Cofounder and Principle of Culture Rx
CultureRx was started as the embodiment of Cali Ressler and Jody Thompson's passionate belief that there is a better way to work. They began their work together at Best Buy where they are credited with revolutionizing the workplace through the creation of a Results-Only Work Environment, ROWE. Driven by an intuitive notion that results-focused work environments foster productive employees and have a positive effect on overall performance, they are now taking their idea outside of the Best Buy workplace to help you find new ways to energize your workforce.
The ROWE experiment started quietly, when Cali Ressler, who manages Best Buy's work-life balance programs, helped a troubled division of the retail group in Minneapolis deal with sinking employee morale. Ressler encouraged the manager to try flexible scheduling, trusting his team to work as it suited them. "He said, 'Well, trust doesn't cost me anything,'" she recalls. The innovation was that the whole team did it together. While the sample size was fewer than 300 employees, the early results were promising. Turnover in the first three months of employment fell from 14% to zero, job satisfaction rose 10%, and their team-performance scores rose 13%.
When Jody Thompson, Best Buy's "organizational change" guru, heard about Ressler's work, she pushed the company's management to make total flexibility available to everyone. No one is forced into it; teams sign up when they're ready. Best Buy expects that ROWE one day will apply to the whole company. At the moment, it is working on a version for the 100,000 retail employees in its stores, a much more difficult task because most of those employees are hourly, and their work is regulated by federal law.
CultureRx has grown to offer customized consulting services tailored to the needs of their clients - companies committed to challenging the status quo for the benefit of a healthy workforce and ultimately, a healthy bottom line, but the Results-Only Work Environment remains the core of the CultureRx philosophy. A Results-Only Work Environment is one where your talent will show up energized, disciplined, fluid, flexible, and focused - always ready to deliver the results necessary to drive your business.
ROWE is a bold, cultural transformation that permeates the attitudes and operating style of an entire workplace, leveling the playing field and giving people complete autonomy - as long as the work gets done. In a ROWE, people do whatever they want whenever they want as long as the work gets done. In the park, in a coffee shop, in the shower. At midnight or 3am or on Sunday. Whenever and wherever.
Cali and Jody have often been featured in the press for their contribution to this workforce revolution. Most recently, they can be found in Fortune, BusinessWeek, and TIME Magazine articles, and on-the-air in segments on 60 Minutes, ABC World News Tonight, and NBC Nightly News.
Cali Ressler and Jody Thompson's presentation is provocative and their ideas are innovative. They will show you how trusting your employees to get their work done helps your company retain talent, expands your business and brings solutions to problems your company faces every day.
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Work/Life BalanceWho are we kidding?! We live in a world that rewards long hours, lots of face time, and sacrificing personal time. The answer is not flextime. Flextime is a joke. The answer is not work/life balance. Under the current system, balance is an impossibility. The answer is not getting better organized, or setting your alarm fifteen minutes early to beat the morning rush, or spending a Saturday making all your lunches for the month.There are no tips or tricks or new types of schedules that are going to solve this problem. The only solution is to change the game entirely.Cali and Jody offer not a new way of working, but a new way of living. It's based on the radical idea that everyone in a work environment is an adult--that even though they owe a company their best work, they don't owe them their time or their lives. They have created Results-Only Work Environment, or ROWE, where people can truly live the lives they're wanting to live because they're in complete control over how they spend their time.You don't have to ask permission to go grocery shopping at 10:00 a.m. on a Wednesday morning, or see a movie on a Tuesday afternoon. You just do it. As long as your work gets done, then your life is your own. You get paid for a chunk of work, not for a chunk of time.Now THAT'S work/life balance.RetentionThe never-ending Talent War. Companies are living it, and can't seem to win. Employees bounce from company to company, looking for more pay, better benefits, more amenities, signing bonuses and on and on and over and over--driving costs up and hurting everyone's bottom line. What if YOUR COMPANY was the 'greener grass' on the other side? What if you could create a work environment that became a magnet not only for Gen Y, but for all generations--and stuck only the talent you want to keep? What if you could have the competitive edge in the never-ending Talent War?Cali and Jody will enlighten you by introducing the three powerful forces that work together to create the work culture that exists today--the culture that chases employees away instead of holding onto them. They will plant the seeds that will leave you wondering why we continue to try to fix the problem, instead of changing the game. They will leave you energized to begin making REAL change.Workforce IssuesCompanies are faced with many workforce challenges in today's business environment. Retention headaches. Recruitment nightmares. Productivity drain. Wasted resources. Talent Wars. Decreased Engagement. And, there's a million and one solutions out there to 'solve' your workforce woes. So, why haven?t we 'cured' what ails us?It's time to stop band-aiding the issues and look for REAL change. Cali Ressler and Jody Thompson will show you how changing the foundation of how the workplace operates will drive out the redundant, out of date, antiquated practices that have little chance of ever curing the workforce issues we?re all faced with.Human ResourcesAs BusinessWeek stated in Dec. 2006, "Cali Ressler and Jody Thompson are two HR people you actually don?t hate."When did Human Resources become IN-human? How did Human Resources become the 'rule enforcers'? Whatever happened to the HUMAN in Human Resources?The world is changing and the workforce has different needs than it did 40 years ago when the 40-hour workweek was established. Just look at your rules and policies. Is anyone really following them? Are they laughable in today's global environment? Do they even make SENSE??Cali Ressler and Jody Thompson are the new HR. Let them show you how building a work environment based on trust will liberate Human Resources from the rules, and focus them on what's really important to you and your business: The bottom line.Cali Ressler and Jody Thompson have fought what might be considered the biggest battle inside a corporation in the 21st century. They de-structured and fundamentally CHANGED the work culture, which everyone said 'can't be done'.Overcoming AdversityInside the walls of a Fortune 100 company, they hunted down and systematically obliterated the outdated rules and regulations that have governed us for decades, and fashioned a workplace based solely on results. From the bowels of Corporate America, they moved underground, broke through the politics and red tape, and sparked a revolution. Their creation, Results-Only Work Environment (ROWE), is now a dramatic, global movement based on the simple truth that people want to be energized and ready to collaborate--they want to excel at their jobs and deliver.Cali and Jody are proof that simple brilliance and common sense along with passion and perseverance can drive meaningful, empowerment for employees and better results for all employers.Innovation/Future TrendThe 1950's work environment is colliding with the 21st Century. Everyone knows the workplace needs to change. Everywhere you look there's another article about generations colliding, competing in global business markets, creating internal resiliency, adaptability and innovation engines, and surviving change. And the information is numbing. Where do you start? It's time to move past the clutter and cut to the chase.Cali and Jody will NOT give you advice on how to play the game better or faster. They will NOT show you how to win by introducing repackaged 'flavor of the month' strategies that are 'glitzier' than the next consultant?s program. They will NOT inundate you with PowerPoint slides filled with charts, graphs and statistics that only consultants can decipher.They WILL show you the NEW game in talent acquisition and management--the ONLY game that makes sense to move your business into the future. And, they'll leave you open, finally, for REAL change. And, 'nnovate' won't be your new buzzword, it will be what you do.These two women are social visionaries, workplace activists and agents of global change that have literally redefined, revolutionized and reinvented the relationship between employers and the people who get the work done.Cali and Jody's open, authentic, and provocative presentation will make you painfully aware of the things that need to change in your workplace TODAY.Eldercare/Childcare"My Mom called at the office to ask if I could pick up her medicine this afternoon on my way home. It's a problem for me because I have to pick up my daughter from school after her theater group, and Mom's pharmacy is on the other side of town. At rush hour, this could take more than two hours. I feel like the filling in the middle of a sandwich. On one side, my Mom is depending on me to help her cope with the things she can't do for herself, like her finances and driving her to the doctor. She would like me to call her every day, too. She was so good to me as I was growing up, I feel guilty that I can't do everything she seems to expect of me. On the other side, I have children who take up as much time and money as I can give them. They have so many activities and need to be driven everywhere. What with driving, keeping the refrigerator filled and doing the laundry, my wife and I are exhausted. I can't remember the last time we had a quiet evening together." Called the 'sandwich generation' almost half of Americans between the ages of 44 and 55 have aging parents or in-laws as well as children under age 21.People are buckling under the stress. Businesses continue to implement program after program that attempt to alleviate the 'problem.' And worse yet, the programs don't allow people to care for their families the way THEY want to care for them. And no matter how many new programs, policies, rules and guidelines put in the employee handbook, the problem will never be effectively solved.The workplace is broken, and Cali Ressler and Jody Thompson will show you how to fix it.There is a new and better way. These social visionaries, workplace activists, and agents of global change are leading the way for how we ALL can and will care for each other in the future.
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