Thu. February 28
Thou Shalt Not Work From Home
A fascinating thing occurred last week in the ever changing world of work. The CEO of Yahoo! ordered that working from home was no longer an option for the company’s employees. Citing a greater desire for communication and collaboration, the memo from HR was positive in nature but definitive in message: work in the office or don’t work here anymore. Needless to say this decision has received about just as much support as Jonah Lehrer’s apology speech.
There are two parts of this story which have likely pushed it to the national spotlight. The first is the CEO herself. Marissa Mayer is famous for a) being so young, b) being a woman, and c) having a child in September 2012 and miraculously going back to work just two weeks later. As someone who works in a technology business where almost everything can be done remotely and who would be likely to understand the benefits of working from home, Mayer seems like the last person to adopt such an unwavering policy.
The second is what we know about working from home in a scholarly sense. Though research in this area is relatively new, working from home definitely decreases commute time, increases an individual’s ability to have work-family balance, and may allow for increased performance and satisfaction. However, the major downside for working from home has to do with a lack of face to face contact – not just Skype but actually being in the presence of another human being. In the worst case scenario, these pros and cons might be considered a wash, but on the surface, they do not appear to be something that Mayer needed to crush like a grape.
But she did. This 37 year old, female, mother of one, who works in the technology business (I picture almost everyone just staring at a computer all day with little human contact) shut down home work. What perplexed me most about this story is not the reasons why she made the decision – clearly she values communication and collaboration to such a degree she is willing to upset a lot of people – but the resulting national outrage.
I think we can all agree that Mayer is a smart and capable boss. I am not sure how you can run Yahoo! at 37 otherwise. I think we can all agree that Mayer knows more about Yahoo! than all of her critics combined. And I think we can all agree that Mayer has some knowledge of the difficulties of going into work every day while also having a family (Yes she can afford more help than the rest of us, but still). If we all agree on these principles, why is it that we still react with such vitriol versus simple curiosity? Before contemptuously criticizing such decisions with likely only a sliver of the behind-the-scenes information we need, maybe we can all take a bit more time understanding the why before demonizing the what.
Ryan Duffy is an assistant professor of counseling psychology at the University of Florida.
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(I picture almost everyone just staring at a computer all day with little human contact)
That’s not how it goes down.
As a father of two who has worked from home for five years, I can say unequivocally in my case that I am far more productive at home than in the office. I will admit that no small part of that is that the office is 100 miles away and my main computer and equipment are all at home.
Still, even without those factors I would be more productive at home, for one simple reason: my wife and kids don’t interrupt me nearly as much on a given day down here as my coworkers do when I’m in the office.
Nevertheless, I have a constant battle with my bosses who feel I need to be in the office more for exactly that face to face reason. While there are times (all-day brai storming sessions, e.g) when being in person helps, for ordinary work the phone and IM and email and Skype are just fine. FaceTime is just as good as face time.
Executives see it differently and I think I know why. It’s because they don’t *really* understand the nature of what it means to be engaged in production-oriented work. An executive’s work largely *is* meetings, so it’s no wonder they think that being face to face is so important. For the rest of, the people actually getting the stuff done, solitude and isolation are usually much more valuable. This is why when you go to an office with an “open, collaborative environment” (which by the way is hardly ever where the executive chooses to spend her time), you mostly see people wearing headphones to shut out the clamor around them.
I’m convinced that more work from home would lead to more productivity and be better for society by getting people off of our clogged motorways. But that would require trust on the part of the people running the show that those at home are not simple surfing and watching TV all day.
“And I think we can all agree that Mayer has some knowledge of the difficulties of going into work every day while also having a family…”
News reports stated that Ms. Mayer had a nursery built beside her office at work. Is that an option for other Yahoo employees? I rather doubt it. So, this new mom knows about going into work every day while having a family just how? Not from experience.
Why would people be upset? Because the vast numbers of clueless managers out there (they are legion; Dilburt is NOT fiction!) will use this example to screw up many other lives.
I have a job whose nature absolutely does not require me to be at the office, although policy requires I spend about 15 hours per week commuting. In the wrong hands this kind of story will only further cement attitudes about how to manage people in the workplace that are counter productive.
Some people, of course bend the rules, when working from home, but it comes down to what gets done; I find doing my main work from home, increases my productivity, which can be clearly seen by my Boss. It depends as all things on the individual.
I’m not sure how you are defining “relatively”, but research on telecommuting is not “relatively new” – it has been going on since the mid-1980s (see e.g. DeSanctis’s1984 article in the journal Information & Management).
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