Yahoo’s Telecommuting Ban Receives Major Backlash

Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer has given her employees until June to commute to an office everyday, essentially ending employees telecommuting from home. This decision from Mayer has been met with a lot of criticism, there has been some speculation that this might just be a way for Yahoo to let go of some of its employees that aren’t able to make the commute or relocate to a Yahoo office. Mayer claims that her decision to end telecommuting was to make Yahoo a more cohesive team, and that co-workers come up with better ideas when they can run into each other around the office.
One major problem employees see with this decision is that it is going to lead to employees being more stressed out because of a daily commute and less productive because of the high stress and less of a balance between work and home life. There is also the added cost this is going to bring to Yahoo of building offices to house all their employees and also the cost of furnishing each office. Many Yahoo employees see this as a hypocritical decision on Mayer’s part because she worked from home after the birth of her first child and has a nursery attached to her office at Yahoo so she can always be around her child. With all the technology we have access to now it makes it much easier for people to work from home and have a balanced work and home life without the added stress of a daily commute, Yahoo’s decision may cause it to lose a lot of it’s valued employees if they can’t come up with some type of compromise.