Kudos

I’ve read lately that retail chain Best Buy is far into a new pilot program where employees get to work whenever they want. They can come and go as they please, as long as their targets and task deadlines are met. There is a hidden bonus here (aside from boosting employee engagement) – targets and tasks need to be thoroughly defined and tracked for the program to work. Both managers and employees have a good incentive to work those parameters out.

The pilot is being expanded from HQ staff to the retail floor. The assumption is that today’s workers can manage their own time, coordinating shifts with fellow employees and working together to meet store targets.

I find the experiment to be very interesting in a Web 2.0 kind of way. What Best Buy is basically doing is to shift power to the worker down the chain. That’s exactly what W2.0 does for the internet user. It shifts power down the chain, making each person a contributor.

Because of this conceptual similarity, I’m wondering how Web 2.0 (or Enterprise 2.0, to be exact) can facilitate this transition at Best Buy. The article didn’t include any data on the kind of IT in place to support this shift in employment dynamics, but it stands to reason that such infrastructure is required.

Furthermore, the assumption that employees have the responsibility and capability to manage themselves as contributors is very exciting to me. Is this shift in mentality that characterizes today’s younger employee the result of growing up into a social internet? Or is the social internet a result of these attitude changes, and if so what caused them in the first place?

I’ve been recently commenting on a post by Andrew McAfee regarding my concerns about attention allocation when implementing Enterprise 2.0. John Howard answered my comment with an interesting comment of his own clarifying to me how information workers adapt and participate in E2.0 in the normal run of business, or as John described it:

In my experience, people didn’t get side-tracked from their day job, they used their normal coffee, water-cooler, smoke break (!), waiting for edits to render, moments to dip into the Q&A going on in our discussion system

Johns comment really helped clarify things for me, yet it also led me to think about all of those employees that don’t have free moments to dip into the discussion system – Customer service representatives for one are monitored on a minute by minute basis, and yet they have a collective understanding of the customer and real time access to customer issues that are valuable. I have commented about this on the original blog post.

But then I began thinking about all of those other people that don’t even work in front of a computer, yet have a lot of know-how that is truly valuable to the organization. I was reminded of the local store I go to when I need meat. The store is part of a large chain and they have an employee on duty to help customers that have specific requirements (I like to buy pounded veal schnitzel). One of their employees has a lot of knowledge and he helps me sometimes pick what I need.

However, more often than not other employees are on duty that don’t really know a lot about food (although they try their best). When my “favorite employee” is not on duty I simply don’t buy at that store, and not because of his character but because of his knowledge.

So I was wondering how a corporate wiki could help that chain propagate knowledge between employees that work the meat section. Since they have an employee who is passionate about food, why not encourage him to write a blog about it and let other employees read it? I for one might start buying more meat from them.

I’m thinking about the implications of E2.0 on porters, nurses, doctors, clerks. I’m thinking about how people selling shoes can benefit from E2.0. I’m thinking that there is a lot more to E2.0 than solutions for information workers, or rather, that everyone seems to me to be an information worker.