Where Is work done most efficiently and effectively? Yahoo!, a pioneer in Web search and navigation, struggles to remain relevant in the face of competition from the likes of Google, Facebook, and Twitter. It missed the two biggest Internet trendssocial networking and mobile. However, in July 2012, after the company did its own search, it snagged a gem as the company's new CEOMarissa Mayer, one of Google's top executives. Mayer had been one of the few public faces of Google and was responsible for the look and feel of Google's most popular products. Guiding Yahoo! as it tries to regain its former prominence is proving to be the challenge that experts predicted, but they're also saying that if anyone could take on the challenge of making Yahoo! an innovator once again, Mayer is the person. Two of her initial decisions included free food at the office and new smartphones for every employee, something that Google does. However, in early 2013, Mayer launched an employee initiative that generated lots of discussionpositive and negative. She decided that as of mid-2013, Yahoo! employees who worked remotely had to come back to the office. The memo from the vice president of people and development (code for head of Human Resources) clarified that the new initiative was a response to productivity issues that often arise when employees work from home. With a new boss and a renewed commitment to making Yahoo! a strong company in a challenging industry, employees were expected to be physically present in the workplace, hopefully leading to developing a strong common bond and greater productivity. The announcement affected not only those who worked from home full timemainly customer service reps but also those employees who had arranged to work from home one or two days a week. Yahoo! isn't the only company asking remote workers to return. Bank of America, which had a popular remote work program, decided late in 2012 that employees in certain roles had to come back to the office. And Best Buy Co. recently cut its longtime telecommuting program. Before Mayer became CEO at Yahoo!, it's a wonder anything ever got done. What she found wasn't even remotely like the way employees functioned at Google. At Yahoo!, few people were physically at work in the office cubicles throughout the building. Few cars or bikes or other vehicles could be found in the facility's parking lots. Even more disturbing, some of the employees who were physically present did as little work as needed and then took off early. She also discovered that other employees who worked from home did little but collect a paycheck or maybe worked on a sideline business they had started. Even at the office, one former manager described morale as low as it could be because employees thought the company was failing that they were on a sinking ship. These were some of the reasons that Mayer abolished Yahoo!'s work-from-home policy. If Yahoo! was to again become the nimble company it had once been, a new culture of innovation, communication, and collaboration was needed. And that meant employees had to be at workphysically at work, together. Restoring Yahoo!'s "cool" factorfrom its products to its deteriorating morale and culture would be difficult if the organization's people weren't there. That's why Mayer's decision created such an uproar. Yahoo!'s only official statement on the new policy said, "This isn't a broad industry view on working from home. This is about what is right for Yahoo!, right now" (Yahoo! Press Release, February 26, 2013). Where work is done most efficiently and effectivelyoffice, home, combinationis an important workplace issue. The three main managerial concerns are productivity, innovation, and collaboration. Do flexible arrangements lead to greater productivity or inhibit innovation and collaboration? Another concern is that employees, especially younger ones, expect to be able to work remotely. Yes, the trend has been toward greater workplace flexibility, but does that flexibility lead to a bloated, lazy, and unproductive remote workforce? These are the challenges of designing organizational structures.

Similarly in today's climate business around the globe are facing similar challenges. The pandemic has already had a profound effect on the way people behave and how businesses operate. But as governments lift restrictions, many organizations are considering how to open their offices safely. Early in June, Apple CEO Tim Cook sent out a company-wide memo telling staff they would be required back in the office by early September. Workers would be expected to be present for three days a week, with two days of remote work. Some Apple employees weren't happy - and pushed back with their own letter. Addressed to upper management, their message expressed frustration about the new policy, saying that it had led some employees to quit. Apple's prepandemic policies discouraged remote work, but post-Covid-19, employees are challenging what they called "a disconnect between how the executive team thinks about remote/location-flexible work and the lived experiences of many of Apple's employees". Apple staffers aren't the only ones contesting plans to return to the office. Workers at Washingtonian magazine, a USbased publication, walked off the job when their chief executive Cathy Merrill wrote an op-ed that appeared to threaten employees' job security if they refused to return to the office five days a week. Other employers still appear to be talking tough, however; last week, Morgan Stanley CEO James Gorman said he'd be "very disappointed if people haven't found their way into the office" by early September. "Then we'll have a different kind of conversation." As employers start to unveil their post-pandemic visions for work, pushback movements from employees keen to retain their work-from-home privileges are in nascent stages. But localised protests may be indicative of more widespread resistance among workers to revert to pre-pandemic patterns. Employees may well feel they've proved they can be productive at home - and that the reasons companies say they want them back in-office don't stack up. Establishing future working patterns that appease all sides will be a complex process. "[Pushback is] more a wake-up call than a death sentence for employer relationships," says Merriman. "I'm not sure why the pandemic made [leaders] forget that you can't be a top-down, imposing leader when workers have options."

Question:

Is being able to work remotely important to you? Why or why not? How can companies find a middle ground in addressing this pressing issue?