Working At Home Or Virtually – What’s Best?

When Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer recently ordered employees back to their offices and announced her intention to crackdown on working from home, it was the shot fired ‘round the world.

Why?

Because so many people telecommute and do it so well.  But even ex-employees of Yahoo! came out to defend Mayer who took only two weeks off for her recent maternity leave.

Mayer says you have to physically go to work to collaborate better while telecommuters insist that with all the digital tools that exist, they can communicate just fine from home and save on commuting costs and day care to boot.

Who is right?

When I put the question to Morley Winograd, author of Millennial Momentum about the emerging Generation Y he put it in perspective: 

“The solution that she should be shooting for, but maybe can’t afford, is to make the workplace such a great place to be that people show up on their own rather than telecommuting. That’s what Google has done with its Googleplex campus that they are about to spend millions more to make even more attractive. For Google the place is so great that they had to adopt a rule for first year workers LIMITING the time they spend on campus.” 

So as usual, we tend get lost in the din of the discussion.

To change people’s behavior, give them the burning desire to do that which you want them to do.

And that advice applies to all of us in our personal and business lives as well.

Light their fire rather than burn down the house.

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