The debate over telecommuting, or having employees work from a remote location, has been pulled back into question since Marissa Mayer recently pulled the plug on this perk for Yahoo! employees. The media’s rhetoric surrounding this decision made it appear as an outright attack on every working American. Rumor has it that the always data conscious Mayer based her decision on the company’s VPN logs which showed lackluster activity levels.

Having been a virtual worker for the past couple of years, I can vouch that this style of working is not for everyone or for every company. The type of work required along with the individual’s work style (Do they need social interaction with coworkers?) factor into the overall success. The question of whether telecommuting should be allowed or not, in my opinion, is the wrong questions for businesses today. The question they all should be asking is how can we have the right technology infrastructure along with the right management and leadership to get the maximum benefit from virtual workers?

Several trends will continue to fuel the need for companies to be flexible when it comes to poaching the best players from the talent pool. To start, some professions, say software programmers, face a supply and demand problem. Younger generations have responded through research and surveys in support of a more favorable “work/life balance.” And perhaps the biggest reason businesses will have to be more flexible in regards to recruitment and telecommuting is that the very nature of our work is changing. The type and design of work brought by the Industrial Revolution (assembly lines, factory work, etc.) lost its dominance to the social/knowledge worker.

The most recent economic recession sped up this change in the workforce. More than ever, people have multiple sources of income from places outside of their primary job. We are our own Company of 1 because the same democratization in technology that allows telecommuting also allows us easy access to a marketplace. We are setting up shop on eBay, selling arts and crafts on Etsy, offering our stuff up for rent on sites like Airbnb, and selling our services through Elance or Amazon’s Mechanical Turk. 

In the end, the decision for Mayer to ban telecommuting, at least temporarily, at Yahoo! is probably the right decision. The company is suffering financially from a lack of innovation and direction. Both of which will be helped by the organic creativity that comes from face-to-face interaction. Going forward businesses will have to be more adaptive in their approach to human capital, because there are more ways and more places where money can be made. The nature of work is shifting and the employer may not always be in control. 

photo: Schlüsselbein2007