zero HR bloggers had mentioned it. Count me as one of those people
who are unsurprised by this revelation.
I know that this is a hard thing to swallow from someone who has
very much advocated ROWE in the past. There are some things holding
people back from advocating ROWE and I want to address them here:
1. HR people don’t trust the system - HR people in general
don’t trust employees or managers to do the right thing so
they’d rather not rock the boat and expose their weaknesses
as an organization. They believe by keeping people at work, they
can compensate by being able to monitor what a person is doing every
minute of the day.
2. Managers don’t trust their employees - Instead of seeing
the benefits in recruiting and retention that this program would
bring, managers focus on how their lowest performers would do. Instead
of admitting their weakness in developing their own employees, they
would rather compensate by punishing their best workers.
3. Managing by results scares everyone (except your high performers)
- This is the big one. If you don’t feel confident that you
can manage people by the results they bring to the organization,
then what are you managing them by? I can tell you but you’ll
never admit it: attendance and keeping busy. If you can’t
manage in a results-only way, that’s what you’d prefer
to manage by.
Look, ROWE is radical because it is something that is common sense
based but is hard to wrap old school (and even some new school)
minds around. If you ask a business person what they are hiring
a person to do, 100% of the time they should say “to do [insert
something].” Yet almost all of those business people will
also manage not based on whether someone is doing that something
but also on a litany of non-related criteria (whether or not you’re
chained to the desk properly). If a person is successful at doing
their job well and can do it working from home, on a schedule they
dictate, isn’t that better (especially if that person is happier)?
I almost always get an e-mail or comment insinuating that I’d
just rather work at home all day and not come into the office. No,
I’ve done that already. I want to be in the office (if at
least for a little bit).
I’d like to believe ROWE is going to be adopted on a large
scale but I am not that foolishly optimistic. I am guessing that
ROWE will get implemented at progressive large corporations and
smaller companies that are looking for that competitive edge.
Flexibility is low cost and it is absolutely stunning to me that
people can’t see the huge low cost opportunity that is standing
right in front of them. 
Lance Haun, Human Resource Professional.
http://hrmtoday.com and http://yourhrguy.com
Reprinted with permission.
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