Zipline Communications Inc., the Spokane-based website and mobile applications builder that does business as Zipline Interactive, has tossed the 9-to-5 workday and has liberated its employees from their office confines.

Ryan Stemkoski, 31, who co-founded the company with Shawn Davis, 46, says the move has increased productivity and reduced costs, while increasing employee satisfaction with their work-life balance.

“Employees can set their own schedules, and we’re evaluating whether they are meeting deadlines with good work,” Stemkoski says. “It makes work more of a lifestyle than a place to go.”

Starting last January, he says, Zipline employees have been allowed to work whenever and wherever they want. He says it took six months to transition fully into the concept.

“It’s a big adjustment,” he says. “Normally, you are used to someone working next to you.”

The concept is modeled after the results-only work environment (ROWE) pioneered by Cali Ressler and Jody Thompson, cofounders of Minneapolis-based human resources consulting firm CultureRx.

Shawn Davis, 46, says ROWE puts employees’ focus on accomplishing tasks rather than on the time clock.

“It’s not work at odds with life, but work merged with life,” says Davis, who still performs 80 percent of his work in the office.

Stemkoski, on the other hand, does 80 percent of his work away from the corporate office. Being a morning person, he sometimes starts at 4 a.m. at his home office and has accomplished several tasks before having breakfast with his family.

While a few of the company’s employees prefer the conventional office setting at Zipline, located at 804 S. Monroe, most perform the majority of their work at home or other locations.

“Overall, there’s been a pretty good increase in productivity,” Stemkoski says.

Productivity is measured by the ability to meet deadlines with quality work, he says.

“Everything is assigned a deadline—even small tasks,” he says. “It might be as simple as even sending an email or making changes to a website.”

Meetings, whether virtual through a telecommunications technology like Skype, or face-to-face in the office conference room, are limited to set times to enable employees to return to their tasks, he says.

Stemkoski says all Zipline employees qualify as full-time exempt, salaried employees who aren’t paid by the hour.

“We don’t want to assign 60 hours of work and ask them to do it in 40 hours,” he says. “We have to make sure people are assigned appropriate amounts of work.”

Some employees are more efficient than others, though, Stemkoski says. 

“We try to set an average workload,” he says. “An employee on the more-efficient side might not have to work as many hours as someone else.”

Even before implementing ROWE, Zipline had tracked the timing for certain tasks for billing purposes.

“We have a pretty good system that we’ve been doing for 10 years before making this step,” Stemkoski says. “We have a good feel for how long things take. That’s what we set a price on.”

Zipline, being a creative company, relies on collaboration between employees, even if they can’t be in the same place.

“We added additional conference capabilities for teleconferencing,” he says. “We can all get together and talk much like we’re in the same room.”

Thanks to communications tech-nology, employees don’t have to be in Spokane or Washington state to work with other project team members.

During initial testing of the ROWE concept, one employee contributed her work while on an extended visit to family in Texas, Stemkoski says.

With reduced requirements for office space, Zipline was able to move to a smaller office. 

It currently occupies 2,000 square feet of space in a former fire station building on Spokane’s South Hill, having moved from 5,000 square feet of space on the second floor of the former Luminaria building at 154 S. Madison downtown.

With the cost savings, Zipline leased a small office in Seattle, where employees can meet clients there, Stemkoski says.

Zipline also has a service hub in Vancouver, Wash.

Most of Zipline’s 15 employees still live in the Spokane area, although the company is actively looking to hire employees in Seattle.

“We have a lot of work going on there,” Stemkoski says. “This work style enabled us to fine-tune the process of operating with remote workers.”

While Zipline is a leader in employing the ROWE concept in the Spokane area, it’s a trending topic in the human resources community, says Valerie Fields, human resources manager for Associated Industries, a Spokane-based employer membership group.

In manufacturing and other industries that have specific deadlines for nonexempt employees who are paid by the hour, the conventional work week remains rigid among many employers here, she says.

In regard to flexible work concepts like ROWE, however, Fields says, “I think it’s a good option for anyone who can measure success in some way other than when a person is sitting at a desk.”

Such a concept also is ideal for people who regularly contact customers and clients overseas.

“When working with people around the world, some are drinking martinis when others are eating Cheerios,” she says.

Associated Industries itself is flexible in enabling employees to balance work and personal time, says Pam Pyrc, the organization’s vice president of marketing.

“We have an open work environment,” Pyrc says. “Some of us are very much project based and work from home.”

She says Associated Industries employees don’t have to punch a clock or keep timecards. “Productivity is not always tied to the clock.”

Kevin Dudley, marketing and communications manager at Greater Spokane Incorporated, the Spokane area’s joint chamber of commerce and economic development organization, also says Zipline is in the forefront of the ROWE concept in the Inland Northwest.

“We work with Zipline and know that’s how they operate,” Dudley says.

Dudley says concepts like ROWE could become important recruitment tools for creative and techology companies.

“As a 27-year-old person, it’s enticing to our generation,” he says. “Probably the younger generation is more used to it and apt to sign on somewhere that allows you to do that.”

Though Zipline initially set up ROWE as a one-year experiment, Stemkoski says, “I think we’re going to keep doing it here. Employees have enjoyed having flexibility to spend time with family.”

Stemkoski says he had been told to expect some initial turnover when switching to the results-based system, but no one left Zipline because of ROWE, nor has the company had to let go any employees for being unable to meet deadlines.

“I know it’s already had an impact on retention,” he says.

He also has seen an uptick in people inquiring about openings at Zipline.

“We just recruited our first post-ROWE employees,” Stemkoski says.