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Off the Record: Is Marissa Mayer onto something?

Last Friday, Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer backpedalled on the company’s flexible working policy and banned all employees from working from home.

A memo was sent out by the company’s HR boss telling all remote staff they need to find a way to work from an office by the time June rolls around.

The news has a lot of Yahoo employees – particularly working mothers – up in arms, but it has also taken bystanders back a bit, too. No more flexible working, at all?! Is she living in the dark ages?

But the move makes sense, in a way. Yahoo has a productivity problem when compared to Google (Mayer’s former employer) and she has been following the Google playbook ever since she took over the reigns to try and correct this. Free food for all staff? Check. Smartphone for every employee? Check.

Google, the pioneer of collaborative working environments, also doesn’t hugely favour flexible working, so it was really only a matter of time until Yahoo followed in their footsteps.

According to Sarah Robb, former Google head of people for the APAC region, who we interviewed back in March 2012, Google’s view on telecommuting and flexible working is that it’s okay once in a while, but the company “doesn’t want to promote a telecommuting environment because we believe the best ideas come from having a cup of coffee and sparking something.”

With this, I tend to agree. The best ideas are generally concocted through a more collaborative environment – not over the phone. However, I’m not so sure that giving something to all employees, then swiftly taking it away, is the best way to gain staff loyalty and keep that desire to be innovative intact.

Despite nods of agreement from some Yahoo staff – a few have been reported as saying many people “milked” the flexible policies to work on non-Yahoo projects – the trend towards creative work arrangements is not dying down, particularly in tech companies. Is Yahoo wise to buck the trend?

Virgin Group head Richard Branson doesn’t think so. He wrote in his blog that Mayer’s “backwards” move undermines her staff and implies she does not trust them to get their work done without supervision.

“If you provide the right technology to keep in touch, maintain regular communication and get the right balance between remote and office working, people will be motivated to work responsibly, quickly and with high quality,” he wrote.

A lot of the disappointment has also come from people really hoping Mayer would change the business world in favour of working mums. However, it seems she has taken the privilege away from many, but kept it for herself (wouldn’t all working mums love to be able to build a nursery in their office like Mayer did?)

In Asia, flexible working is an upward trend and is constantly talked about as a necessary perk to keep job-hopping talent on board. Employees often cite the advantage as something they are specifically looking for in an employer.

But I often wonder how realistic working from home is. In my industry – media – it’s practically non-existent and I think this is typically true of many companies and in many industries in Asia.

Working from home requires a huge shift in culture. After all, the stigma remains in offices in Singapore that if you’re not physically at your desk, you’re not working. Yet, job seekers (younger ones in particular) expect flexibility to be offered.

Companies wanting to position themselves as an employer of choice need to give employees the option of some form of flexible working arrangement – that, I think, we can all agree on – but in order for it to have the desired effect, it needs to be properly managed and maintained.

And it cannot suddenly be pulled out from underneath your employee’s feet and “taken back”.

It’s not clear why Mayer has made this change – even though I still think there are cases for keeping all employees in the office – but I’m not convinced she’s doing the right thing.

Do you? What are your views on flexible working? Do you think Asia still has a long way to go to shift the perception around not being in the office, or are we already there?

Email me at rebeccal@humanresourcesonline.net

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