As a quick follow-up to my recent blog post, “Working from Home vs. ‘Working’ from Home,” I’d like to share this interesting
infographic, courtesy of Yast.com. The page includes lots of informative facts and figures regarding the state of telecommuting today, and predictions for the future.
I didn’t get to commenting on the last post about this but I think Yahoo’s new CEO is onto something but I think it’s temporary at best.
I think if you have a smart management team then they should be more than capable of knowing who is productive from home and who isn’t and should also then be able to make those folks more productive from home. However, if those managers are the same people being unproductive and goofing off from home (or on the road or whatever) then what kind of example are they setting for their employees.
For me, i work from home when I ABSOLUTELY MUST get something done. I am infinitely more productive when working from home. There are less distractions, less office chatter, less people stopping in, less time getting coffee, etc etc. I am also the person who answers emails before I come in and at night before I go to sleep. It’s an AWFUL habit but it’s reality. The more and more easily connected we become, I believe that the expectation will be that work can and will happen wherever you are whenever through out the day.
I think that business models will eventually (soon) have to shift corporate “benefits” to accommodate that kind of work as we Gen Xers continue to adapt to new technologies. I don’t even know what to expect from Millennials.
Bottom line is that she was (in my opinion) right to do what she did. I believe it’s temporary at best and was done to weed out those who were taking advantage on EVERY level (“methinks thou dost protest too much”). People will reaccommodate themselves to office life and Yahoo will be better off for it.
Marisa, since your comment I learned that BestBuy, another onetime market leader, also just revoked telecommuting for their corporate staff. It will be interesting to see whether companies that aren’t in dire straits financially also begin to reign-in flexible workplace policies. Thanks for reading and for commenting.