Last Friday, a leaked memo sent from Jackie Reses, Yahoo!’s executive vice president of people and development, announced that Yahoo (YHOO) 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 by CEO Marissa Mayer last fall, 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.”
According to AllThingsD, only “several hundred” of Yahoo!’s 11,500 employees work remotely, although an untold number may work at home one or two days a week. Bloomberg Businessweek asked Yahoo how many people it expects to change their schedules as a result of this new policy, but a spokesperson said the company does not comment on internal matters.
That’s too bad, because with this announcement, Yahoo seems to be undoing all the benefits associated with allowing employees the freedom to work from home when they need to.
“What’s really troubling about this is that a technology company can’t figure out how to collaborate remotely,” says Kate Lister, president of the Telework Research Center. “[This decision] runs counter to worldwide trends toward more remote work.” According to Telework Research Center’s analysis of the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, telecommuting increased 73% between 2005 and 2011. Now an estimated that 20 to 30 million Americans work from home at least one day a week.
When Mayer joined Yahoo last year, much was made of her pregnancy and subsequent childbirth (for which she took only a two week maternity leave). It’s tempting to view this don’t-work-from-home mandate as dig at other working parents. But actually, according to a June 2012 article (PDF) in the Monthly Labor Review, not only is telecommuting is just as popular among childless employees as it is among parents, but working mothers are no more likely to work from home than are fathers. “It’s kind of a shame that it gets made into a mommy thing because it’s families in general who need this flexible time,” says Lister.
In fact, what’s most telling about this decision is that it highlights Yahoo’s apparent inability to keep tabs on its employees unless they’re physically at their desks. Rese’s memo implied that employees are unproductive at home, but several academic studies that counter this claim. For example, a recent study (PDF) from Stanford University found that when a Chinese travel agency let employees work from home, they were 13% more productive than when they worked in the building and ultimately saved the company $2,000 a year. And perhaps more importantly, employees seemed to appreciate the freedom of choice so much that they had a higher job satisfaction rate and were less likely to leave the company.
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 only work 38 hours a week before they find it hard to balance their professional and personal lives, while those who worked from home clocked in 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 of their time.
From a company’s perspective—especially one that’s struggling to re-establish its Internet relevancy—you’d think that would be a good thing.
