A memo from Yahoo's executive vice president, Jackie Reses, which was leaked Friday, informed employees that "work from home" was no longer an option for them.
After Chief Executive Officer Marissa Mayer joined Yahoo last year, she has doing everything in her power to get the company back to its former glory. She began with free food and new smartphones for all Yahoo employees. However, now, the company has taken a surprising step and abolished its "work from home" policy and has asked all employees to begin working from the office.
A memo from Yahoo's executive vice president, Jackie Reses, which was leaked Friday, informed employees that "work from home" was no longer an option for them. Reses, who was hired by Mayer, explained that face-to-face interaction among employees fosters a more collaborative culture. "Speed and quality are often sacrificed when we work from home," said Reses.
The memo was later reprinted by the Wall Street Journal's AllThingsD blog. The blog noted that while only a few hundreds of Yahoo's 11,500 employees regularly worked from home, most employees were allowed to work from the comfort of their homes at least once or twice a week. When Bloomberg Business week asked the company about how many employees they think would be affected by this new change in policy, Yahoo refused to comment saying they do not discuss internal affairs of the company.
Experts predict that this move could lead to negative consequences as the company will be removing all the benefits that come with working from home.
"What's really troubling about this is that a technology company can't figure out how to collaborate remotely," said Kate Lister, president of the Telework Research Center. "[This decision] runs counter to worldwide trends toward more remote work."
Yahoo is one of the most recent companies to address this "work from home" issue, which is known to be the country's biggest workplace issues. Late last year Bank of America, that had a popular program for working remotely announced that most of its employees were asked to come in and work from the office daily.
John Challenger, chief executive of Challenger Gray & Christmas, an outplacement and executive coaching firm said, "A lot of companies are afraid to let their workers work from home some of the time or all of the time because they're afraid they'll lose control."
