Colombo knows that simply imposing ROWE at Electronics Shack will not work. So, she wants to begin a trial program where she can encourage managers and employees to try it out, and help them work out the problems. She hopes that a successful trial program will inspire other managers and employees to request trials for their own work groups. She has identified where she would like to introduce ROWE.

Li Poon, General Store Manager, Manitoba - Colombo is particularly interested in introducing ROWE to the retail environment because the turnover rate is nearly 70 percent per year, a number far higher than the industry average. Employee morale is so low as to also be a significant problem. Because of the nature of the work, retail stores will be Colombos toughest challenge in introducing ROWE. However, Colombo believes she cannot limit ROWE to units where its easiest to implement. She is determined to find a way to make it work in the retail stores. Otherwise, she feels that retail employees will be resentful of employees in other parts of the organization who get to work under the ROWE principles.

Poon has expressed interest in having ROWE introduced for her store. As general manager, Poon is responsible for sales, operations, inventory management, and loss prevention for her store. She works with her employees to make sure that they offer exceptional customer service, and address customer service customer issues when necessary. Poon is assisted by two assistant managers, whose job is to work closely with customer-service reps. The assistant managers are responsible for maintaining high morale, providing feedback and coaching to sales associates. They engage in basic selling, ring-in sales, answer customer inquiries, and handle special orders, returns, and exchanges. Poons store is open from 9:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. seven days a week.

While Poon wants the opportunity to introduce ROWE to her store, she acknowledges that she will need a lot of support, direction, and encouragement to make the program work. Poon is highly respected by her employees, but has never introduced a major change to her employees before.

Early Response to ROWE

Colombo has informed all employees that changes are coming, although she has also told them that she will introduce the new ROWE program in just three units at first. She hopes the trials will minimize the disruption throughout the company, as well as provide time to work out any unexpected difficulties with introducing ROWE more widely.

Although she announced only Monday, last week, which three units would be included in the ROWE trial, Colombo is already receiving complaints. Younger employees who are not part of the three-unit trials, are urging her to introduce the changes into more units, more quickly so they can benefit right away. Some of them are threatening to leave if she does not act quickly to get more units involved. Many of the Generation X and Baby Boomers, who have worked for the company for 20 years are resentful that work life is going to be easier for an employee in their 20s and early 30s than it was for them when they were younger. Even though they appreciate an opportunity for more work-life balance/employee well-being, they resent having sacrificed much of their family life to help build the company. They believe younger employees should pay the same price. Thus, they are inclined to encourage Colombo to go more slowly in introducing ROWE.

Some employees are not sure that ROWE is a good idea at all. They are afraid that having more autonomy will also mean that there will be no clear guidelines about when work is supposed to start and stop. They are afraid that they will end up working 24 hours a day, and they dont know how to make sure that does not happen. Some managers have reminded Colombo that the store still needs to comply with employment standards legislation on overtime, meaning that most employees should not be working more than a 40-hour week or an 8-hour day, without appropriate overtime pay. Meanwhile, about one-third of her managers have said that they just dont believe what she is trying to do will work, and they wont support it, even if it does work in the trial unitsall because they believe that more rather than less control drives strong results.

Colombo reviews the many concerns that her managers and employees have raised and wonders what she should do? How can she best introduce ROWE to the unit so that it has the best chance to work? What should she do about the employees who are complaining that she is either moving too fast or not fast enough? And, how quickly can ROWE become a way of life throughout the entire company?