Yahoo is wrong: Working from home is productive

(MoneyWatch) Tech sites are a-tizzy over the leaked internal Yahoo! memo announcing that employees had to stop working from home come summer. The stated reason is that great interactions come from being in the same space, and that having everyone on site makes for "one Yahoo!".

Opinion is mixed -- generally based on whether someone works from home and loves it, or had a bad experience with a colleague who worked from home and hates it. So we shall see how Yahoo morale takes the news. But I do know this: Nixing telecommuting has a good chance of making one distracted Yahoo.

• How to run a company (in your spare time)
• No, it isn't faster to do it yourself
• What effective people measure -- and you can too

There are certainly benefits to sharing space, but there are also drawbacks, even in terms of the "speed and quality" that the memo claimed that remote work sacrificed. Sometimes people drop by a cubicle with brilliant ideas, and sometimes they drop by to show off the photos of their dog (again). Sometimes people meet each other by accident in the hallway, and sometimes you lose 15 minutes helping Bob find Steve, who he was told is on your floor, but actually isn't.

What having a flexible work-from-home policy does is allow employees to find the right mix. Maybe two days from home and three on-site, with everyone needing to be in the office on Tuesdays. Maybe you come in a little later in the mornings after getting your major work done at home, so you can be available for interaction in the afternoons. The goal is to enjoy the best of both worlds: The turbo-productivity that can come from waking up, grabbing your coffee, powering up your laptop and going to work with no commute, plus the interactions that come sometimes when you're close by your colleagues.

What Yahoo is saying is that only the latter matters. But I doubt the company is really against working from home. After all, I don't think Yahoo will ban employees from answering emails after 5 p.m. or finishing up a report in the evening or on the weekend. If they truly think that no good work can be done remotely, then the company needs to forbid that too. I'll wait for that memo.

[abapprogrammer]

Thank you for your segment on working from home and yahoo's new approach to the concept.

Back in the 90's I worked for a wonderful company. They started to offer a work from home work platform when the project/job suited the platform.

Progamming was perfect for working from home. I think that the biggest stumbling block was that management was NOT used to the platform. If they did not see me working at my desk, they forgot about me. Please know that my manager had no problem calling me at home at 6pm requesting a project to be coded, tested, and into production by 9am the following day. And yes, I delivered.

Wondering if managment UNDER utilization of work from home staffers is the real problem at yahoo.

Thank you again for your segment.

[johnhlong]

Just what I want to do (I am a Yahoo Work At Home Employee Now) insert sarcasm next, have to make commute,hellish, try to ignore the farts from the cubicles, the smell of peoples snacks and smelling food,wasteful meetings to talk about how were going to speedup production with limited resources and how little miss cant do wrong is trying to stroke the board of yahoo to make herself look like she knows whats shes doing *** if anything , more people at all companies should be allowed to work from home with video conferencing and high speed internet. There is a thing called software that can monitor a person work product and time spent. Or how about this, trust your employees and if they fail--gone. It should be a given that going to a iconic symbolized building is a relic of the 9 to 5 old world work schedule. Really, do we need to travel to a freaking building to work together. Wait for 5 to 6 dollar gas and no wage increase or cost of inflation increase in pay, then we will see how many still want to commute to work.

[johnhlong]

Just what I want to do (I am a Yahoo Work At Home Employee Now) insert sarcasm next, have to make commute,hellish, try to ignore the farts from the cubicles, the smell of peoples snacks and smelling food,wasteful meetings to talk about how were going to speedup production with limited resources and how little miss cant do wrong is trying to stroke the board of yahoo to make herself look like she knows whats shes doing *** if anything , more people at all companies should be allowed to work from home with video conferencing and high speed internet. There is a thing called software that can monitor a person work product and time spent. Or how about this, trust your employees and if they fail--gone. It should be a given that going to a iconic symbolized building is a relic of the 9 to 5 old world work schedule. Really, do we need to travel to a freaking building to work together. Wait for 5 to 6 dollar gas and no wage increase or cost of inflation increase in pay, then we will see how many still want to commute to work.

[Suzanne Lucas]

I love your last line. I totally agree with you. Let Mayer put her money where her mouth is and take away everyone's blackberry/smartphone and laptop. NO WORK OUTSIDE THE OFFICE!

[NewTemplar]

Thank you for reminding all about home-office productivity. I have worked in both "office" and "home office" environments, and both have obvious perks and downsides. However, the overall productivity winner for many people is "home office". The "building" is filled with distractions that do not exist in remote locations. I have the same amount of meetings (several) every week in both scenarios, but the remote access meetings have far more focus and less blather.

On the surface, it seems to be a classic micromanager's move, but should be noted that Ms. Mayer is apparently using this action to deal with multiple "Yahoo issues". Two of the claimed issues are a culture that reportedly uses remote offices to "hide out" from company proceedings, and an indirect way to force what some may call "good attrition" to reduce costs.

At any rate, all "home offices" should be "video commuters" and not simply "telecommuters" to join the 21st Century and become truly productive, interconnected and effective members of their team and company. Workers have no excuse to "not" be connected now, and companies are often receiving greater amounts of work hours and accomplishment from their employees (not to mention higher retention of top talent and green solution). "Phoning it in" is way back in the old school, with companies such as Polycom leading the way for the new global corporate model.

[HistoryNote]

An interesting counterpoint article. If work from home was compared to outsourcing, which it could easily be, we might see a trend in reversing the work from home paradigm.

Work from home is a great concept if you need to provide concessions to a talent pool that is hard to find. That's not the case any longer. Today the talent pool is amply available. Willingness and loyalty are the new commodities.

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/12/the-insourcing-boom/309166/