Is working from home always better?

There's been lots of talk in the blogosphere about Marissa Mayers decision to tell Yahoo! employees to stop working from home. Hey, even Yahoo! employees were/are discussing it on the web.
James Robertson wrote up a nice post about this decision and also pointed to the fact that Google seems to be like-minded to Yahoo! when it comes to working from home. Also interesting is what he says about the implications of this kind of news for 'the digital workplace'.

One of the things I like about the discussion is that we have to rethink why we like/dislike working from home. And that's one of the things I miss in the discussion about tele-work. Of course commenters rightly wonder what this Yahoo! statement means with respect to trusting employees to decide for themselves where they can get their work done.
However, isn't it also OK to discuss what the pro's and con's of tele-work are. Is working from home always the best way to go?
In my experience with working from home, some types of work are great to do from home and some are great to do in the train or at the office. I know from talks with others that my experiences relate to many. For instance I find it very hard to write reports and read longer documents and books at the office. There are simply too many disruptions there. I know this does not go for everybody. But isn't this something to discuss. Along with things we personally have to get done, there are also joint task we have to get done together. How are we going to get that done when working from home and/or the office?
As Mark Morrell says in a comment to the above-mentioned post (I'm rephrasing him a bit): in the end it comes down to trusting employees to decide when and where they can get things done. Sometimes this is at home, sometimes this is at work. True. My point is: we decide this for ourselves and we decide about this together with colleagues.

I'm curious what your thoughts are on this topic. Please share them as a comment.

Popular posts

Keep the Intranet Small

Image
This tweet by Jonathan Phillips ( @digitaljonathan ) triggered to finalize this post, that's been burning in my draft box. I've always been intrigued by how unsuccessful many intranets are. And there are all kinds of good reasons for intranet failure. One of the things that is hardly ever mentioned is: Shouldn't the intranet be smaller? Usually intranets are huge. Lots and lots of pages with lots and lots of content. With complex navigation. The intranet  evaluation surveys almost always show employees only use the news page and people finder. But still we build and maintain nice big intranets. Not only stats point to smaller intranets. There are others reasons as well. I came up with a few. If you have more, just leave a comment. Here's my list: -            user requirements: users don't require large intranet -            search/navigation: searching and navigating a small ...
Read more

Enterprise 2.0 Research

Image
There's not too much fundamental research on Enterprise 2.0. Deloitte recently published interesting research done on enterprise 2.0 implementations and their return-on-investment. In the EU research has also done as well. Study is being done for the European Commission and it was carried out by Tech4i2, IDC and Headshift. What was the goal of the study? Goals of the study To provide a clear definition of Enterprise 2.0 is, describe the market and the positioning of EU industry, also in comparison with US and Asia; To analyze the take-up of Enterprise 2.0, the organizational requirements, and the role on the transition to a knowledge based low-carbon economy; To collect evidence on its macro-economic impact, as a market opportunity for the European Software industry and as a productivity tool for European business; To identify and analyse both the direct and contextual challenges, including the need for Next Generation Access and the legal barriers; To analyse an...
Read more

Innovation in Turbulent Times

Image
I love reading articles about innovation. And every now and then you read one that is very interesting. "Innovation in Turbulent Times" by Rigby, Gruver, Allen (in HBR, June 2009) is one of them. This article takes fashion companies as an example for continuous, year-by-year innovation. And how successful fashion companies are usually led by two people: a left-brainer and a right-brainer. "If you don't have highly creative people in positions of real authority, you won't get innovation. Most companies in other industries ignore this lesson." They extend this to show that successful non-fashion companies have the same kind of leadership. And this kind of leadership is usually also characterized by a long-term relationship. I think this concept can also be extended to teams and projects as well. More often than not, people are good at one or the other: thinking up great concepts or ideas, or, making them. In teams and projects we can learn from this as...
Read more