“To me this isn’t really about work/life, it’s about company/no company,” said Shane Mac, director of products at Zaarly, a San Francisco based startup, who realized relatively early on that his company could not be run remotely. “It’s about taking in Yahoo, which is a pretty legendary brand and kind of symbolizes what this valley and area is, and not becoming AltaVista, Lycos and AskJeeves …”
“Maybe [management] feels like this is the medicine that Yahoo needs,” said Swisher. “Maybe she feels like there’s no other way of fixing it. Unfortunately what’s happened is she’s created a focus on the work-from-home thing versus fixing what ails Yahoo.”
2. Yahoo Might Have Needed A Kick in the Butt
There’s plenty of evidence that Yahoo has been suffering in recent years and that there’s lots of pressure on Mayer to put the company back on top. Swisher says that the telecommuting ban may have been prompted by a perceived lack of urgency among company employees:
“I know from sources she was frustrated that the Yahoo parking lots were sort of slow to fill in the morning and quick to empty out in the afternoon,” said Swisher. “I think that was a big issue. ”
“When you go to the Yahoo campus, you know when you comparatively visit Google or Twitter or Facebook, there’s a real energy on those campuses and Yahoo for years has been rather enervated …” said Swisher.
3. Working From Home is Productive, Despite Stigma
A recent Stanford study found that workers who telecommute are happier and more productive than their in-office counterparts. The study examined productivity of call center workers for a Chinese travel agency who worked from home versus those who worked in an office. The telecommuters in the study answered more calls, worked more hours, and took shorter breaks.
Forum received multiple comments from telecommuters saying that they are perceived as slackers and have to try harder to make their contributions known. Williams, from the Center for WorkLife Law, called this the “flexibility stigma.”
“The assumption is that if you’re working in a traditional way and not taking time off and your you-know-what is on your chair, then you’re productive. And the assumption is, if you even so much as take family leave, especially for fathers, that you’re unproductive and uncommitted. This is a very strong automatic assumption; it’s a very strong stigma and it’s not related to reality, it’s related to perception. ”
“For men actually, it’s related to the perception that if you’re taking leave or you’re on a flexible schedule that you’re more feminine than other men,” said Williams.
4. Being Productive is Different Than Being Innovative
Even supporters of telecommuting acknowledged that it wouldn’t work for every company or for every position.
“There are people at Yahoo who could be collaborating and innovating and haven’t been,” said John Roberts, a professor of strategic management and international business at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. “And that collaboration and innovation is encouraged by having people there face to face, interacting formally and informally. But for people who are doing technical support or doing relatively straightforward programming tasks, or people who are managing databases — there’s not a lot of innovation potential in their jobs. To allow those who want to work from home to do so makes their lives better, makes them happier, and makes them more productive.”
Said Williams: “It’s not an issue of whether telecommuting suits a company, it’s really an issue of whether telecommuting — properly managed — is suitable for an individual job.”
Just as most of the Forum guests agreed that telecommuting is not appropriate for every position, most also agreed that managing remote workers required a different approach than managing those you see every day.
5. Remote Workers Require Different Management
“The management of remote takes a lot of time,” said Mac of Zaarly, the startup. “And you have to invest in it and put time into it. And if that’s where you set your culture and what you believe in, I think it’s very doable.”
“I don’t think it’s necessarily true that managing remote people takes more time,” said Williams. “I do think it takes some thought and takes some careful thinking through. That’s been done, actually, long since 20 years ago, but you do have to, in a very deliberate way, set up interactions and check-in points.”
The news that Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer has banned telecommuting has created as much buzz as her initial hiring, her pregnancy, or her incredibly short maternity leave. In other words, it’s getting a lot of attention, and much of it negative. It’s also sparked a serious debate about the relationship between employees’ work and home life.