Much has been made of Yahoo's decision to eliminate all work from home arrangement and to sternly discourage the informal flexibility that allows people to get their cable fixed. Nearly all the ensuing press has been critical and negative . A few people have chimed in with the occasional "Yes, working at home does cut down on the organic, spontaneous collaboration and innovation that being around your colleagues inspires." but generally speaking the general consensus is that Yahoo's move was ill-conceived or at the very least poorly executed.
In that I'm also going to be rather critical of Yahoo doesn't differentiate me from everyone else. However, I'm going to tackle this issue from a different angle. Because my diversity & inclusion philosophy is based on the belief that most people don't wake up with the malicious intent to discriminate against any minority or disenfranchised group I have to believe that Yahoo's motivation to yank away flexibility, both formal and informal, was well intentioned.
(Side note: Is anyone else annoyed at how Marissa Mayer is talk all the blame for this decision? Though the idea may have been hers, workplace decisions of this magnitude typically get vetted and discussed by many members of the management committee. There is a handful of female AND male leaders who signed off on this thing. I'm getting really uncomfortable with the whole female CEO bashing thing.)
As someone who has done my fair share of working from home I will be the first person to say that:
1) Working from home is invaluable for a working mom.
2) Working from home is great for my productivity; Fewer distractions due to a loud, unruly workplace; More hours to work since I eliminate my commuting time; The ability to work when I am most productive - I am a late starter and I really find my creative grove in the late evening.
3) Working from home is a total collaboration/innovation killer.
If you're a tech company that relies on continual innovation it then stands to reason that a no working from home policy makes sense. In it's absolute purest distillation, Yahoo's decision was a good one. But of course we don't live in a world of absolutes. We live in a messy, complex world of human beings who are motivated by different factors and benefits.
Innovation, at least in the form that Yahoo is trying to inspire, comes from the intersection of disparate thought processes, experiences, and perspectives intersecting to create something new and previously nonexistent. Essential to this form of innovation are two things 1) An environment that allows for spontaneous intersections to occur frequently, and 2) the existence of diverse and disparate thought processes, experiences, and perspectives. While Yahoo's decision to push a policy of 'Presentism' provides the first ingredient for innovation, it actually creates a barrier to the second ingredient.
People familiar with the tech industry, especially the Silicon Valley tech industry, will know that it ain't exactly the most diverse community of individuals. It's largely a bunch of very smart, very geeky, mostly white (some Asian), 20-40 year old man-boys who grew up in largely middle to upper class homes and who all graduated from a small cluster of very elite colleges and universities. Women are rare. Working moms are rarer. And Latinos and African-American are rarer still. There are a handful of foreign nationals but they get relegated to the less glamorous, less influential roles. Lets call them the 'H1B Visa Ghettos'. Though the tech industry hates to admit it, they have got a serious, serious diversity problem. As one person once put it (and I paraphrase) 'The Silicon Valley is really just a bunch of rich, white boys creating really cool toys for other rich, white boys.'
Many years ago in the early days of diversity & inclusion companies began to realize that in order to attract a diverse workforce they had to offer alternative benefits and incentives to attract and retain diverse workers. Flexibility and other alternative work policies sprung out of corporations' desire to try and cultivate a new work reality that would appeal to women and other traditionally underrepresented groups. Fastforward twenty some odd years and we do see that these alternative work policies have had an impact on a companies' ability to attract and retain a wide range of workers. The companies with the most progressive policies often have the strongest employment brands to leverage during the talent acquisition process. Companies that have chosen not to change with the evolving and emerging workforce are very rapidly losing ground in their ability to hire talent both at the college and experience hire arena. Yahoo, by essentially promoting a workplace policy reminiscent of the 1970s and 80s when there wasn't the technology to work flexibly and alternatively are essentially communicating the message that "If you're not like us and if you don't want to work like us, you're not welcome here."
Though not directly stated, the general understanding is that Yahoo expects and is planning for this new policy reversal to result in many employees quitting the organization. What they probably aren't expecting but what will likely happen is that the decision will result in many of Yahoo's most diverse and culturally unique individuals to leave. Yahoo will lose the essential diversity it so needs to truly inspire innovation and creativity. Presentism will create a younger, whiter, more male Yahoo that lacks the perspectives of the diverse consumers that will be so essential to Yahoo's success.
Yahoo will not win the war for search engine eyeballs. That games already been won by Google. It also will likely not win the war for social media hub. Facebook has that covered. Yahoo has to carve out a unique consumer value proposition that will attract young and old internet users to the site. Good luck doing that when the people creating your site are a 'bunch of rich, white boys creating really cool toys for other rich, white boys.' Yahoo is essentially recreating the moment when P&G realized it was asking a room full of bald-white men to design the next breakthrough women's shampoo. Good luck Yahoo!
*For the record, I don't want to imply that white men are not innovative or diverse. They are! But when you start to add the factors of narrow generational, socio-economic, nationality, and educational range you do start to eliminate a lot of the factors that mold our differing perspectives.
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