Best Buy's 'Results Only Work Environment': Changing the Productivity Paradigm?

Reportedly, ROWE teams had an average 3.2 percent lower voluntary turnover than non-ROWE teams. Average productivity of ROWE teams had also increased 35 percent. Employee engagement, which was a measure of job satisfaction and hence an important factor in retention, was also reported to be significantly higher in ROWE teams. Best Buy reportedly witnessed several non-quantifiable benefits as well. For instance, managers at the company said that ROWE made their work easier. They admitted that, despite their previous misgivings, performance was actually easier to track under ROWE than under conventional systems. Similarly, problems were also easier to identify and correct...

In late 2006, Best Buy announced that it was working on a project that would allow ROWE to be implemented in a modified form in the company's retail stores, which employed almost 120,000 people. The company believed that an employee-friendly work environment could provide a solution to the problem of high attrition in the stores. (Best Buy's voluntary attrition in its retail stores was around 65 percent in 2006.) "It's a well-known fact that it's difficult to keep people working in retail - not just at Best Buy - because of the hours and the stress. We want to look at deeply held beliefs in the retail environment and whether they're actually in the way of both associates' and customers' needs," said Thompson...