In a landmark 2007 paper published in the Journal of Applied Psychology called “The Good, the Bad, and the Unknown About Telecommuting: Meta-Analysis of Psychological Mediators and Individual Consequences”, authors Ravi Gajendran and David Harrison of the Department of Management and Organization at Pennsylvania State University dispelled the notion that working from home was bad for business or bad for employee morale. It’s a paper I’m certain the internet company Yahoo! failed to read when they recently announced all 12,000+ employees had to begin working from Yahoo! offices 100 percent of the time effective June 2013. What did Gajendran and Harrison prove? Through the review and analysis of 46 individual studies that featured 12,883 employees, these researchers determined working from home demonstrated seven positive outcomes:
flexible work Archive
My jaw dropped when I read it. Thanks to an internal memo leaked to Kara Swisher by a Yahoo employee, we have insight into a recent decision by their C-Suite. Taking a page from “we liked it better when we physically saw you hammering keystrokes on your laptop” the struggling company (bada Bing?) has mandated any Yahoo employee currently working from home (full-time or on occasion) must relocate their fingers and keystrokes back to the office by June. That’s right … if a Yahoo employee was able to work from home, it’s no longer in the employee contract. I call it ‘management yahooliganism‘. The memo itself was penned by Jackie Reses, Yahoo’s Head of Human Resources. I’ve no idea whether Jackie (and CEO Marissa Mayer)