Yahoo Ban on Working From Home is Misguided - The Juggle - WSJ

By Ellen Ernst Kossek

Yahoo?s decision to call remote workers back into the office is in the media because it raises some often unspoken but prevailing cultural assumptions.

In many corporate cultures, valuing work-life balance and integrating personal life with working is seen as antithetical to job performance. Employees who have control over where, when and how they work are seen as unproductive. Flexibility is perceived as an entitlement, not as a tool for productivity.

This is not just an issue for those who deal with childcare or elder care. Millenials, Gen-Xers and Boomers, men and women, returning veterans and disabled employees: Studies find that all employees value some control over managing personal and working time.

In addition, just because people are in the office doesn?t mean they are necessarily productive.

My research on boundary management styles shows individuals and company cultures have different engagement styles for managing work and personal life communications. Some of us are ?integrators? who can read take text messages from family, follow the news, and update our Facebook pages while still getting our job done well. Some of us work better at 5 a.m. or late at night. Other workers are ?separators?: They need time to focus and detach from work to concentrate. They also need some time off on weekends or evenings to recover from job stress.

Research shows that teleworking can help firms meet business objectives if the organization?s management sees it as a tool to improve performance, rather than a barrier to performance.

This means adapting metrics to focus on results, and linking flexible schedules to talent management and job demands. Management has to take time to coach employees, to be clear on goals, and have the courage to get rid of the bottom 10% of workers and abusers of a flexible system. Asking employees to be ?flexible on flexibility? ? ?setting core hours for meetings, coming into the office for group brainstorms or setting specific hours for conference calls ? are helpful approaches.

So telework is not the cause of Yahoos? problems. Employees commit to an organization because of its positive culture, and a feeling they are valued as whole people, not because they are ordered to sit at their desk. Abolishing telework is like cancelling the prom because someone spiked the punchbowl. It is not going to get Yahoo out of its doldrums in the long term. It may even result in an exodus, ?as talent leaves for employers who do not see work- life flexibility as being at war with job performance.

Ellen Ernst Kossek is a co- author of ?CEO of Me: Creating a Life that Works in the Flexible Job Age? and the Basil S. Turner Distinguished Professor of Management at Purdue University?s Krannert School of Management. She is also a member of the Work Family Health Network and the President of the Work-Family Researchers Network.

Related: The Home Office in the Spotlight

Source: http://blogs.wsj.com/juggle/2013/02/27/yahoo-ban-on-working-from-home-is-misguided/

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