Scott Behson is concerned about the way in which Yahoo!’s decision to terminate remote employment will affect families.
I’ve long believed that businesses would become much more flexible and progressive when it comes to work-family issues when those of my generation rose to positions of leadership.
Current 40-somethings are the first to grow up with dual-career couples for parents, while mostly being in dual-career marriages in their own lives. This generation of leaders is also more diverse and gender-equal than any that came before. This perspective, I’ve always thought, would finally lead to widespread understanding that workplace flexibility is not just a nice thing to do, but is good business: keeping step with our changing world improves a company’s ability to better attract and retain top talent.
The first nominee for poster child of this generation of leadership was Marissa Mayer, the new CEO of Yahoo! (and former Google wunderkind), who made headlines as the youngest female CEO of a Fortune 500 company (and was named CEO while pregnant!). Many, including me, had high hopes for a fresh approach to leadership and for a CEO who would empathize with fellow working parents.
Well, Ms. Mayer has passed up the chance to champion workplace flexibility. In fact, she has probably set the movement back when she announced that Yahoo! employees will no longer be allowed to work from home. None of them.
Mayer’s is a patently dumb decision. It shouldn’t be telework for all or telework for none. The ability to telecommute should be based on the individual and the job. If an employee proved trustworthy and reliable, and performs a job for which telework is appropriate, then they should telecommute, at least some of the time (she really needs to read my blog, especially this series of articles). Sub-optimal bosses reject telework because they fear they can no longer monitor employee performance and/or confuse being fair with treating everyone exactly the same. When used appropriately telework brings many benefits.
Mayer’s decision is on the wrong side of business history. 84 of the Fortune 100 companies allow part-time telecommuting. Over 20% of employees at such companies as SC Johnson, Qualcomm, Booz Allen, Fidelity, Cisco and Goldman Sachs telecommute. If they can allow for telecommuting, why can’t Yahoo?
Mayer’s decision is also an important step backwards. If the young, tech-savvy, new mother CEO (of an internet company, no less!!!) doesn’t recognize that work schedules can be arranged to accommodate family life (and not just the other way around, as evidenced by the nursery she built into her office suite), this gives license to all the “old school” management types to hold back the tide a little while longer.
Yahoo! employees lose, but, in a small way, so do the employees of many other companies. (or maybe there’s still hope, as the backlash has begun in earnest- see here, here and here)
For more on this topic, please read Lisa Belkin’s take at Huffpo and especially Neil Cohen’s brilliant take at Man on Third.
Your reactions? Let’s discuss in the comments section.
—photo from Wheelcentre/ public domain
Add a million more exclamation points to the “an internet company, no less!!!!” This is a really stunning negative message about the internet itself, by someone who’s supposed to be an expert about it. Presumably a really big IT company would have figured out the best way to maximize the business potential of the internet, but she’s saying there is no substitute for being physically present when business takes place. Isn’t it sort of like Yahoo saying you can’t make money from the internet? The only way to do something is to be physically present? REALLY bad message for an… Read more »
It is probable that Yahoo! had been allowing too much telework too indiscriminantly and needed to scale back. I get that. However, a blunt “one size fits all” solution is not wise. I’ve worked with many companies on this issue, and the management of telework and workplace flexibility needs to be handled based on job requirements, customer and coworker needs, as well as the individuals involved.
Welcome to an economy where there are still a heck of a lot of people unemployed. She made a decision and if people don’t like it, there is a line of well qualified people standing in line to take the positions. Even without a poor economy, there have always been people in the wings to replace workers. Since when did companies build their businesses to accommodate family scenarios? It’s a business and yeah, it’s nice that some businesses are accommodating these family situations, but in the big scheme of things, business leaders do what they do so as to better… Read more »
And that line of well qualified people will continue to get longer. We have a whole new world to deal with people and our leadership in this country is clueless about it.
Actually the unemployment rate for people college degrees is very low. Probably 95% of Yahoo employees have college degrees. In a workplace like that this policy will only cause a brain drain. The best workers will go where the benefits are better and Yahoo will be left with a less qualified and less talented workforce. This isn’t a case of “it’s a poor economy you should be lucky to have a job” (which is insulting to workers of all stripes anyway). You say that businesses shouldn’t accommodate family situations, yet Marisa herself had nursery added to her office (and that… Read more »
It’s possible there is a cost-benefit to bringing employees back in house. Major changes like that are usually driven by the CFO and CHRO revising salary expenses. Telecommuting is beneficial to employees and retention, but may be costing the company more in operating expenses and administration costs.
Cost-benefit could/should be part of it, Joan, I agree. From her successes at Google, she sounds hands-on, so it could be about maximizing productivity i.e. instead of having to schedule meetings, wait for teleresponses, etc, employees could be summoned at once to brainstorm/execute something. The effect falls on her shoulders so it’ll be interesting to see how this plays out: it could send a negative trend, as Scott points out, but it could rescue Yahoo!, as Kari points out.
I’m guessing from your comments you probably don’t work at a large corporation or in tech. Working from home _is_ a cost benefit to companies. The more workers there are at home the more a company saves in all forms of real estate costs including desk space and heating/cooling. I’m guessing when all of the Yahoo employees get to “their office” the first day this is in place they will find they are lacking thousands of desk spaces. Not to mention every study has shown people get more work done from home. It’s an absolutely insane decision. Sorry to burst… Read more »
I admit my business sense is really poor, but maybe she’s thinking that it would be a massive headache to sort out which people would do better working at home and which people do better in the office under the current system. Maybe in her view it may save more money in the long term to scrap the system and start over than try to tweak it here and there. Maybe the “no more working from home” is like a system restart. She’s done the ControlAltDelete for the company. (aka the “Microsoft salute”) Start from square one, with no one… Read more »
All right. First off – they actually call themselves “Yahoos”?? What a cluster of contradictions! So, on the “plus” side we’ve got the youngest woman ever to be CEO of a Fortune 500 company. AND she was pregnant when they hired her. Then she brought her baby to work with her. Granted, it was a special nursery she annexed to her executive suite and not a moby wrap like the Italian MP last year, but still. Ok. So on the “minus” side she only took two weeks maternity leave. Ten working days. And now this “face time” edict. I’m left… Read more »
Well, here’s another possible narrative – A young, female, recently-pregnant CEO shows she can make tough business decisions (going “against type” in some respects), decisions her predecessors were afraid to make. Maybe partially because she’s a young, female, recently-pregnant CEO she has some “political capital” so to speak that she can burn in the short-term while she saves the company. THEN, after the sails are trimmed and the ship is righted, she brings flexibility back in a more reasonable and robust manner. Maybe, in the end, she turns out to be a heroine of historic proportions because she IS a… Read more »
Kari- Thank you for your excellent comments!
My initial draft for this article was to set it up just like you lay out- that it was part of a master plan that, in the long term would mean more flexible workplaces!!! (written as an inner monlouge). I couldn’t make iut work, so you have what I wrote here.
I’m thinking that’s got to be part of the strategy, Kari. Yahoo! needs help fast, and this could very well be a move to trim the fat. I’d like to root for that narrative as well, CAPITALS and all.
Robert – yeah, I don’t normally use CAPITALS, but I was feeling a little cheeky about this. What I really wanted was the typographical equivalent of jazz hands. That’s probably *asterisks* but I use those all the time because I haven’t figured out italics yet. (which look like maybe I do this?)
If she’s evil, she’s an evil genius. It’s hysterical so few people think she’s not capable of a complex leadership strategy. Everyone’s focused on the memo itself, as if she’s just a simple-minded idiot, when she’s already thought 3 or 4 steps ahead. She set a trap, and gullible people just walked right into it. Give her some credit. Give women credit for being just as capable of Machiavelli/Kissinger levels of manipulation and intrigue as men. Forget the whole “but she’s a mother!” or “but she’s a woman, too!” garbage. Does anyone still think she was promoted just because she’s… Read more »
Sorry, should say so few people think she IS capable of complex strategy….
James- Very well put. The optimist in me sometimes gets ahead of myself, I guess.
A new spin on the whole “Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss”, huh.
Thanks for reading and your great comment!
If the young, tech-savvy, new mother CEO (of an internet company, no less!!!) doesn’t recognize that work schedules can be arranged to accommodate family life Read more at https://goodmenproject.com/families/families-yahoos-banned-from-working-at-home-marissa-mayers-mandate-is-bad-for-business/#4Z8KO3dTYv5wJ0TT.99 thats why i always raise my eyebrows at those that think that more women in senior positions would bring about a change in work culture. as demonstrated those women are more similar in psychology to their male peers, than with the minions (whether women or men). the only difference between c class men and women, is that the women get to avoid wearing that dismal suit with that shirt n tie… Read more »