From the archive: to work or not to work from home

So it’s all kicking off about working from home this week, after Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer decided that gossiping in the loos and/or drinking from the water cooler of knowledge would make the company more creative and more productive. Something like that anyway.

Now I have an interest in all this. One of the first major pieces of business writing I ever did was for a Managing Director at BT Global Services about the work life balance. Terms like home working, telecommuting, and hot-desking were bandied about as the saviours of the modern corporation – as you would expect from a company in the telecoms business.

Mind you, that was back in the days when BlackBerrys were whizzy and new, and RIM had a share price to speak of.

Now, of course, I’m a home-worker myself with a full array of communications options at my disposal. What makes me different from the hapless Yahoos is that my office and my home are synonymous: there is no distant water cooler, calling my name with its siren song of workplace gossip and Good Wife catch-ups. If I don’t work at home, I’m not working anywhere (with the possible exception of the local coffee shop). My motivation is slightly different.

What surprises me is the Manichean response that Mayer’s decision seems to have provoked. It turns out that not everyone read my early white paper.

Maybe I spent too long looking at the bottom half of the internet last week, but it seems that the world is divided into those who skive at home and assume everyone else does; and climate evangelists who see no reason why we should have a collective workspace at all. Add to that the poisonous pro-mummy / anti-mummy brigades and it all got very unpleasant very quickly.

This of course is what the internet does so very well: polarise opinion. Why listen to what someone else has to say if you can get all CAPS SHOUTY without being arrested for disturbing the peace. But surely in this case it’s pretty obvious. Some jobs and some people work brilliantly on their own. And some don’t.

I’m one of those that do.

Now that my inner misanthrope is given full reign, I get more done in less time now than I ever did when I was in an office. And, if I may be so bold, I’ve got even better at it.

Equally, I am related to people who start climbing the walls if they haven’t had six meetings before elevenses. Treating us the same and assuming that we approach our work in the same way is not going to get the best out of either of us.

All of which suggests to me that Mayer has maybe missed her mark. Yahoo! has got some pretty big challenges ahead of it: assuming an identikit workforce doesn’t sound like a great way to solve them.