New Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer made the bold move recently to rollback Yahoo's work-from-home policy and require all employees to work at Yahoo's offices. Best Buy almost immediately followed suit and ended their work-from-home program. There was a firestorm of media coverage on Yahoo's decision, most of it against the move. Here's three different takes: New York Times, Forbes, and CIO. My take: a laughably bad idea. Here's why.
Simply put, given lack of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, you should always try to maintain flexibility over rigidity. Flexibility gives you options to pursue the most efficient, productive solution. Rigidity just gives you rules enforcement. Work-from-home policies provide employers with flexibility to recruit, hire, motivate, and retain valued employees. Also, as we have seen, work doesn't happen at work much anyway.
Why would Yahoo and Best Buy voluntarily step into these cement shoes? Here's my take. Both companies currently have major issues with their executive leadership. Yahoo is on their 5th CEO in four years, and Best Buy is simply fighting for survival. What happens when people are backed into a corner? They fight back to try and take control of whatever they can. As David Foote mentioned in the CIO article, "When the heat is on, execs get nervous. There are many nervous execs out there
right now; Marissa Meyer is one of them. She wants more control and she
obviously feels that by moving people back into her physical sphere she will be
more in control of the outcomes." Call me crazy, but I don't think this level of rigidity will go over well in a Silicon Valley laid back company culture. Square peg meet round hole.
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