Ducks in a Row: Remote or On-site
by Miki Saxon
Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer started a brouhaha recently when she ended the company’s policy of allowing staff to work from home; many insiders said it was a good move, because remote workers weren’t performing.
However, low productivity and lack of accountability is a management problem, so if she only brings people on-sight without directly dealing with the underlying management problems the results probably won’t improve much.
Hubert Joly, the new Best Buy CEO, dumped the ROWE culture in favor of 40-hour on-site workdays for the headquarters staff as the best way to boost performance in the turnaround; he also wants to sure that everyone knows they are dispensable (himself included).
However, nothing I’ve seen indicates that the work wasn’t getting done, so dumping ROWE may prove of questionable value.
Tony Hsieh thinks on-site is better not because of accountability, but because “companies with strong cultures outperform those without in the long-term financially. So we’re big, big believers in building strong company cultures; note that Zappos’ business lends itself to having all its staff on-site.
Whereas IBM has a strong, unified culture in spite of being a global company with thousands of employees who work off-site.
Bottom line: It’s not a matter of on or off-site; it’s a matter of the strength of the culture, which is dependent on the skill of the management.
Flickr image credit: Gidzy
