Yahoo recently stirred a debate on the social media when the company decided to end the option of telecommuting for its employees. Apparently, the incident has served as an inspiration for Best Buy who has also decided to abandon its telework program, demanding that the employees must be present at the offices during work hours.
For long, Best Buy has followed the ROWE management strategy. ROWE stands for Results-Only Work Environment and essentially lets the employees do their work from anywhere at any time, as long as they fulfill the minimum work-hour requirements.
The decision to abandon the ROWE program is apparently a part of a larger strategy by Best Buy to lay off hundreds of its workers and restructure itself to trim down its costs. The plan is to let go of some 400 corporate workers, which in turn would help Best Buy achieve the goal of saving $725 million in costs.
Commenting on the decision to abandon the teleworking option, Best Buy’s Matt Furman says, “We’re a company that still believes strongly in employee flexibility, but the ROWE program itself has been canceled. In any circumstance, it matters not just what you do but how you do it. Particularly in a turnaround, what matters is the ability of employees to collaborate and work together on solving the problems the company faces.”
The company does cite that although the program is cancelled in all its entirety, managers can still decide to take an exemption in the case of a given employee, if the circumstances of that employees demand such a work model.
Courtesy: Network World
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