business

This is lovely. Do they think we've forgotten that woman at MN/DOT who was practicing a variation on ROWE during the bridge collapse? They rarely knew exactly where she was...

I worked at Best Buy under the ROWE program and found that not only does it not work as they billed it, but it creates more work for the same pay. Essentially the work still needs to get done, so the people who do the work end up staying in the corporate offices to work while the middle management decision makers are off at the cabin, miles away from being "connected". It sounds tempting to a lot of people to be able to "work when you want" but the reality is that is creates more work, more miscommunications and more headaches. I don't believe that people should work like this. We need face to face communication.

The issue with this is that Best Buy used it as an excuse to outsource Operations jobs to India at the going rate of $50 a day. In the process they lost market share and revenue. Nobody at Best Buy will admit to the correlation because staring at the operational costs bottom line has the execs mesmerized. Lose 500 Minnesota jobs to India so that Minnesotans will eventually be paid $50 a day. Go mercantilism.

Seriously.

They are just trying to put a name to it.

Those people at MNDOT cannot even take care of their own building in Roseville, let alone bridges!

This philosophy, which gives more freedom to employees, doesn't work with everybody. It only works with the self-starters and entrapreneurial-type people who are results oriented. It fails miserably with process-oriented bureaucrats who don't do anything unless they are told when and how to do it. So forget about implementing it in union shops or with government workers.

Treat workers like adults and the company will reap the rewards. Kudos to Thompson and Ressler for stepping up.

Feel-good-ism. Companies like Best Buy, Target, etc don't know what productivity is!

This is a 'cute' idea and if corporations want to spend money on this - good for them. However, to think that our government might spend money on this makes me furious. I'll help them focus on results for free, and if they do I think they'll find that they still work regular hours, get more done, and do it with fewer people.