She earned a $1.1 million bonus after working just six months for the company so she must be doing something right.
Thirty seven year old Marissa Mayer was hired as Chief Executive Officer by Yahoo executives to boost productivity and to turn the company in a new positive direction. Of course that's going to mean changes. If she kept going in the same direction, how can one expect productivity gains?
Among the changes she's implementing? She's asking the slew of employees who strictly work from home start spending some quality time in the office.
"To become the absolute best place to work, communication and collaboration will be important, so we need to be working side-by-side," she says. "Speed and quality are often sacrificed when we work from home."
As much as anyone would enjoy the luxury and freedom offered through working from home, I will say, I have to agree with her. It just makes sense that closer communication and collaboration would equate to increased productivity. But there are plenty who don't, especially the employees who are soon going to have to commute - at least part of the time. "Mayer has taken a giant leap backward," says one workforce consultant. "Instead of keeping great talent, she is going to find herself with a workplace full of people who are good at showing up and putting in time...' "When employees have family or other personal issues they need to take care of, the feeling is that by being able to work from home you can take care of those in a much shorter period of time than commuting."
Naturally, if you've grown accustomed to working from home you are going to buck a system that's going to require you to get up, get dressed, keep a schedule and fight the traffic but if company productivity is suffering can you really blame the higher ups for looking at change?
Since Mayer has come on board with internet giant Yahoo, the company reported its first annual sales increase in four years. "She needs to rebuild the culture of this company, and she needs to drive revenue growth" says analyst Collin Gillis. "The whole notion of ending remote working, and whether it's right or wrong, it's her prerogative as CEO, and we'll see if it helps her with those first two goals."
I think it all boils down to smart business sense.
