AFTER a decades-long search for a manageable balance between motherhood and career, a group of American women has found work in a place that sounds like paradise. At the Minneapolis headquarters of Best Buy, an electronics retailer, almost 2,000 employees are allowed to turn up for work when they like — as long as their jobs get done.

A unique experiment in flexible work hours is attracting international attention as a possible solution to one of the most familiar dilemmas faced by employers and their female workforces: how do you make jobs and families compatible? For Traci Tobias, 36, a manager in Best Buy’s travel office, the transformation of the company into a pioneer of flexible working practices has produced one incalculable benefit: “My kids have stopped saying every morning, ‘Mommy, I don’t want you to go to work’.”

The introduction of what Best Buy calls a “results oriented work environment” was partly intended to reverse a trend among valued female employees who were opting for part-time jobs as more compatible with family life. It is also aimed at cutting the worker stress and executive burnout that are increasingly troubling US corporations.

The programme goes far beyond the variable starting and finishing hours of many companies’ so-called flexitime schedules. It measures worker performance not by the hours clocked at a desk, but by the achievement of company goals.

For Dave Telschow, the company’s national director of repair services, that means he can work at home on Fridays, avoiding the weekend rush hour. Jennifer Janssen can interrupt her work in the finance department, head off in mid-afternoon to pick up her five-year-old twins from daycare and finish her tasks on her laptop at home.

Best Buy officials acknowledge that their programme may not suit every employer, and the company has experienced significant hiccups in changing a corporate culture that placed a premium on long working hours and personal sacrifice. Ambitious employees who believed they could get ahead by working late at their office desks are wondering if anyone will notice their effort.

Yet the results from Minneapolis have been striking. After phasing in the programme over the past three years, Best Buy now offers almost half its employees the chance to work their own hours. Not only has worker productivity risen, but a recent office survey found that 98% of the company’s managers favoured flexible schedules for their staff.

Behind the experiment lie two contradictory trends that are common in most western societies. Rapid advances in communication technology have made working from home or on the road as easy as working in an office.

At the same time, surveys have repeatedly found that the US workforce spends far too much time in the office. The national holiday average is only 14 days a year, and a recent study by the Families and Work Institute discovered that 36% of workers did not take all the time off that was owing to them, mainly because they were afraid their employers would regard them as insufficiently dedicated.

Yet the fallout from stress, exhaustion, depression and from women abandoning careers early costs employers billions of dollars a year.

Other surveys have noted that the average worker fritters away more than two hours of his day on time-wasting activities such as personal internet surfing, socialising with other employees and conducting personal business.

When Best Buy asked its employees for suggestions on improving working conditions three years ago the answer was overwhelming. “They replied, ‘We want to be trusted to do our work the way we feel is best for us’,” said Cali Ressler, who helps supervise the programme. “They also said, ‘We want to be able to balance our personal lives with that work’.”

By leaving it to departments to find the right balance between presence and absence, Best Buy appears to have achieved what Time magazine last week described as “a wrenching reprogramming of attitudes towards work”.

The change has not prevented lay-offs — 895 people were fired last year — but for women climbing the corporate tree, there is no company like it.

Janssen had thought about leaving when she became pregnant with her twins. “Now it’s not even an issue,” she said.

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