'Why Work Sucks and How to Fix It'

Imagine a workplace with no rules. You can breeze in at noon and leave at 2, and no one gives you the stink-eye. Want to see a movie on Monday afternoon, or spend Tuesday morning at your kid's school? No problem. The only thing that matters in this workplace 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 Richfield, Minn.-based Best Buy.

Two human-resources professionals, Cali Ressler and Jody Thompson, created what they call the 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.

“People can do whatever they want, whenever they want, as long as their work gets done,” they write. “You get paid for a chunk of work, not for a chunk of time.”

They stress their philosophy isn't just about making workers happy – they believe it's good business, too. At Best Buy, ROWE teams lowered their voluntary turnover (a.k.a. quit) rates while increasing involuntary turnover (a.k.a. fire) rates. That means, when they were judged solely on their results, desirable workers stuck around while incompetent people were caught out and dismissed.

Still, making work not suck is a tough sell. Best Buy Canada hasn't hopped aboard the ROWE train. Ms. Ressler and Ms. Thompson spoke to The Globe and Mail about their crusade, why we all need to eradicate “sludge” and why they think flextime is a farce