Imagine a workplace without rules. You can breeze in at noon and leave at 2 p.m., and no one gives you a dirty look. Want to exercise at the gym Monday afternoon, or spend Tuesday morning at your kid's school? No problem. The only thing that matters is that you get the job done.
It sounds impossibly idealistic. But it's really happening for 3,000 employees in the corporate offices of Best Buy at Richfield, Minnesota.
Two human-resources professionals, Cali Ressler and Jody Thompson, have created a "Results-Only Work Environment", or ROWE. They're trying to spread the idea with their new book, Why Work Sucks and How to Fix It, published last week. In a nutshell, they want to abolish the notion of a 40-hour (or 50, 60 or god help us, 70-hour) workweek.