Remote work is a wonderful thing. If you believe all the hype, it makes us pollute less, be more productive (by cutting out those water cooler conversations), and be happier, with more time to spend with our kids.
If you don’t believe them, it’s a way to lose sight of how productive your workers are, a loss of control, and the fastest way to lose money known to mankind, other than backing Pets.com’s IPO.
But when a large Internet based company, floundering after years of not having a single coherent direction, with a new CEO literally every year, suddenly issues an edict, ordering all remote workers to report to their offices, questions are going to be asked. Questions about who is actually a productive worker – the remote ones who are motivated to keep their remote privileges? Or the management, who presumably hits the office daily, and still can’t manage to figure out what Yahoo actually does?
Yahoo! has been a respected brand. I bet every one of you can call out the Yaaaaahhooooooo! yodel. (If you just did that on the subway, don’t blame me.) But taking privileges away from people for no good reason is simply wrong. You’ll get the workers riled up, and probably lose productivity.
And what about the fact that government workers, and contractors, rarely, if ever, get to work from home? “Hoteling” or Hot Desking, or whatever it’s being called at your location, is the hottest thing going. Save budget on facilities, spend it on headcount and equipment, right? Awesome. Let’s test out the equipment to securely work remotely. It works! Ok, who gets the equipment? Ummmmmmmm. It’s a rare manager who is willing to be the first to not have a visible kingdom.
This is from the same mindset. “No one can be productive unless I can have my thumb on them!” said most managers.
This is ridiculous. It has been proven you get more productivity, happier, less-stressed workers (lower healthcare costs!!), and better quality of work, from utilizing work-from-home technology with good workers. Those last two words are the kicker. Put a lazy guy at home, he’s still lazy. Put a motivated gal at home, she’s still motivated. She’s just closer to work, steps instead of commuting on the beltway, with more time to work, and more motivation to get things done before the kids come home and need to be tended to. (This applies to both sexes equally!)
Use your workers, trust your workers, and use modern technology to measure their productivity. Keep the best ones, and keep them happy with remote work privileges. Actually saves you money, and makes employees happier and more productive?
Seems like Yahoo! is headed in a bad direction. Let’s see if they can revive their failing brand, and when they reverse this edict, maybe they can provide some guidance to big contracting companies, and government agencies, by showing how useful it is to have this option available.
Joshua Marpet is on the Board of Directors of two Infosec conferences, BSides Las Vegas, and Security BSides Delaware. He is also staff at Derbycon, Shmoocon, and as the “InfoSec Megaphone”, anywhere else he goes. Joshua is an experienced Forensic, Incident Response, and mobile forensics expert and researcher. As an adjunct professor at Wilmington University, he teaches Information Security at an NSA/DHS certified Center of Academic Excellence. In his professional life, he is a managing partner at Guarded Risk, a proactive forensics and proactive incident response firm.
