By Katherine Reynolds Lewis, contributor
FORTUNE -- At MeetingMatrix International, a communications firm based in Portsmouth, N.H., employees have no defined work schedules, unlimited paid time off, and meetings are optional. How do they ever get any work done? That's actually the only thing that matters: results.
MeetingMatrix executives point to longer customer support hours, increased sales during a down economy, and 100% retention as evidence that their focus on the end results -- and not hours in the office -- works.
"When you start treating people like adults, they start acting like it," says the company's CEO Jmichaele Keller, who in 2008 shelved his company's employee monitoring systems in favor of a more flexible approach. Under the new regime, "people have a lot of ability to shape what is going on in their world and not a lot of micromanaging.... There really is no direct tie in an office environment between the amount of time spent and the productivity of that individual."
MeetingMatrix is among 262 organizations to win an Alfred P. Sloan award for excellence in workplace effectiveness and flexibility this year, the winners of which were announced today by the Families and Work Institute and the Society for Human Resource Management. More
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