It looks like Marissa Mayer isn’t the only female CEO ending the days of telecommuting for their tech conglomerates — HP’s Meg Whitman is joining the club, too.
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Okay, so we stretched the truth a bit. Hewlett-Packard isn’t completely ending the work-from-home policy, but it is definitely tightening the definition of who qualifies for telecommuting. As reported in an article published by AllThingsD, HP has communicated that the change is intended to “help create a more connected workforce and drive greater collaboration and innovation,” which requires the tech giant to have “all hands on deck.”
But there’s a slight issue with the new in-house work policy; HP doesn’t have sufficient space to fit the estimated 80,000-plus employees that were telecommuters. To help solve this slight problem, the company will allow employees who live more than one hour away from the office to continue to work from home.
Additionally, HP is doing its best to accommodate employees by adding or improving corporate conference rooms, technologies, gyms, cafeterias, and, even opening new state-of-the-art headquarters across the globe. But are these upgrades enough incentive to make commuting to the office every day worth it for HP employees?
Even if many professionals would take a job that allows them to work from home over one that doesn’t, that might not be what’s best for the company. According to a study conducted by Stanford University, it depends on whether these employees work independently, or if their jobs require collaboration and creativity. As it turns out, the study revealed that employees whose jobs required them to work independently were, in fact, more productive while working from home. However, those employees who relied on collaboration with others had a less positive impact from telecommuting.
Mayer and Whitman may get all the heat for implementing seemingly harsh non-telecommuting policies, but they were hired for one obvious reason — to take their companies to the next level. Mayer definitely proved her policy change’s worth as Yahoo’s stock continues to climb after the ban. Sure, we’d all love to have our cake and eat it too, but sometimes that cake is sitting in the office break room and not at home.
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