I’m actually a big believer in face time. I think that important information passes, networks get strengthened, and you really do get to know people better (mostly for better, sometimes – admittedly – for worse) when you see your colleagues up close and personal. Informal encounters matter. So does body-language and tone. Unless you’ve got the world’s best telepresence system, body-language can’t be conveyed in an online meeting. And, unless you know someone really well, it’s sometimes to know exactly what’s meant in an e-mail message or IM, all the emoticons in the world aside.
So being there is important.
Just not all the time.
And my feelings here seem to be pretty well borne out by studies that show that working from home makes people happier, more productive, less stressed.
I know plenty of folks who telecommute a day or two a week, and, for them, life is good. They get their work done while avoiding a rotten commute, being able to throw a load of laundry in, having the time to pick the kids up, and not have to worry about when the cable guy shows.
In return, most of those telecommuters are willing to throw in a few hours after the kiddies are in bed to check e-mail and, in general, take care of business.
Employees who telecommute aren’t happy because they’re working less. In fact, they’re probably working more. A 2010 Brigham Young University study found that office employees can work only 38 hours a week before they find it hard to balance their professional and personal lives; those who worked from home were clocking 57 hours of work before they felt stretched too thin. So a flexible work policy leads to happier workers, who voluntarily give the company more time. (Source: Business Week.)
But at Yahoo, the thinking is that those who work from home are trimmers.
Last Friday, a leaked memo sent from Jackie Reses, Yahoo!’s executive vice president of people and development, announced that Yahoo employees would no longer be able to work from home. “Speed and quality are often sacrificed when we work from home,” Rese, who was hired last fall by Chief Executive Officer Marissa Mayer, explained in the memo, which was later reprinted by the Wall Street Journal‘s AllThingsD blog. She then went on to explain that all employees with “work-from-home arrangements” will have to start coming into the office every day and that when other employees find they have to “stay home for the cable guy,” they should “use your best judgment.”
This is only going to impact a small minority of Yahoo employees, but, boy, does this set quite the old-school tone, a tone that suggests that employees can’t be trusted. And it’s pretty surprising to see an Internet company, one that presumably employs a lot of those “always on” millennials, clamp down on a practice that has been so well-enabled by technology.
I have a friend who telecommutes full time, the result of her company of origin having been acquired by a company that’s HQ’d miles from home. She gets in to HQ a couple of times a month, and I know that she misses the give and take, the inside scoop, and even being able to see politics at play. On the other hand, by being able to work uninterrupted, she gets a boatload done from home, while also being there when her kids get home from school. For her, the ideal would be having a few days each week in the office-office, and a couple of days (or afternoons) in her home office.
Another friend recently took an in-person job, after spending a year working virtually – and not liking it. But he hopes to get back to a balance – a regular work at home day – once he gets settled in.
Interesting that, in both these cases, it’s the employee who’s hungering for more face time. Both companies have no problem with folks who work fully from home.
Personally, I think Yahoo is making a mistake. Sure, they’re going to make the sourpusses who resented those who worked from home happy. But they’re going to make everyone else paranoid about when to use their “best judgment” about when to work from home. Which is just going to ratchet up the stress level in what is, I’m quite sure, a pretty darned stressed environment already.
So much for the assumption that business becomes kinder and gentler when a woman’s in charge. Although one might have suspected that someone who took just two weeks for her maternity leave is not a big believer in working from home. On the other hand, Marissa Mayer can well afford to have someone hang out waiting for the cable guy.
And so much for the Internet changes everything.
Apparently not at Yahoo.
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