Yahoo’s decision to stop letting employees work from home is
about as smart as most of the product decisions they have been making lately:
Way off the mark.
Was Marissa
Mayer hibernating in some cave for the last several years then woke up and
said: “Where is everybody?”
They are at home working very well thank you – and if you
make them all come back to work every day, you will be losing some of the best
resources you have, plus losing out on a very creative way to maximize your
employee assets.
Simon Kennedy in a recent
blog post on DNA writes: “Marissa Mayer’s decision to order Yahoo! Inc staff to work in the
company’s offices runs counter to new research published by the National Bureau
of Economic Research.” He goes on to quote the National Bureau of Economic
Research whose results “showed home-working led to a 13% increase in
performance, mainly reflecting reductions in sick days and breaks. The rest
was attributed to making more calls per minute thanks in part to the quieter
working environment.”
And this didn't even take into account the fact that people who work from home spend
time on work activities well beyond the normal 8 hour work day.
I can
understand a leader trying to turn around a company by taking some drastic
measures to improve performance. But I think this was a knee jerk reaction
based on faulty data. In the long run this will be just one more stupid move
Yahoo has made. Yahoo is traditionally 2 steps behind in their marketplace, and
apparently they are at least two steps behind in employee workplace trends as
well.
I
guess, in the end, this decision (along with many others at Yahoo) will serve
as great case-study fodder for future MBAs. I would suggest a title for the
case study should be: Yahoo: A study in
Bad Timing.
Guess
they won’t be making next year’s 100 Best Places to Work List.
Read
more blogs by Jerry on Toolbox For HR
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