A summary of the article by the same name appearing in Time Magazine, July 25, 2005

Best Buy used to be just another corporate headquarters in Minneapolis where effective work was deemed equivalent to face time in the office. But in response to the usual life balancing pressures, Best Buy decided not to create “another work-life balance program” for its 3,500 employees at headquarters. Instead they started a program 3 years ago that half of the employees are using.

The innovation of the program is that flexibility is provided to an entire team at once and individuals within the team are trusted to get their work done without regard to where or when. As one manager implementing the program said, “Trust doesn’t cost me anything.” The results have been encouraging – job satisfaction and team performance are up and turnover is down. There are a number of observations that have come out of the program:

• It takes small steps and time to implement a flexible program as cultural changes seep into the psyche and employees develop alternative styles and communication techniques.
• Employees have adopted systems from whiteboards outside cubicles to publicly accessible calendars that communicate the whens and wheres of their schedules.
• E-mails have become more succinct.
• The time spent in meetings has dropped dramatically.
• One of the biggest challenges and perhaps the most emotional is “deprogramming” old attitudes
• One innovative practice Best Buy uses is to conduct “sludge” sessions.
  • When an employee hears a comment that reinforces old attitudes promoting overwork, like “Wow, I wish I could come in at 10”, they call “sludge.” The offending party has to succumb to a nominal penalty.
• Managers have put up the most resistance to the program and the solution is often for them to learn to plan more carefully.
• Without time spent in the office as a proxy for good work, managers now have to establish clear goals for their employees.
• “In exchange for autonomy, Best Buy employees give up the guidelines of where work ends and leisure begins.” Some individuals have struggled with how not to make work a 24-hour project.

While the program has much to offer, it still has its challenges as the company struggles with how to apply the principles across all of its employees and deal with the emotional challenges individuals wrestle with during their transition to the new way of thinking about work. In return for increased autonomy, Best Buy is asking employees to be more creative and take initiative.