As you might have read, Marissa Mayer, the relatively new CEO at Yahoo, has banned working from home from 1st June 13.
“To be one Yahoo!, and that starts being physically together…To become the absolute best place to work, communication and collaboration will be important. That is why it is critical that we are all present in our offices. Some of the best decisions and insights come from hallway and cafeteria discussions, meeting new people, and impromptu team meetings."
This is rather pertinent to us here at TechMarketView. We set the firm up so that everyone works from home. We all get together as a team once a month and meet ‘physically’ often – indeed, most often when we visit clients together. So far I would say that it has worked really well. Rather than getting less work done, I think our productivity is boosted by no commute time. It is also a boon to our people with young children. Overall, I suspect everyone works far more than the allotted hours. Something I can see from the times of emails where one is as likely to get a quick response at 7.00am, 7.00pm or even 10.00pm!
Other differences are that Mayer also provides free canteen food at Yahoo (TMV people raid their own fridges at lunchtime) and free iPhones (we instigated a BYOT policy from day one – so everyone chooses, buys and pays for their own tech)
Of course, working from home has its downsides and I’d actually agree that“Some of the best decisions and insights come from hallway and cafeteria discussions, meeting new people, and impromptu team meetings.” But these can be engineered even when most work is done from home.
I think Mayer is going against the general trend that we see. Indeed, recent surveys have shown that almost all ‘knowledge workers’ in the UK work from home for at least part of their week.