Chapter 16  Motivating Employees

519

Case Application 1 Passion for the Outdoors

and for People
At its headquarters in Ventura, California, Patagonia’s office space feels more like a
national park lodge than the main office of a $400 million retailer.105 It has a Douglas
fir staircase and a portrait of Yosemite’s El Capitan. The company’s café serves or-
ganic food and drinks. There’s an infant and toddler child-care room for employees’
children. An easy one-block walk from the Pacific Ocean, employees’ surfboards are
lined up by the cafeteria, ready at a moment’s notice to catch some waves. (Current
wave reports are noted on a whiteboard in the lobby.) After surfing or jogging or bik-
ing, employees can freshen up in the showers in the restrooms. And no one has a pri-
vate office. If an employee doesn’t want to be disturbed, he or she wears headphones.
Visitors are evident by the business attire they wear. The company encourages cel-
ebrations to boost employee morale. For instance, at the Reno store, the “Fun Patrol”
organizes parties throughout the year.
Patagonia has long been recognized as a great workplace for mothers. And it’s
also earned a reputation for loyal employees, something that many retailers struggle
with. Its combined voluntary and involuntary turnover in its retail stores was around
25 percent, while it was only 7 percent at headquarters. (The industry average for retail
is around 44 percent.) Patagonia’s CEO Casey Sheahan says the company’s culture,
camaraderie, and way of doing business is very meaningful to employees and they
know that “what they do each day is contributing toward a higher purpose—protect-
ing and preserving the areas that most of them love spending time in.” Managers are
coached to define expectations, communicate deadlines, and then let employees figure
out the best way to meet those.
Founded by Yvon Chouinard (his profile as a Leader Making a Difference can be
found on page 188), Patagonia’s first and strongest passion is for the outdoors and the
environment. And that attracts employees who are also passionate about those things.
But Patagonia’s executives do realize that they are first and foremost a business and,
even though they’re committed to doing the right thing, the company needs to remain
profitable to be able to continue to do the things it’s passionate about. But that hasn’t
seemed to be an issue since the recession in the early 1990s, when the company had to
make its only large-scale layoffs in its history.

Discussion Questions
16-13. What would it be like to work at Patagonia? (Hint: Go to Patagonia’s Web site
and find the section on jobs.) What’s your assessment of the company’s work
environment?
16-14. Using what you’ve learned from studying the various motivation theories,
what does Patagonia’s situation tell you about employee motivation?
16-15. What do you think might be Patagonia’s biggest challenge in keeping
employees motivated?
16-16. If you were managing a team of Patagonia employees in the retail stores, how
would you keep them motivated?
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Case Application 2 Best Practices at Best Buy

Do traditional workplaces reward long hours instead of efficient hours? Wouldn’t it
make more sense to have a workplace in which employees could work however and
whenever they wanted to as long as they did their work? Well, that’s the approach
Best Buy tried.106 And this radical workplace experiment, which obviously has many
implications for employee motivation, was an interesting and enlightening journey for
the company.
In 2002, then-CEO Brad Anderson introduced a carefully crafted program called
ROWE—Results-Only Work Environment. ROWE was the inspiration of two HRM
managers at Best Buy, Cali Ressler and Jody Thompson. These two had been asked to
take a flexible work program in effect at corporate headquarters in Minnesota and de-
velop it for implementation throughout the company. Although that flexible work pro-
gram had had some stunning successes, including high levels of employee engagement
and productivity, there was one significant issue. Those involved in the program were
perceived to be "not working." And that was a common reaction from managers who
didn’t really view flexible work employees as actually doing work because they didn’t
show up at work during the "traditional" hours. The two women set about to change that
impression by creating a program in which employees would be evaluated on what they
accomplished—their "results only"—not on the amount of hours they spent working.
The first thing to understand about ROWE was that it wasn’t about schedules.
Instead, it was about changing the work culture of an organization, which is infinitely
more difficult than changing schedules. With Anderson’s blessing and support, they
embarked on this journey to overhaul the company’s corporate workplace.
The first step in implementing ROWE was a culture audit at company headquar-
ters, which helped them establish a baseline for how employees perceived their work
environment. After four months, the audit was repeated. During this time, Best Buy
executives were being educated about ROWE and what it was all about. Obviously, it
was important to have their commitment to the program. The second phase involved
explaining the ROWE philosophy to all the corporate employees and training manag-
ers on how to maintain control in a ROWE workplace. In the third phase, work unit
teams were free to figure out how to implement the changes. Each team found a dif-
ferent way to keep the flexibility from spiraling into chaos. For instance, the public
relations team got pagers to make sure someone was always available in an emergency.
Some employees in the finance department used software that turns voice mail into
e-mail files accessible from anywhere, making it easier for them to work at home. Four
months after ROWE was implemented, Ressler and Thompson followed up with an-
other culture check to see how everyone was doing.
So what results did Best Buy see with this experiment? Productivity jumped 41
percent, and voluntary turnover fell to 8 percent from 12 percent. They also discov-
ered that when employees’ engagement with their jobs increased, average annual sales
increased 2 percent. And employees said the freedom changed their lives. ROWE
reduced work-family conflict and increased employees’ control over their schedules.
ROWE employees didn’t "count" how many hours they were at work but instead
­focused on getting their work done, however many or few hours that took. For them,
work became "something you do—not a place you go."
Despite the positive aspects of the program, Best Buy’s current CEO, Hubert
Joly, decided to eliminate the flexible work environment associated with ROWE. Now
instead of being able to work whenever and wherever they choose, most corporate
staff will be required to work traditional 40-hour weeks in the office. And Ressler and
Thompson? Well, they now own their own HR consultancy practice, which promotes
the ROWE idea to other companies.
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Discussion Questions
16-17. Describe the elements of ROWE. What do you think might be the advantages
and drawbacks of such a program?
16-18. Using one or more motivation theories from the chapter, explain why you
think ROWE works.
16-19. What might be the challenges for managers in motivating employees in a
program like this?
16-20. Does this sound like something you would be comfortable with? Why or
why not?
16-21. What’s your interpretation of the statement that “Work is something you do,
not a place you go”? Do you agree? Why or why not?