Best Buy corporate workers don't have set hours. Aka, 2:00pm on a Tuesday afternoon is hunting time, or 11am on a Thursday morning might be a good time to take in a matinée. Workers are encouraged to work when they want, where they want, and to determine the best way to do it. Best Buy is moving to a results-only worker model, which Best Buy explains is helping them cut down on inefficiencies involved with requiring employees to be in the office when, frankly, they don't need to be. This is all according to a Business Week puff story that appeared in the December 11 issue (and can be found here online) No meetings, no corporate lunches, no real office hours. . .just get results.
Maybe this will work, maybe it won't. Efficiency is always a good thing, and results are too. Ignoring the fact that brain-storming and interaction is great, and how companies like BMW thrive thanks to brainpower working collectively (ironically, Business Week in November ran a story about BMW praising their close-knit corporate culture and production facilities, where workers from different departments work near each other, hence more prone to interact with each other and come up with great ideas. (Part of that series is here). Maybe Best Buy will be a revolutionary march towards a greater bottom line and employee satisfaction. Or maybe not.
The article about Best Buy smells like a little less journalism and a little more of riding the wave. The economy hasn't flat-lined like many doom-sayers have predicted, and the Dow has risen substantially from the end of the summer through now. It's very probable that this change has exacted results, but are they permanent, and to what extent are they only a result of the changes? Business Week fails to investigate this important aspect.
Also, although profits are up big at Best Buy, recent articles in other publications have noted how Target and Wal-Mart are looking for a piece of the pie of Best Buy's extended-care warranties (cash cows), and that the flat-screen TV craze may not have hit its peak, but it too will pass eventually. Besides, have you ever been in Best Buy lately? It's fun to look, but it's not the world's greatest place to shop. Ever try to find something hard-to-find at Best Buy? It doesn't exist. Or have you checked out www.bestbuy.com? Their website and interface is stuck in 8-years ago mode, with bad search functions and clunky inputs.
But here's the stranger part: Best Buy wants to extend this culture to their retail stores. Huh? I fail to see how this corporate "results-only" culture can be extended to an environment where someone has to open the store doors at 8am, no matter how early that seems. Maybe I'm crazy, or maybe it's just Best Buy.
No comments:
Post a Comment