March 4, 2013

Yahoo policy: A watershed moment for telecommuting

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For those Seattle-area workers currently telecommuting at their jobs, let us take a few moments to give thanks to Marissa Mayer, the CEO of Yahoo. Mayer recently sent out an order to all telecommuting employees demanding that they get their behinds back in their assigned offices by June or start looking elsewhere for work.

Like parents everywhere who have told their sons or daughters that they are "forbidden" to date a particularly undesirable person, Mayer has most likely made whatever problem she was trying to avoid even worse by imposing a draconian new policy. Bans on behavior are about as popular with teenagers as they are with professional tech workers, and the tsunami of backlash has been swift and strong.

Virgin founder Richard Branson, writing in his blog, said that the policy demonstrated that Yahoo management had lost trust in its own employees to perform at the highest level, regardless of their location. The Atlantic cited a study from Stanford showing that telecommuting workers were 22 percent more productive compared to their in-office counterparts, as well as another study from Cisco, finding that the company saved $277 million a year in overhead costs by allowing their employees to work from home. Other critics of the decision say telecommuting helps the environment by taking more cars off the road, reduces the number of sick days people take and helps retain the best employees.

The reasons Mayer gave for the policy change seem reasonable enough. "Some of the best decisions and insights come from hallway and cafeteria discussions, meeting new people, and impromptu team meetings," read the Yahoo memo, which was leaked to the All Things D blog in late February. "Speed and quality are often sacrificed when we work from home. We need to be one Yahoo, and that starts with physically being together."

What Mayer didn't take into account, however, was the psychological toll of this decision. Once a perk is awarded and established, taking it away can be a wrenching process. The effect of a rescinded benefit on workplace morale can be as devastating as the announcement of layoffs. No doubt some of the current work-from-home Yahoos (as they call themselves) accepted their jobs precisely because they didn't have to fight the notorious Silicon Valley traffic every morning and put up with the annoying habits of co-workers in "Cubicle Land."

It's important to note that Mayer is only imposing a new policy on her own workers. She made the decision not as an advocate of general change in the workplace but as a CEO who thinks she's doing what's right for her company. In some ways, her decision amounts to a "circling of the wagons" and a bid to focus her remaining employees on rebuilding the company's sagging brand. It may be an unpopular strategy, but, as some supporters have said, it might just work in this instance.

In a larger sense, however, Mayer has inadvertently elevated telecommuting from a cushy perk for a privileged few to a mainstream workplace policy issue. Since the memo leaked out, employees, executives and HR professionals have been forced to determine whether working from home is better and more cost-effective than running a centralized office. It's a healthy debate that's long overdue.

So what has your experience been with telecommuting? Have you switched to working from home after being in an office job? How have your productivity and communication been affected? Let us know!

Randy Woods writes about job-search tools, networking techniques and other tips to help you land your dream job.

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commuting, flex time, productivity, telecommuting, work/life balance