Raging Debates in HR

Libby.Sartain — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 20:11:21 +0000

I love the concept, I am not sure how it works within the context of employment laws. Best Buy and Gap Online report good results…

See my post on this topic:

http://www.brandfortalent.com/blog/whats-next/rowe-new-way-to-work-for-new-consumer-of-work/

Laurie.Ruettimann — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 20:11:00 +0000

I love the concept, but if ROWE worked, wouldn’t the marketplace embrace it?

Ed.Lawler — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 20:10:30 +0000

N/A

Sharlyn.Lauby — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 20:10:09 +0000

I haven’t read the ROWE book, but I’ve seen enough articles about it to get the concept. The idea of holding people accountable for only results is awesome. I think in a perfect world, this is the ideal all businesses should strive for. Ahem (as I take off the rose colored glasses) unfortunately, we don’t live in a perfect world. So while I like the idea, I think its practical application is limited to certain leadership cultures, business models, and/or industries.

Lance.Haun — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 20:09:15 +0000

Do you have a pure knowledge worker environment? ROWE will work fine under this scenario. Police, firemen, hourly associates and manufacturing though? No.

It is purely based on the nature of the work. Some lend themselves well to the concept, some don’t.

Richard.Hadden — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 20:08:47 +0000

N/A

Kris.Dunn — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 20:08:22 +0000

No. Mainly due to two factors:

1. Most companies aren’t good enough at performance management to quantify the actual results and/or behavior they need from the talent in their organization.

2. Most managers don’t have enough trust that employees aren’t watching Oprah all day long to let ROWE happen.

Want ROWE to work? Get really good at #1, then you’ve got a chance at getting past the trust barrier outlined in #2. To say more would be useless. The entire game related to ROWE can be summed up in those two points.

David.Creelman — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 20:07:52 +0000

ROWE is part common sense and part dangerous fantasy. The good part of this idea is that managers should tell employees what needs to get done, not micro-manage in telling them how to do it. The silly part of this idea is if managers think that it will be easy to define clear results for all jobs. ROWE still calls for massive amounts of judgment as to whether an employee is getting appropriate results or not. But that is the manager’s job: to apply judgment while drawing on whatever objective evidence is available.

This really gets at an understanding of what a manager’s job is. A manager is someone who has to be deeply engaged in the work of his or her people so that they are in a position to make wise judgments. This is why young managers will usually be bad managers–they just haven’t had enough experiences to make wise judgments.

There is a lot of training on supervisory skills but not enough on explaining just what a manager really does. Perhaps before you think about ROWE you should read Mintzberg’s new book that is simply called “Managing”.

Peter.Cappelli — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 20:07:27 +0000

I don’t know about this particular approach, but the idea of being clear about exactly what matters at work is a good thing. We do want supervisors to hold employees accountable for job performance and not on attributes like personality or appearance that sometimes bleed in. The downside of attempts to pin down exactly what performance is in a narrow sense is that it is easy to leave something out. In such a case, only what is measured will get performed. For example, organizations that focus only on individual performance measures find that employees don’t help each other, leading to negative consequences for the organization.

Josh.Bersin — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 20:07:03 +0000

All organizations should focus on results – and people should understand how results are measured. If “results” are clearly measured and transparently communicated, all employees at all levels can much more clearly understand how to improve.

Ultimately the most important issue here is for top leadership and all other leaders to “define what results look like” – in forms that each individual can model and understand the role they play. Driving “results for results sake” may result in measurement of meaningless activity – it is the ultimate business goals, strategies, and directions that should drive measurement of results.