Editor’s note: This article was first published in March 2013. It reports news from that month: Marissa Mayer was then Yahoo CEO (she left in 2017), and the ban on working from home was due to start that June.
Marissa Mayer, a former Google employee and now CEO of Yahoo, has decided to put an end to remote work at the company. Yahoo was one of the first companies to adopt working from home as a hallmark of workplace flexibility, something that today, according to Mayer, seems to be holding back the company’s growth.
From June, all Yahoo employees will have to work their hours at the office. In Mayer’s words, communication and collaboration will be important, so people need to work side by side, and that is why it is critical for everyone to be physically present in the offices. She believes the quality of teamwork suffers considerably when people work from home.
Employees who disagree with the measure are at serious risk of losing their jobs, since it appears to be non-negotiable. Even so, many of the company’s staff consider it unfair, especially women with children who joined Yahoo precisely so they could build their careers from home.
Our view
We have always recommended remote work as a way to cut costs and to be able to hire professionals who would otherwise not be able to work with us, because they are not willing to leave the place where they live.
Done properly, remote work can be all advantages: employees don’t waste time commuting or stuck in traffic, they can be more efficient while spending fewer hours on the job, and they save on meals out. In a technological age, with every kind of tool and service available to keep companies and remote workers in touch, we think this is a step backwards. And it is worrying that it is a technology company known for innovation that wants to return to the traditional way of working. If a tech company can’t use technology to make remote work work, who can?
Some people think this decision has nothing to do with remote work itself, since the companies that have adopted it so far have cut costs and increased profits. It may have more to do with a lack of trust in the people Yahoo currently employs. Given that Marissa Mayer has already cleared out 2,000 workers at Yahoo, this could be another way to push some people out, namely those who can’t or won’t show up at the office every day.
Further reading
- The 20 best companies to work for in Spain
- The future of employment and the new idea of self-employment in Spain
Featured image: World Economic Forum, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
