26 February 2013 | Posted inBlog News & Updates, workplace
Why I Believe a Work-at-Home Policy is Worth Keeping
image from Wikimedia Commons
Several organizations have asked for our advice on “work-from-home” policies, particularly in light of the recent policy change at Yahoo, effectively rescinding their work-at-home program. I can’t speak for Yahoo, but the issues they are facing are very real… how can organizations encourage employees to connect with one another now that we’re so all so mobile and can work anywhere? Marissa Mayer, Yahoo’s current CEO and formerly with Google, has seen the benefits of a culture that encourages employees to come into the office.
As our team learned in HOK’s design of Google Canada’s new Toronto office, they go to a lot of trouble to make sure their employees are enticed to come to their campuses and want to stay there by providing great food, dry cleaning, exercise rooms, games, etc. Honestly, pretty much every Google office is way cooler than my home and, yes, if I worked for Google I would absolutely be more likely to come into the office than stay at home to work. Google trusts their employees to make the right call on how they need to work to be as productive as possible.
Last Friday, I sat in a room with executives of an engineering company and had a discussion about this topic. We are in the midst of developing their overall workplace strategy as well as their telework (work from home) and mobile work (work from anywhere) policies. We were talking specifically last week about the need to encourage employees, when not with their customers, to be at the office. These employees are highly technical with a mission that requires that they share information on behalf of their customers. They need to communicate, collaborate and fortuitously “bump into” one another often in order to get their job done well. That said, the way they work is by thinking and researching for long periods alone, which is critical for innovation and the accuracy of their work.
The executives of this company were torn about how to communicate what they are trying to achieve. On one hand, collaboration is good for their business. On the other hand, working alone (at home or the office) is a highly effective way for their people to work. We discussed the importance of “trusting” their managers and employees to make the right call. At the end of the meeting, the executives opted for a strategy of providing their employees choice and clear measures for success and they decided not to create mandates. We also talked about the importance of creating a workplace that really helped attract employees to come into the office on a regular basis.
The other interesting anecdote that was discussed last week with these executives was the fact that their company actually measures how well individuals collaborate as part of their annual performance review process. Just about across the board, their teleworkers (those who work primarily at home) consistently score higher at being “great collaborators” over any other group. We talked about how this is likely because their teleworkers are concerned about how they are “out of sight and out of mind,” and tend to make communication and collaboration more of a priority than those who come in the office every day.
We advise clients to engage in conversations with their people about how to encourage more effective collaboration — to model the very behavior they are trying to achieve. We also like to check performance metrics. Do the organization’s metrics support collaboration and the culture they are trying to achieve? Or is there a need to create incentives to connect people and encourage innovation.
Having a ”choice” about working at home, being mobile or working full- or part-time at the office is an important option that attracts and retains talented people. These choices create greater satisfaction and allow organizations to align their needs with those of their employees. Given that employees are company’s most important asset, isn’t it worth a little flexibility to keep them around and happy?
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I find this SO fascinating…especially because many of Yahoo’s products focus on virtual collaboration. Does this mean they have no confidence that Yahoo mail, Yahoo messenger, Yahoo search, etc. are able to provide the collaboration that they need?
I think the answer is ‘somewhere in between’. Sometimes I am more productive hammering out work at home without all the distractions of a busy office. Sometimes I am running back and forth across to town to meetings and working at home gets me a couple more hours of work in because I am not making gratuitous trips to the office. Sometimes I need to be in the office to interact with the teams I work with and to talk with clients. I tell my team members that I respect their judgement to know when they need to work remotely (whether it’s for concentration or to attend to a sick child) and when they need to be in the office. And they choose to be in the office MOST of the time! The office doesn’t need to be snazzy or full of amenities, it just needs to be conducive to productive collaboration. I think taking away the telework option is basically treating employees like children. And it’s bound to cause some resentment.
Great subject! I believe both telework and mobile work are essential to every company in recent times. Employees make use of these two every day despite company policies. The challenge is to create a balance between flexibility and collaboration. I am glad to hear executives are taking this challenge seriously and creating policies to encourage collaboration as well as analyzing the metrics of how telework allows for creativity and productivity improvements. Some companies have encouraged collaboration by hosting inner-office networking events during which employees mingle for about one hour Friday afternoon and casually catch up on their colleagues projects or recent achievements. This type of networking is a good collaboration tool but not always the most effective. Sometimes casual collaboration is key, in which case the right office setting becomes the best tool to promote it. However, there are still companies that do not recognize or encourage telework or mobile work as part of their company culture and managers demand “face time” from their employees, this can work against them and result in low employee/talent retention. Finding the right balance between flexibility and collaboration depends on each company’s business goals, tools, and workforce demographics. Best of luck on your interesting work, keep us posted on exciting new trends!
I think the benefit of Yahoo’s decision hitting the cyber-world is that its started conversations amoung a broader group of people. Of course, the first reactions have been immediate concern/doubt that we are on the right path in implementing our own versions of mobile work.
I think it stresses that continued attention to developing trust-based relationships amoung team members,negotiating clear performance expectations between managers and staff, and helping new managers with skills to manage (mobile) individuals are more important than ever in today’s world.
I would also suggest that each organzation needs to think deeply about the approach to mobility that is right for them at a specific time in their organizations evolution. It’s important that whatever the workplace strategy an organization designs, we need to ensure that we support, and are supported, by their specific culture and business goals.
And we shouldn’t forget that each company’s culture and situation is unique. The workplace and culture that Yahoo’s senior leadership is building today is probably very different than the needs they’ve had in the past and certainly not the same as other organizations, even companies in the same industry.
There is only one thing in common among all organizations with strong cultures. They are made up of people who really want to be there. The really good ones go a step further to attract and keep very diverse people that complement and challenge each other, thus constantly renewing the organization and evolving the culture. The content of the culture is important, but what people respond to is it’s quality or intensity. Enthusiasm is contagious. When successful it appears to be indestructible, but in reality it is a very fragile ecosystem that requires constant nurturing. And particularly difficult to rebuild once lost. It is easy to look at icon driven cultures like an Apple with Jobs, Microsoft with Gates, Virgin with Branson. Perhaps an icon is required or created when rebuilding, like a Mulally at Ford or a Gerstner at IBM. It seems that Marissa understands that she needs to create a culture that once again attracts people who are passionate about what they are doing. This awareness is a significant improvement over recent prior Yahoo CEOs who seemed to focus on restructuring in terms of financials or products only. If she succeeds (and I really hope she does) this issue of where people work from will quickly become irrelevant. If the culture is as broken as folks make it to be, she will need to break some eggs to make an omelet. Frankly money or formal HR policy (beyond what is already legislated or considered standard practice), and definitely workspace are really not in the top factors for motivating people. These factors will keep people but not motivate them. How many on this group have used these reasons as their primary drivers in deciding how they allocate mind share for most of their waking hours?
For context here’s the post with Yahoo’s internal memo…
http://allthingsd.com/20130222/physically-together-heres-the-internal-yahoo-no-work-from-home-memo-which-extends-beyond-remote-workers/?goback=%2Egde_101168_member_216974535
Interestingly, I sat on a panel last week focused on resiliency planning for real estate organzations post Hurricane Sandy. Lots of great lessons learned were shared about the event, but one item mentioned relevant here was from Fried Frank, a NY law firm. The panelist said that the hurricane forced their employees to work from home an entire month, but they lost zero productivity (lawyers are pretty good at tracking hours) that entire time. He was quick to note that the firm still did not have a telework policy. So clearly culture trumps productivity for this company. Fascinating!
Culture eats strategy for breakfast (Peter Drucker)
Culture eats process for lunch (Alan Mulally)
Productivity and innovation are very important but very different things, though, unfortunately, often used inter-changeably. As soon as someone spends a little bit of time dwelling on that difference, it brings great clarity to personal and organizational priorities and expectations.