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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsFemale Yahoo! CEO Kills Work from Home Option? Why Americans Need a More Flexible Workplace
http://www.alternet.org/female-yahoo-ceo-kills-work-home-option-why-americans-need-more-flexible-workplaceI dont have children, although someday I hope to, but I am a big fan of efficiency and changing from pajamas into pajamas. In other words, I am a fan of working from home, which is why I was dismayed to see that Yahoo!s new-ish CEO, Marissa Mayer, has signed off on eliminating it as an option for her employees. This is about more than lifestyle or employee cohesion (or pajama pants). Its a deeply political move.
All Things Ds Kara Swisher, who first reported on the memo and its protest-too-much assertions that this is about fun, also notes that the new policy doesnt just extend to a few hundred customer service employees, but to any staffers who might have arrangements to work from home just one or two days a week, too. That includes waiting for service and repair visits, and, presumably, other home responsibilities. In the name of morale and becoming the absolute best place to work, Yahoo! is setting back the progress and flexibility that some employees have been able to enjoy. That not only belies contemporary realities and preferences including the fact that productivity is about a lot more than putting in hours but its impact falls disproportionately on women.
As Nancy Folbre, an economist and editor of For Love and Money: Care Provision in the United States, told Salon last year, Once upon a time, we lived in a world where men engaged in paid work and women stayed home and took care of the children, the elderly, the sick, and the disabled. Thats not the world we live in now: Even in households with more than one adult, some form of paid work is rarely a choice, and someone still has to do the care work, usually on top of everything else. That someone is usually a woman, which is why state and city-level policies for paid sick days and family leave the bare minimum of flexibility are feminist issues.
The policy change under Mayer comes just as her fellow Google alumna, and current Facebook chief operating officer, Sheryl Sandberg is about to publish a book on female leadership that kicks off with her using her clout at Google to get accommodations for pregnant employees. Im wary of catfight-like oppositions between powerful women, the kind that cropped up in the recent New York Times piece on Sandbergs Lean In circles, between Sandberg and Anne-Marie Slaughter, whose stylistic and substantive differences seem frankly minuscule to me, whatever their personal issues. But the contrast here is palpable: One executive is extolling going home early even as she urges ambition; the other wants you to stay put, regardless of actual productivity, and the consequences be damned.
Xipe Totec
(43,890 posts)Yahoo, of all places, should be keenly aware that physical location is irrelevant in cyberspace.
And to force employees to come in to a physical office is to reject the fundamental raison d'être for companies like Yahoo.
She might as well pull the plug on Yahoo right now and save the electricity.
nebenaube
(3,496 posts)I question the intelligence of this one.
SharonAnn
(13,776 posts)Lurks Often
(5,455 posts)I read the memo and found the reasoning to be crap. I'm inclined to think Marissa Mayer is a micro managing control freak and doesn't like the idea of employees working from home where they are "unsupervised".
Fawke Em
(11,366 posts)Two school-aged children who are often sick and a mother who has health issues (and I'm an only child, so I'm "it" when it comes to taking care of her) and, she picks up my children from school, so when one is sick, they all become sick.
I often come home early and pick up the kids from school and finish my day or I simply work from home when one of the children are sick so they don't inflict it on my mother, who has a harder time recovering from any illness they would give her.
My husband doesn't have the flexibility at work that I do, so I work from home.
But, I'm hardly "unsupervised." I work on a VPN and am in constant IM contact with my boss. We're a two-person office, so we have to interact frequently. If I wasn't working, he'd know.
Mayer's reasoning is shit. She sounds like a petty tyrant.
Lurks Often
(5,455 posts)There remains a type of manager who HAS to have their reports in sight where they can be "supervised" whether they need to be supervised or not.
I'm a full time work at home and I love it. Don't miss the petty office gossip and disputes, don't miss hearing about the latest reality show, don't miss hearing about other peoples children or grandchildren or how the spouse is being an ass.
I probably saving a good $5K a year not going into the office.
The only real downside to working at home is the food is much, much better.
elzenmahn
(904 posts)At one time (she might still be doing this, anyone in the know please chime in), she was reading the resumes of all of the potential new hires. This, combined with the move away from telecommuting, leads me to believe that she might be trying to clear out what she perceived to be the remaining "dead wood" from the organization.
She's trying to change the culture over there. I say, good luck with that.
Lurks Often
(5,455 posts)not pissing off all of your teleworkers and probably some in the office as well.
I had a co-worker who was NEVER quiet. If she wasn't talking to her neighbor, she was on the phone and if she wasn't doing either of those, she hummed and she often wore so much perfume you could literally taste it in the air. We were THRILLED when she left the office to be a teleworker.
Management wouldn't do anything because she was just productive enough to stay below the radar.
I went full time telework when they closed the office that was 10 minutes away and gave me a choice between commuting 30 minutes every day in heavy traffic to a crappy part of the city and paying for my parking. Saves me about $5k a year in gas, food and other expenses.
leftyohiolib
(5,917 posts)hobbit709
(41,694 posts)she can't bug them as easily when they are working from home.
KansDem
(28,498 posts)Power and clout are intoxicants to some minds.
cbdo2007
(9,213 posts)than in the office. Myself as well. I'll be working from home today because of the major snow storm here but I would much rather be driving the 45 minutes each way to the office and working from there cause it's just too distracting here to get too much work done.
Orrex
(63,215 posts)But for the people who are able to do it, it's a terrific option. Cutting the program altogether is simply a lazy attempt to grab headlines. Mission accomplished.
mythology
(9,527 posts)I've found I wind up working longer when I work from home as well because I'm being less productive. It might be different if I consistently worked from home, but I don't have a home office set up so it's just less comfortable and familiar for me to work at home.
Plus at my work I find that when everybody is remote due to a storm we wind up having even more meetings than we normally do. It's like people forget how to use email or IM and decide that everything needs a meeting.
CTyankee
(63,912 posts)take a vacation day or, eventually, have the company declare a "snow day" with pay. There are pluses and minuses to both arrangements.
Working at home isn't possible if you are caring for lots of people at home. You can't do two things at once. You have to have reliable child care/elder care or it is just not possible. Or you end up working late into the night and even then you may have to communicate with someone right then and it's midnight so...
cartach
(511 posts)That's the main reason she wants to eliminate working from home. There's always a certain percentage of slackers and those are the ones who need supervision. I would suggest that working at home leaves one vulnerable to distractions as you say unless you're doing piecework and getting paid for actual output. A CEO also has a responsibility to get the most productivity within reason from employees and I'm sure all the factors have been considered. If existing employees don't like it they can quit and give their jobs to the hordes of unemployed out there.
enlightenment
(8,830 posts)Making broad-based changes to eliminate individual issues is poor management. Your absolute faith in this CEO is touching, though.
Yavin4
(35,441 posts)And in a lot of cases, they don't even know who it is on the other side of the world that is actually doing the work.
blackspade
(10,056 posts)Productivity is not correlated w/ office work.
I'm much more productive at home than the office. Much fewer distractions.
mikeytherat
(6,829 posts)I have to complete Task A, with all of it's parameters, in X amount of time, and I do exactly that. Did my physical location matter to the outcome? If my employer is unable to determine this, that's really pathetic.
mikey_the_rat
Live and Learn
(12,769 posts)Telecommuting increases productivity by approximately 13%.
HangOnKids
(4,291 posts)Hooey. Not worthy of anymore of a reply.
Gormy Cuss
(30,884 posts)I was far more productive because no one was casually popping into the office for a quick chat and I wasn't spending so much time going to and from meeting rooms. I just picked up the phone when the meeting began.
I also didn't need as long a lunch break. In the office it would be a solid half hour to 45 minutes. At home, it was about 15.
I could "go back to work" after taking a dinner break to finish up something due the next day rather than stay in the office trying to slog through it when I was tired. I could and did work a few hours on the weekend from home on projects that had been put off during the week. I never would have hauled myself in on a Saturday to work for two hours but doing it from home was easy.
Many of my coworkers did the same. Typically it was one day a week as a scheduled telecommuting day. For a handful of us, we went from in-office staff to fulltime telecommuters when offices closed or employees moved too far away for the daily commute. The CEO of our 1000 employee company recognized that on the whole telecommuting had increased productivity and saved the company money in terms of office space allocations and staff retention.
Where telecommuting can fail is when an employee can't configure a workspace at home that is free from distractions. Most companies address this issue when telecommuting is an option.
Dawgs
(14,755 posts)My only distraction at home is one of our cats.
NewJeffCT
(56,828 posts)It depends on the situation. If Im working from home to care for my sick daughter, Im probably less productive because Im spending time caring for her, making her lunch, checking her temperature, etc. However, it's either work from home and get some work done, or not work from home and take a day off entirely and get zero work done.
However, if Im home alone, I often find myself more productive in terms of work you dont have the distraction of annoying co-workers bothering you as directly, as well as not spending time talking about the latest big sporting event or tv show from the night before, no attractive young women about the office to distract you, etc.
Xipe Totec
(43,890 posts)You want it fixed now, or you want me to come in?
Your choice.
Response to cbdo2007 (Reply #7)
devilgrrl This message was self-deleted by its author.
KatyMan
(4,198 posts)is an RN case manager for a Medicare HMO. I have worked from home for many years and always meet or exceed my productivity standard. I am much more productive- I have no distractions at home- my office is set up; I get up and dress; no TV or radio. I have to remind myself to get up and walk around every couple of hours. Sure, I put in a few loads of laundry- on my lunch time. I do not run errands while I am on the clock. No small kids (well, no kids at home all- only cats- and they aren't demanding) I am not unusual. There are many productive work at home folk. I am one of them.
Orrex
(63,215 posts)Last edited Tue Feb 26, 2013, 10:46 AM - Edit history (1)
It's not as though her uterus forced her to axe the policy, but I digress.
I wonder how many people signed onto Yahoo specifically because they were able to work from home.
I foresee major disappointment, coupled with the standard passive-aggressive rebellion in the workplace.
blackspade
(10,056 posts)It's like Fox using female news anchors to push their anti-women agenda.
MADem
(135,425 posts)Isn't she the one who was also the first pregnant CEO at a "big" company, too? Yeah, here it is:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-07-17/mayer-becomes-highest-profile-pregnant-woman-hired-as-ceo.html
Mayer, an engineer and former Google (GOOG) Inc. executive who helped develop the companys home page and maps products, was hired by Yahoo after a nine-week search for a CEO. The 37-year- old brings the number of women running Fortune 500 companies to 20. Many other women on the list -- including WellPoint Inc.s Angela Braly, PepsiCo Inc.s Indra Nooyi and Xerox Corp.s Ursula Burns -- had children before becoming CEOs.
Yahoos board found Mayers pregnancy a nonissue and thats a big sign of progress, said Gayle Tzemach Lemmon, deputy director of the Women and Foreign Policy Program at the New York-based Council on Foreign Relations, who is pregnant with twins. But at many companies, its still an issue.
Mayer and her husband, technology investor Zachary Bogue, are expecting a boy on Oct. 7, she told Fortune magazine this week after she was named Yahoos CEO. She disclosed to Yahoos board that she was pregnant in late June, Mayer said in the interview. Dana Lengkeek, a spokeswoman for Sunnyvale, California-based Yahoo, declined to comment further.
I think people thought that because of her (relative) youth and her personal situation, she would go in another direction.
I do think the people suggesting that she wants to "clear out the dead wood" have a point. Whatever her reasoning, I don't think she's going to increase morale...!
Orrex
(63,215 posts)But I still don't see why it was necessary to highlight this in the headline.
If Danica Patrick had crashed at Daytona, I don't expect that the headline have been:
[h1]Female Driver Crashes During 121st Lap[/h1]
It's enough for the headline to identify the Yahoo CEO as the person responsible for killing this policy. They can talk about her status as "first female CEO" within the body of the article.
MADem
(135,425 posts)would go in the opposite direction, seeing as she just had a child in October.
It looks like she's more in favor of a "take your kid to work" policy as opposed to "Stay home with the infant and work from the house" policy...
WIRED is saying this decision could go either way for her, and that she might go with her old workplace model at Google:
To become the absolute best place to work, communication and collaboration will be important, so we need to be working side-by-side, the internal memo from Yahoo human resources head Jackie Reses reads. That is why it is critical that we are all present in our offices.
....Much has been written about the power of serendipitous encounters to fuel innovation, a serendipity encouraged by physical proximity and density. Yoav Schwartz (no relation to Tony) has been outspoken online in support of the new Yahoo policy and believes thats the kind of environment Mayer wants to create. Schwartz is the founder and CEO of Uberflip, a 20-person startup in Toronto with a strict no-work-from-home policy. Schwartz says prospective employees learn about the policy up front, which means they know what to expect. Mayer didnt have the chance to set that tone from the start, he says, which means having to make tough calls to reboot the workplace culture she inherited.
Its about being part of an ecosystem. I think thats what Mayer was trying to convey, Schwartz says. If youre building a culture, a huge part of that culture is being present within it.
If Danica Patrick had crashed, I think they would have noted her gender in the headline...after all, they've done nothing but mention it since she was awarded the pole position.
Examples:
http://www.ndtv.com/photos/sports/danica-patrick-first-woman-to-take-nascar-pole-14674
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-400_162-57570987/danica-patrick-first-woman-to-lead-a-lap-at-daytona-500/
http://jalopnik.com/danica-patrick-is-now-the-first-woman-to-lead-a-lap-at-417402164
As long as there are still barriers left, there will be these kinds of headlines, no matter what the minority (or underserved majority) group. If it's not "typical," (and typical in the case of NASCAR is caucasian and male) it will be noted in the news.
sufrommich
(22,871 posts)child care.
MineralMan
(146,317 posts)This is going to hurt Yahoo, which really can't afford much more injury.
el scorcho
(58 posts)who knew?
SunSeeker
(51,571 posts)If she did this to improve productivity, then that tells me they have incompetent supervision. That problem will not abate by chaining employees to their desks. There are many ways to insure the productivity of work-at-home employees. The fact that they have chosen not to implement them says more about what is wrong about management at Yahoo than anything about their employees.
Also, this is anti-environment and anti-family. It is particularly sad to see a female CEO do this who should know better. She appears to be suffering from the corporate version of the Stockholm Syndrome.
MADem
(135,425 posts)This is going to cause hatred, resentment and productivity will suffer.
The new boss is trying to reinvent the wheel while asserting "control" over her employees. This isn't about morale, IMO, this is all about "I wanna have my EYE on you."
Dumb, dumb, dumb.
I know someone who would have had to retire due to medical issues had she not been able to work from her home. Instead, she is still working after ten years and is one of the most productive employees in her unit--but she needed to be close to home in an environment that was conducive to her being able to work comfortably. If she had to commute she wouldn't have been able to keep at it.
kestrel91316
(51,666 posts)MADem
(135,425 posts)Yahoo Inc.s new CEO Marissa Mayer is known for helping to create Gmail, being employee No. 20 at Google and her penchant for cupcakes. Shes also known to Democrats and one Republican as a generous donor.
In 2008 and 2011, Mayer gave a combined $59,300 to the Democratic National Committee, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics. Shes also given to President Barack Obama, and earlier this year contributed $2,500 to Sen. Olympia Snowe, a Maine Republican known for working with Democrats.
Its hardly unheard of for Silicon Valley executives to support Obama, but Republican challenger Mitt Romney is reportedly making inroads of his own, by raising cash from Cisco chief executive John Chambers and Hewlett Packard CEO Meg Whitman, among others.
Mayer also hosted a fundraiser for Obama at her Palo Alto, Calif. home in 2010.
cbdo2007
(9,213 posts)kestrel91316
(51,666 posts)Dreamer Tatum
(10,926 posts)unblock
(52,253 posts)Loss of productivity and key employees, combined with the rising price of gas. I'd dump any Yahoo! stock I had if I had any.
joeybee12
(56,177 posts)Their boards make Free Republic look like, well, not batshit insane.
BuddhaGirl
(3,608 posts)and newly hired??
politicat
(9,808 posts)I've been working from home part time for seven years. My lab grew in personnel, but not physical space. I volunteered to work from home and give up my desk to someone who actually needed to be near the benches. (I'm a statistician, so as long as I have access to the servers I could work from the moon.)
Best decision ever for everyone concerned -- we are all better about scheduling and staying on task now. We now have a dozen people who do most of their work from home, and another dozen who hot-desk and work a flexible schedule. (The latter are either grad students or undergrad assistants, so flexibility is critical for their scholastic survival.)
We're also significantly better about communication because we write everything -- we communicate by email or instant message or text rather than phone or in person (except the twice-weekly staff meetings). The only people who work in the lab are those doing the chemical analysis. We have far fewer miscommunications and far, far less forgotten or procrastinated stuff. And morale is high for everyone -- the lab workers have space and the room to concentrate, we math and analysis types can go for a short walk in the middle of the day to clear our heads without someone accusing us of slacking off.
If scientists can do this, there is no reason that a tech company can't because we're using off the shelf, free or cheap software tools that are commonly available to everyone.
frylock
(34,825 posts)survey sez..... ummm no, she doesn't. stupid move.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/tykiisel/2013/02/26/does-marissa-mayer-know-something-we-dont/