grease on them under his authority), worked a big 3 days this week, including one day that was 11-6...I think I worked 9-8 on the same day.
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So, you slept for an hour on company time and then called it a day?
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I'm assuming the grand parent meant he worked from 09:00-20:00.
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Actually, I thought the same thing about his inability to see what was happening first hand. Most CxOs are supremely out of touch with the day to day runnings of the corporation. Still, I would expect that the filtering of programs and processes would have made it through the several layers of management it would take to hit the CEOs ears. Then again, it's possible that the lower management might have been fearful that top management would not approve of such an arrangement, and that's why the whole
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Re:Is it just me... (Score:4, Funny)
Yes, but they'd only make money if they mail in the rebate with a photocopy of the original stabbing impliment and the original bloody suit.
Ah, the bottom? (Score:2, Insightful)
Also, some info missing from the summary.. Zonk's schedule follows:
8:00 am-4:00 pm - Bash Sony.
I don't want to rain on this parade, but ... (Score:2)
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Meetings ca
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My day tends towards working 8:30-noon, then a break for lunch, another 3-4 hours in the afternoon, a break for dinner, and maybe an hour during the evenings or on the weekend. It also helps that I telecommute the ma
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I don't see where it says you can't schedule a meeting. If you need to collaborate with someone face-to-face, then two of you figure out a time that you can both be in the same place to collaborate. If you're both being stubborn asses and can't agree on a time and place - well, that's what middle management is there to sort out.
That's not so easy (Score:2)
I've been in situations where i'm the only one in a given time zone. It can easily take a day to schedule a meeting with three people in it - that sort of inefficiency isn't good.
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My guess is that people would synchronize their calendars when necessary to ensure that productivity doesn't slip, because if it did, the upper brass would find out, and they'd lose their awesome flex time.
The question now is whether the company will be able to sustain productivity, now that people know that upper management in on board with the flex time idea.
More Hours? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Funny (Score:3, Funny)
They've gone from almost always having what I am looking for to almost never having what I am looking for.
A simple USB mouse? Nope, just wireless and the $70 gamer mice. Off to Staples
A new PC game? Nope, ours never seems to have games on release. Off to Eb Games
A cheap cable? Nope, just a $50 Geek Squad version. Off to Wal-mart for the $10 version
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It only means.... (Score:5, Funny)
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If you realized these warranties were HALF of Best Buy's TOTAL profit....you might have a chasing program out of the corporate offices as well.
The BB formula goes something like this....
1) Lure People in with crap
2) Annoy the crap out of them until they buy some low prices electronic item
3) Coerce / dupe buyers in crappy extended warranties
4) Profit !!!!!!!!!!!
Congradulations my friend, you're one of the few on the Internet that have cracked the code..
We are doing something similar (Score:5, Insightful)
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If more companies in a set area went to a flexible schedule, I wonder how much that would fix traffic jams. Perhaps the amount of accidents would actually decrease as less cars are on the road at the same time.
Re:We are doing something similar (Score:5, Informative)
The City of Houston thinks it will help alleviate traffic problems. It's actually city policy to encourage flex time for this reason, and this policy has specifically caused one of the (very large) aerospace contractors I work with to implement a generous flex time policy.
http://www.houstontx.gov/flexworks/flexinthecity/
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Yet the VP of IT was stupid and reprimanded me for not risking my life and driving 3 hours in a snowstorm so I could do it there....
I wonder why I dont work ther eanymore.
Anyways, most IT and all IS/CS can be done
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I hated rigid schedules to the point that I quit and started my own company. I saw it as an obsolete business model. My office building choice was primarily based on proximity to public transit. I wanted to be located directly adjacent to a BART station http://www.bart.gov/ [bart.gov]
I am paying a premium price for it, but it takes cars off the road and gives people some extra time during commute to actually be productive rather than wasting time in traffic. In the long run, this will probably create a heada
A.K.A..... (Score:5, Insightful)
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I'm not sure that's the right angle to take. This implies that you have a fixed set of tasks, and that you would do those tasks faster if it meant you could leave work when they were finished, regardless of how long they took to complete. It also means that your boss has already examined the tasks, examined you, and decided that they would take you a full day to do. (If this wasn't true, they would have given you more tasks.)
In contrast, I think most self-dri
Dilbert (Score:2)
The way I would handle ROWE is usually take care of the fixed tasks assigned by my manager during my hours at work. Later, at home, I'd work on more "fun" things that interested me or helped to make my job more efficient.
I can see how ROWE could make me a more effi
They have yet to address... (Score:2, Funny)
1. They need to ensure more than one register is open when there are 20 people on line.
2. They need to ensure that the people they hire for the different departments actually know something about what they are selling. Not what they memorized from the training. Actual KNOWLEDGE.
Re:They have yet to address... (Score:5, Insightful)
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I keep hearing people complain about the people who work at Circuit City, or Best Buy, or even the freaking Wal-mart electronic department. They keep yammering about how these employees don't know what you're talking about, and you hit the reason on the head- those who do know what they're talking about have gone on to higher paying jobs. Maybe it's just an upscale electronics place, or maybe they're a sales rep to corporations or actually designing the units themselves.
The only people who work at
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"Take the High-Definition Assessment Test, Earn $100"
"Learn the Difference Between Macs and PCs, Get a 25 cents / hour raise"
I could go on and on, but the point is, it's not hard to offer incentives for your employees to learn. They're just too cheap to do it.
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Shocking (Score:2)
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'Results only' is bull (Score:5, Insightful)
Like a lot of things, 'results-only' is great in theory, but almost impossible to implement in practice due to human nature.
Not my cup of tea, I'm afraid (Score:5, Interesting)
But, at the risk of sounding like one of the old fogeys the article talks about, it's not for me, and for the reasons those old fogeys mention.
a) I work better when at work. I don't like to work at home; one of the nice things about my 5 mile commute is that, if I have to get any significant work done "after hours," I can drive to the office and do it. My focus is better when I don't have my fiancee, my cats, my 360, my Wii, my stereo, my television, etc. around all tempting me to spend time with them, instead. Moreover, I don't want to be available for routine work 24/7 - I'm already "on call" for crises all the time, but it's with the understanding that I'm only to be bothered if it really is a crisis.
b) There is a value to meetings - at least, some of them. We'd all love to completely ditch the useless all staff meetings that are pretty much just a productivity black hole, but some meetings are valuable. In my office, we have one weekly meeting just of the technology team - it's a tight group and a focused meeting. It's on the schedule from 1:00 - 2:00, but we've only actually been in the meeting until 2:00 once since I've been here. We all have pretty specialized jobs, but they all inter-relate. I'm the DBA, for example, and Dave is the storage architect. It's good to touch base on a regular basis to keep up with what's going on outside our fairly narrow areas.
c) I'm not good on the phone. My hearing isn't what it could be, and I spend too much mental power on making sure I'm hearing what the other person is saying to really be processing well. Face to face, I can use rudimentary lip reading and body language to "fill in the gaps" without the mental effort.
This, of course, is just the way I work - for people who don't have my hangups, this is a great system. But I'd end up working somewhere else, most likely.
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That is nice, I live no more than 10 miles, but if we hit rush hour expect 1+ hour commute. I feel sorry for the people that live 30-60 miles that drive here. I take it you do not live in a metropolitan area... Or at least one without bad commuting traffic.
b) There is a value to meetings - at least, some of them.
If it wasn't for a new "major change" in our policy meeting, I wouldn't be able to
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Parent: find a job that you get to work from home or have flex hours.
End of thread.
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Most of our "meetings" are very informal two-to-five person get togethers in someone's office, and that works well for us. But we do have that one
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Research (Score:5, Insightful)
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Businesses seem to underestimate the effect of unnecessary 9-5 on morale and productivity.
In my experience, 9-5 think is bull most of the time. I have had two jobs where 9-5 was mandated for spurious reasons even when other hours (or flex) had way more benefits. One job I had all the work was done 6am-2pm. There was literally nothing we were allowed to do after 2pm. But 9-5 was still mandated. I was so frustrated at our department being behind because I could not c
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There is a potentially serious problem though with paying people on results rather than on time spent. While time spent isn't a great metric of effort invested, finding even half-reasonable metrics of results achieved is even more difficult. This is of course particularly acute in research, where there is almost no way of measuring results, and even if there was, the result is r
Bah, I'm already doing it. (Score:5, Funny)
I work at a local newspaper, and we've already got this implemented!
I work as late as necessary, as long as I work 8 hours (starting at 9 AM or earlier). Heck, the day before thanksgiving, I got to work from 9 AM until 12:20 AM Thanksgiving day! YEAH! I even go to SKIP MY LUNCH BREAK! As long as the paper gets done, they don't care how late I work! Well, if the paper is done, they usually want me to leave, or clock out, since they really don't want to pay overtime..
Sarcasm aside, this is great. Wouldn't work in my industry, seeing as how we are usually pretty crunched for time as is.
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Yes, they do - we also have an online portion, too. I actually prefer having a physical copy to read rather than reading it online. Most newspapers have an online front that is fairly strong.
I dont think this will work at Best Buy (Score:2)
This can work great if done right (Score:3, Insightful)
This seems ideal for programmers like myself. I've got regular hours now, but in the beginning we had no set hours. That didn't mean less hours--often it meant 12+ hour days, but there was no question about when the time at which the work was done, as long as it was done in a timely manner. I've never experienced extreme flex where hours were not insane for other reasons.
Anyway, it seems like this would work well as long as there are still some deadlines--get that new module coded by the end of the month, and it shouldn't matter that you finished in 3 weeks and took the last week off. Management can consider that last week a reward for effective work. They might decide you can handle more work on the next cycle, which can create an incentive for you to "fill out the month". So, management has to understand that dynamic, and not punish people for efficiency.
On the other side of the equation, workers have to not deploy "filling out" and other obvious means of abuse. It seems like this has a better chance to work well if the employees are incentivised with something other than salary; namely, stock options. Then they are only hurting themselves if they hurt the comnpany, in theory. Of course, we all know that a division of a large corporation can perform well while the company overall performs poorly. That dilutes the stock option incentive, so it seems like incentives for a whole department could help (complete that upgrade in a week, the whole division gets extra pay or options).
In order for it to work well, you need mature, self-directing workers.
You also need workers with output that can be measured. I suspect that there are an awful lot of workers with no real output in our economy, or output that can't be measured (I'm pointing the finger at you, mid-level PHBs). A system like this could weed those guys out! OTOH, you can't apply a system like this to jobs like call-center technicians, floor sales, or even sales managers. A big part of those jobs is simply "being available". The fact that a sales rep hasn't taken a call or helped a customer for a few hours doesn't mean he wasn't doing his job--there was just no input he could act on to creat output.
I can see it now... (Score:5, Funny)
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My Job, core hours and early Fridays (Score:2)
Model effectiveness (Score:2)
In the end you still have to fire your useless employees, and concentrate on hiring the useful ones. The ones that won't apply just to take advantage of the system.
Where? (Score:5, Funny)
Best Buy has employees?
You mean those blue shirted people who just stand around?
They *work* there? :-o
Government of Canada (Score:2)
The way it should be (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't do jack shit at work.
I'm a beginning programmer at my place of business (a facility that's part of a Fortune 500 company). I manage and build small web applications for internal use. I'm given a general time table for when it needs to be done, and pick a date within that time table to have it done by. My projects are done on time, and usually have more useful features than intially requested. But I only work maybe four (on average) of the eight or so hours I have to be at work. The rest of the time is spent fiddling around on Slashdot and other places, while looking behind my back to make sure I'm not being watched.
Personally, I find it to be a complete waste of time. Sure, I could pick up some extra projects, or do some research on the side, or move my due dates up by weeks, but I don't see much of a future with this company (maybe two or three more years, at best), so I have no incentive. I would, however, work harder at work if I knew I wouldn't be there so long.
This is the way I see it: If a person is paid salary, why do they have to be there for exactly 40 hours a week? If they can do all of their work in 20 hours, why force them to stick around? If an employee has more freedom to choose when they come and go, they'll have higher moral and thus better work output because they feel they have more control over their job and life (and they would). If they wanted to take a Friday off to see a kid at their sports game, they wouldn't have to worry about filling out forms or requesting time off- they just make sure their work is done the first four days, and inform people they'll be gone the fifth.
Obviously, this kind of situation wouldn't work for all industries. Sales reps, for instance, would probably need to be in during certain hours so they can work with other companies and customers that still do the 9-5 shtick.
But in this age where information can be shared instantly, where cell phones allow us to be reached almost anywhere and laptops to work from a range of places, why should we be constrained to one desk for a specified set of time if we can be as, if not more, productive without those chains?
I hope this experiment works.
Cats (Score:3, Funny)
job (Score:3, Informative)
What really blew was that they expected you in your seat
Some weeks I worked 40 hours. Some weeks I worked closer to 65. Nights, weekends. Anything to get the projects / fixes / whatever done.
Problem was, in my 40 hour week, there were times that I only WORKED 15-20 hours. The rest of the time was walking from place to place, moving candy from a dish in one department to another, playing on the 'net, or just doing nothing at all and trying to keep from falling asleep.
Towards the end, I started coming in when I wanted. I still got ALL my projects finished on time, helped my co-workers on stuff - and only worked 15-20 hours a week.
Boss called me in and fired me
Aah well he was a jerk (still is, from what I hear)..
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A retail employee rant (Re:Geek squad is a fraud.) (Score:3, Insightful)
I work in the warehouse for an electronics retail store, and I'm the one who "collects carriages." I consider myself a geek and do quite well with repairing computers; I simply prefer not to deal with people who have no respect for other human beings. I'd rather push carts than walk in circles trying to conv
Re:A retail employee rant (Re:Geek squad is a frau (Score:3, Insightful)
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I guess its a good thing Best Buy isn't a development environment then, huh?
~Rebecca
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Our c
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I was on a team thet worked three years on an 80 million dollar project, seldom had meetings, most people worked very flexible, and the project was damn succesfull. to quote the Sr. VP "It saved us more money then we could have possible imagined."
SO meetings are very seldom needed. Most business meetings can easily be handle via email, IM or telephone.
Design meeting are usually best in person for creating the frame work, after that features should be easy to conceptualize.
I'll say it agai
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So if a group does something, and it doesn't work(determined by productivity) there going to stop doing it. If they are idiots, they'll do it until they are fired. In either case no one would continue the trend.
people in the trenchs often come up with really great ideas. Too bad they aften get shot down by people afraid of change. FOr someone to think they will know how to solve any problem, and come up with all innovation is hubris in the extreme.