Last week I wrote about motivating your employees and brought out an article which said that giving your employees more autonomy can result in increased productivity, employee engagement and satisfaction.

There is a management strategy called ROWE – Result Only Working Environment. Work is not about a place where you go, it is about what you do. Based on this strategy, employees can work in a way that is most suitable for them and no one can judge how they use their time. The important thing is that the job gets done. Of course, this does not apply for every profession, like for many customer service positions or blue-collars. What has to be understood is that giving your employees more autonomy does not automatically mean that they will work harder and numbers will go up.

ROWE model can be beneficial for your company. For example there is a company in Estonia called ETS Logistika which implemented the model in the autumn of 2012. Already in the first three months their sales per employee increased by 46% and they are still using the model. It works because the boss feels that he can trust his employees while they feel autonomous.

This model of course has its risks, therefore the importance of trust and communication are emphasized even more than in the classical employment form. It is easy to end up with a conflict when the parties involved have expectations towards each other but do not talk about them. You might even get the feeling that the other one is trying to cheat or take advantage of you. Being autonomous does not mean having no rules. The rules need to be there and they have to be clear to everyone involved. Having the freedom to decide and a free schedule or the ability to work from wherever you want might be suitable for one but not the other. Over time you can find out what works best for every individual.

The thing is, everyone is different. Your first thought, while deciding about enabling your employees to work whenever they want, might be that no one will show up the next day. That might just be the case, as the whole process could start in a much earlier stage. It starts with hiring your employees. You have to keep in mind what kind of people you need, such that you could trust them. I am not saying you have to keep your employees on a leash or that you should set them completely free. There has to be a tunnel of communication between you and your staff so the number of misunderstandings could go down. There was a situation where a manager noticed that one of his employees is coming in surprisingly late and he started to get suspicious. What he did not know was that the employee had work obligations at another station also and he was spending the rest of his hours there. It was all just a miscommunication between two managers.

Like I brought out before, using different methods to change the working environment does not automatically mean motivated employees or higher productivity and a bigger profit. It is important to know what your goal is and what your employee’s goal is so that you can help each other move towards them. I will assess more points on motivation in future posts.

By Joosep K. Kuljus