For all of us at JP, clients come first. That means you need to get your work done; now how you do it is a different story at JP. By now, you might have heard that JP works in a ROWE…Results Only Work Environment. What you haven’t heard is how we JP do it. There are eight million stories in a ROWE and this is one of them.
Vacation is a big part of my family life. My wife is a teacher and we have two school age kids…which means they have summers off. These summers are packed with fun activities and travel. And before ROWE I missed out on a few because of work and limited PTO.
With any vacation, if you want to be off the grid, you need to plan around work by making the proper arrangements, informing clients of unavailability, having very clear communication, and setting contingencies for worse-case scenarios. These steps sometimes limit a person’s availability for vacation under a normal work environment regarding last minute vacations. And that’s if you even get approval to take the time off!
But in a ROWE, it’s unlimited PTO. When you have already planned a week getaway to watch a friend’s house on the central coast and then my wife was asked last minute to attend a teachers training in San Diego the following week, you turn it into a two week vacation!
I didn’t have to ask for the time off. I didn’t have to scramble to get someone to cover the projects I was handling. Sure I made a few arrangements with my clients to be unavailable at certain times due to activities and would call into scheduled meetings, but I was also clear that I would be responsive during certain hours and that they could contact me via cell phone if there was an emergency.
I worked from the hotel, I worked from the pool, I worked from the beach, I worked from a back yard BBQ, and I even worked from a client’s house that works remotely! Some of you might even say that it sounds like I worked too much.
One of my clients who had a major campaign kick off that week said that it was like I wasn’t even on vacation with my high level of responsiveness. Even though I was working, they were all planned working sessions that didn’t impede into my fun or distract me from my family. I set clear boundaries with my clients and my family of when I would be working and when I would be having fun.
The point is, in a ROWE, you have the freedom to just go.
#ROWEcation
–Josh Ders, Account Executive
