In light of the alleged ban of telecommuting by Yahoo CEO, Marissa
Mayer, I took the opportunity to address some key points on the issue. I read
the memo and despite the media coverage, there was no mention of a “ban.”
Employees were “asked” to come to work physical locations in the interest of
fostering a more collaborative environment … and then the world exploded.
As someone who has worked on both the administration of a
telecommuting policy, and telecommuted myself, the media coverage of this issue
struck a chord with me. First, let’s
take a look at a few of the issues.
Entitlement
Granting your employees the ability to work from home gives
them the flexibility to balance their personal lives and their work. This type
of flexibility really lets your employees know you appreciate that they can
benefit from not having to be in the office all day. Nothing says work-life
balance like being able to take a conference call on the toilet, while there’s
a roast in the oven. Employees who have enjoyed this privilege up until now will
be just as outraged and offended as if their pensions had been rolled back.
Legal Obligations
Employers are required to provide telecommuting as a
reasonable accommodation for disabled employees. An all-out ban would be
completely illegal. The interesting component to this will be how Yahoo
addresses employees who refuse to come back to the office on a full time basis.
Do they have a clause in their contract that requires an employee to be in the physical
office when asked, and does it cover the frequency with which they are now
being asked to be present? Could an employee argue that the terms of their
employment included the assumption that they would have telecommuting privileges?
Cost
A remote workforce obviously reduces overhead for the
company, but also reduces the cost to the employee. This includes daycare,
transportation, parking and more. This is going to be another bone of
contention as employees start to experience increased work-related costs as a
result of this new initiative. It’s not good for Mayer’s PR that she’s
increasing daycare costs for some of her employees after building a nursery
onto her office. However, she paid for that nursery with her own money, and
rich people have babies differently than the rest of us.
Innovation
The whole purpose of the change in Yahoo’s telecommuting
perspective is to foster innovation within the company (I used the term
perspective, because there doesn’t appear to be any changes to a policy
anywhere in the memo). There are many strategies and tools companies can use to
encourage employees to communicate with their peers remotely, but honestly
nothing really beats living with your co-workers for 8 hours per day. You never
accidentally bump into anyone at your home office, and you rarely interact with
anyone you don’t work with directly. Being physically present in the office
creates a lot more opportunity to interact with co-workers on a more personal
level.
Example: Employee
A bumps into you in the hallway and complains about project X, and you (as an
outsider) can provide input that may different from other employees assigned to
the project.
Yahoo is really just going to have to gauge the feedback
from employees to determine how this will play out. The media backlash is
really coming from people talking about efficiency, and it WAS implied that employees cannot be as efficient from home, which contradicts a whole lot of recent research. Many are shocked that this reduction in
flexibility is coming from a working mom…she went to work two weeks after
childbirth…why would you think she would sympathize with someone who doesn’t
want to drive to work in the morning?
