Workplace Flexibility

Remarks for OPM Director John Berry

White House Forum on Workplace Flexibility, Closing Plenary Session, EEOB
Wednesday, March 31, 2010; 12:00PM-4:30PM

Thank you, Tina for the introduction. It's been great to be here at the White House today to brainstorm about how we increase productivity and resiliency by making our workplaces more flexible.

At the start of another transformational period in American business, Andy Grove of Intel said: there are two kinds of businesses - those that use email and those that will. Today, flexibility is the new email - there are employers that have it, and those that will.

As an HR practitioner, it has become clear to me that helping my workers achieve their life and career goals together makes sense for me too. When I allow a new mother or father to work from home part-time, I retain their valuable skills. [optional: "When I follow [X best practice I learned here today, I get X benefit."]

I'll take these and other ideas back to the Federal workplace. And judging by the buzz in the room today, the CEOs and labor leaders here will take them back to their workplaces as well, with a little encouragement from the Corporate Voices challenge that Valerie mentioned in the opening session.

Flexibility will work when we define the results that each worker and team is responsible for and then hold them to account. We've already started in my agency, and I'm pleased to announce that OPM has signed up two of the leaders in the flexibility field, the creators of the Results Only Work Environment, or ROWE, Cali Ressler and Jody Thompson. [point to them]. They started in the private sector with Best Buy and wrote the book on why "work sucks" and how they fixed it. Since then, they've branched out, bringing ROWE to other companies, the local government workplace, and beginning now, the Federal workplace.

Over the next eight months, they are going to work with us to implement ROWE for 400 workers at OPM, including my own front office staff. So I will be watching, as will our independent evaluator, Deloitte. If it's not working, we'll go back to the drawing board. But if it does work, we're going to expand it vigorously.

Success will send a powerful message, because if flexibility can succeed in the Federal government, with the unrivaled importance, complexity and variety of our missions, it can succeed anywhere.

Our next speaker knows something about telework and the culture we're trying to create. Connected wherever he goes, he's able to work from Ohio in the morning, Washington in the afternoon, and on the plane in between. He and his staff expect to be reachable anywhere, so work can go on wherever they are. And he still has time to watch his daughters play basketball.

So now, to speak a little more about the importance - especially in challenging economic times - of harnessing the benefits of the flexibility revolution for both productivity and work-life balance - it is my great honor and high privilege to introduce to you a man I like to call our Teleworker-in-Chief; a man I could not be prouder to call my boss; the President of the United States, Barack Obama.