A few years ago, the then Yahoo boss Marissa Mayer asked all employees to give up their home office and Company to work - and sparked heated discussions.

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“Working side by side” again

The change of Working world seems unstoppable - towards more flexibility, independence and collaboration even over longer distances. But dam announced the youngest of all people Ms.who ever ran a Fortune 500 companythat the home workers should return to the company. A turnaround?

As Kara Swisher reported back then on allthingsd.com, the then Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer announced in an internal Memorandumthat the YahooEmployees should work side by side in the company again in the future and no longer in their home offices. Their reason: more productivity. This is what the memo says:

“To become the absolute best place to work, communication and collaboration will be important, so we need to be working side-by-side. That is why it is critical that we are all present in our offices. Some of the best decisions and insights come from hallway and cafeteria discussions, meeting new people, and impromptu team meetings. Speed ​​and quality are often sacrificed when we work from home. We need to be one Yahoo !, and that starts with physically being together. ”

Do CEOs have to be role models?

Lisa Belkin sharply criticized this step in the Huffington Post – because Marissa Mayer was the first Boy woman, who is also pregnant, took over the management of a well-known company like Yahoo last summer and is now a role model in this role: as a young company boss as well as when Mother, the child and Career united. Instead of turning Yahoo into a model company for family-friendly working and thus taking advantage of digital working, Belkin complains that Mayer would do exactly the opposite.

Now it was not Mayer's task to satisfy a role model, but to lead the company that was entrusted to her: She will have thought carefully about this move away from the home office and for the benefit of the company: Because collaborative work may have many advantages, but that personal Conversation cannot be replaced in my opinion either – we have also discussed this extensively at imgriff.com.

"I can't work like this"

The danger of loneliness and cutting off important information is great. This is exactly what Mayer indirectly mentions as one of the reasons for her call. The popularity that coworking and “coffee house working” are receiving from freelancers in many places points in a similar direction Head falls. The statement by Julia Seeliger, former TAZ editor and ex-member of the Greens, fits in with this Job Search admits how much she would like to meet colleagues at the coffee machine again.

The question remains: what made Marissa Mayer take her step?  Best of HR – Berufebilder.de®At the time, he gave some reasons for this approach Business Insider informed by a source well acquainted with Mayer's thinking. I have to the justifications and to the social Effect some more thoughts and compiled a list of pros and cons:

7 arguments against the home office

  1. Working together is more fun: In her memo, Marissa Mayer appealed to the community spirit of the “Yahoos” and also emphasized the fun nature of the collaboration. In order to create the absolute best place to work, it is important to work side by side, she says.
  2. Exchange is important: The exchange in personal conversation is still extremely important today - despite all digital means of communication. Above all, informal conversations, gossip in the cafeteria increase productivity and creativity. Google, the company from which Mayer comes, has already successfully demonstrated how important teamwork and constant creative exchange are when developing new ideas.
  3. You can organize meetings efficiently: Of course, meetings can be annoying. However, Marissa Mayer is known for holding extremely efficient meetings of short duration. For example, she only accepts invitations to a meeting if she knows exactly what it is about and what her role is. And she wants to be able to estimate in advance what will be discussed and for how long. More about this in this article by Gregor.
  4. Communication takes time: When people work together at distant workplaces, communication takes significantly longer than when you sit next to each other in the office due to the lower media richness. For example, because misunderstandings arise more often.
  5. Home workers are not necessarily more productive: According to Business Insider, Yahoo had a large number of employees back then who no one knows, who never come into the company - and who are not particularly productive. Because working from home is not necessarily more productive than in a concentrated work environment. Distractions from children or the household damage concentration. A lack of structures also makes disciplined work difficult.
  6. New forms of work do not necessarily make you happier: Those who work at home initially think they are self-determined and flexible - and seem to have achieved exactly what they always wanted. But soon the homeworkers notice that the blanket is falling on their heads at home, and new forms of work are needed. I recently spent a few days in Austin, Texas. Austin is also known as Silicon Hills as the fastest growing city in the USA with numerous IT companies. Here I noticed: The cafes were full of young coffee house workers. But also: Most people sat alone at the table and worked on themselves. Collaborative forms of work and discussions were rarely observed. That makes me think of Shirly Turkle's thesis of shared loneliness. I have also been comparing different coworking models internationally for years. Whether in New Zealand, Canada, Latvia or France: I could always see that coworking spaces were founded because the owners, usually freelancers, fell on the ceiling at home.
  7. A company needs fixed structures: CEOs like Marissa Mayer want more control over their employees - that doesn't have to be bad. A company needs fixed structures and hierarchies in order to function efficiently. If the structures are too loose, hierarchies are also formed, but in a much more non-transparent way.

7 arguments for the home office

  1. Meetings are often unproductive: If they are not structured in a targeted manner, meetings can quickly degenerate into unproductive discussion groups or become an individual's self-presentation platform. I know companies where meetings are a popular method of procrastination, because they are so much more pleasant for the boss than simply to do his job.
  2. There is more gossip than inspiration in the coffee kitchen: I already reported about Julia Seeliger's job search above. In her blog post, she also frankly wrote that she would like to meet colleagues at the coffee machine again. This motivation was criticized more than once by commentators who accused her of not having to look for work when she was looking for a job, but rather just gossiping at the coffee machine. At least, this statement shows how important the chat at work and the feeling of belonging are for many.
  3. "Working through" brings more than constant exchange: I was in Houston some time ago interviewed a rocket scientist, who held senior positions in NASA’s space shuttle program. So a very successful man. And what does he give us as a recipe for success? “Work hard and seek the challenge!” Not about: “Always exchange ideas with others!” It may be that he belongs to another generation. However: I am also most successful in my work (and incidentally also the most satisfied) if I simply work through my tasks consistently. Just to get the loose ends out of your head. Sometimes this also means isolating myself from distractions and just stubbornly following my plan. Certainly I lose some inspiration or two. But it is precisely because I focus that I also finish my tasks. In my opinion, too much exchange is disruptive. And I personally do this efficient work best at home, where I am undisturbed, and not in an office.
  4. Exchange doesn't necessarily make you more productive: Precisely because I have repeatedly praised the advantages of collaborative forms of work, I would like to ask the question: How productive are collaborative forms of work really? And how often is it simply pointlessly and aimlessly discussed? As an example, I come back to the freelancers who meet others in cafes or co-working. I assume that working together, more productively, is not the actual purpose of these collaborative forms of work. Many just want to be with other people. And not a single owner of a coworking space gave me the basic idea that they are more productive together with others or need more inspiration. These aspects usually only crystallized over time, or they were mainly a marketing argument from the start to attract customers.
  5. Who works at home works more: Many people who work flexibly at their desk at home actually do more for their company than some bosses suspect. The problem is that bosses often don't notice it and prefer to have their employees under (apparent) control and therefore right in front of their noses.
  6. It's about more control: As Business Insider writes in his post mentioned above, in more successful companies like Facebook or Google does not usually have employees work from home. In spite of their fun character, there are more efficient structures that Marissa Mayer also wanted to introduce at Yahoo! It was simply about controlling the vast number of homeworkers and also saving costs, because it is to be expected that some of the employees will actually quit.
  7. The boundaries between work and private life are becoming increasingly blurred: However, if companies want more control over their employees, it makes sense to use another tool that has already worked successfully at Google: the fun factor. Google is known for the fact that it offers its employees massages, sports rooms and all kinds of other gadgets. I remember the marble runs hanging over the desks at the Google headquarters in Hamburg, which we visited as a group of journalists a few years ago. And we concluded with concern: "Those who work in this way have no private life." Because true to the motto “We are so cool and we all love each other and we all have fun”, people are then made to work longer and more voluntarily (no one is forced!). And for some, the workplace becomes a substitute for private life. However, this much-vaunted mix of professional and private life is the wrong path of a perfidious corporate logic: the former is about making money, about efficiency and results, no matter how fun you try to make your work. On the other hand, other things should play a role in private life.

Home office yes or no? It depends on the corporate culture

How the topic of working from home and virtual working is to be evaluated in the end depends on the point of view: for a company of this size, there is a certain degree of Structure necessary to keep track. Therefore, it doesn't have to be the worst for business.

This affects the quality of work, the self-determination and the flexibility of the employees decision but whole for sure negative out, and they have every reason to be angry. This can also lead to a shortage of well-qualified workers. It remains to be seen whether other companies will follow this example and scale back the achievements of flexible forms of work.