Best Buy ROWE Program at Best Buy

Best Buy

ROWE Program at Best Buy

Best Buy has taken an organizational change for the improvement of its employees' competence. This paper will talk about Best Buy's culture, the ROWE program implemented and the resistance to the change as a result of the ROWE program. This paper will also talk about the stress that occurred and whether or not the organizational culture has helped with the change.

Describe the culture of Best Buy.

Best Buy's culture involves all chains of authority. Employee's from salary to hourly share responsibilities to satisfy their client needs. The company's culture has changed to a new flexible program to accommodate employee's personal life. Culture is defined as "the shared and learned values, beliefs, and attitudes of its members" (Slocum & Hellriegel, 2007). Best Buy also believes in satisfying employees who invest time in their job and make personal efforts to get the job completed. Unfortunately Best Buy wants to change their organizational strategy to be more flexible, particularly for working women.

2. Discuss the approach to organizational change that the ROWE program illustrates.

Organizational development approach refers to developing employees' competencies to resolve problems by allow them to recognize and become emotionally committed to improving the performance of the firm. It stresses the forming of trusts, dealings and employee commitment (Slocum & Hellriegel, 2007). Best Buy determined to reconsider the idea of work as oppose to the work-life balance program most companies use. The ROWE program was developed as a result of this re-evaluation. ROWE stands for Results-Only Work Environment. The ROWE program demonstrates trust in the employees to get their jobs done without having the fixed work schedule, less meetings, and no focus on how many hours worked.

The change procedure started with less than 300 employees and the belief of recruiting all others to the flexible program. Managers had to trust their employees to work as teams, to boost socialization and productivity. The reason was to develop the employees' competencies on flexible scheduling for work-life, change the culture, and give them independency with their work (Slocum & Hellriegel, 2007). The focus was to change the traumatic, overworked culture that existed at Best Buy.

3. Discuss the resistance, both organization and individual that the ROWE program had to overcome.

"Without change there is no innovation, inspiration, or motivation for improvement. Those who commence change will have a better opportunity to manage the change that is predictable. ~William Pollard. Best Buy has enforced a plan with large potential. There are predictable to be some errors made because it is the company's first time with the ROWE program. The organization has and will experience some resistance. Best Buy has to meet the client's needs, without having employees actually in the office. The company can come resilient if the employees lack self-discipline.