I spent a lot of time debating before deciding to launch this blog. One of the key articles that pushed me towards it I read almost a year ago. Business Week’s Smashing the Clock: No schedules. No mandatory meetings. Inside Best Buy’s radical reshaping of the workplace is a fascinating story that reveals a lot about the changing nature of work.

The official policy for this post-face-time, location-agnostic way of working is that people are free to work wherever they want, whenever they want, as long as they get their work done. “This is like TiVo (TIVO ) for your work,” says the program’s co-founder, Jody Thompson.

The comparison to TiVO is particularly apt, because it underlines one of the less obvious connections between new technologies and our working lives: that technology brings choice. For some reason, a lot of people tend to assume technology is all about efficiency, but that’s not really the case. It’s always been about choice. The choice to send a quick e-mail as opposed to writing and mailing a letter. The choice to edit those photos in-house with the click of a button instead of sending them off to a third-party with an X-acto knife and a darkroom. And, now, the choice to work a schedule that isn’t rigidly defined by your daily access to some largely irrelevant building.

It seems to be working. Since the program’s implementation, average voluntary turnover has fallen drastically, CultureRx says. Meanwhile, Best Buy notes that productivity is up an average 35% in departments that have switched to ROWE. Employee engagement, which measures employee satisfaction and is often a barometer for retention, is way up too, according to the Gallup Organization, which audits corporate cultures.

This is an old article, so I’d be interested in any kind of a follow-up on how it’s going now, but I suspect it’s largely the same. People, when not told exactly when they need to work, will tend to work more, not less. I think the big barrier management needs to get over when it comes to policy’s like Best Buy’s ROWE has nothing to do with any valid concerns of productivity, but rather losing control.

Photo by Ian Muttoo. Licensed under Creative Commons

Tags: best buy, corporate culture, flex time