In February 2013, just 7 months into her tenure in the Yahoo top seat and following the introduction of a series of radical measures to turn her company around, then-CEO Marissa Mayer announced her boldest initiative: a ban on telecommuting. Or, in simpler terms, the tech titan’s employees were no longer permitted to work remotely.
Justifications for Mayer’s policy adjustment ranged from ‘speed and quality’ being sacrificed when work was conducted at home, to the rarity of impromptu in-person meetings which, it was suggested, produced the most innovative and insightful ideas. ‘Yahoos’ (as employees are described by their company) were suitably unimpressed with Mayer’s edict and internal ill-will undoubtedly contributed to the external media furore which ensued. Maureen Dowd of the New York Times wryly asserted that ‘the dictatorial decree’ to work ‘side by side’ had prompted some to dub Mayer ‘the Stalin of Silicon Valley’ rather than the flattering ‘Steinem of Silicon Valley’ epithet which had hitherto been applied.
What a difference a decade makes. At the time of Mayer’s dramatic pronouncement, just 2.5% of American and 13% of UK employees worked from home. Now, with upwards of 50% of Americans and 44% of Brits working at least partially remotely, calls for restrictions on telecommuting hark to a bygone age. To paraphrase and mangle L.P. Hartley’s famous quote, 2013 is a foreign country, and they really did do things differently there. Barack Obama was sworn into his second term as President, Mandela passed, the iPhone 5 was launched, Amazon blew people’s minds by proposing drone deliveries, and Corona meant only a brand of beer.
Yet such historical milestones are, at best, half-remembered memories for the many who populate today’s workforce. Some 2013 ideas, unpopular then, certainly won’t fly now with the Gen Z and millennial demographic cohorts, which constitute 27% of today’s full-time labour pool. For this new generation, working from home is the operational standard: a logical continuation of the digital transformation in their academic and personal lives necessitated by the pandemic. Any executives railing against the inevitable will alienate potential employees.
The fact that between 33-42% of UK employees expressed that they would probably leave their current role if mandated to return to the office five days a week, should come as little surprise. Indeed, it is symptomatic of a broader shift in Gen Z expectations on the relationship between employee and workplace: a renewed emphasis on work-life balance, control over workloads and an accentuated concern for job fulfilment. At the forefront of such trends is working-from-home/hybrid working, the elevated importance of which Stanford Professor Nicholas A. Bloom has highlighted is as valued by workers as an 8% salary increase. The significance of the work-from-home model is not solely viewed through monetary comparability though, with Gen Z employees frequently viewing it as a more equalising means to gain greater responsibility: Professor Bobby Duffy of King’s College London, found that 40% of 16-24 years olds found it easier to put themselves forward for important tasks when working remotely, stating that ‘there is something democratising about a Zoom call…the hierarchy is a lot less clear.’
The manifold mental and physical health benefits of WFH have equally played a role in increased retention at firms that have endorsed full or hybrid telecommuting. A review – funded by National Institute for Health and Care Research Health Protection Research Unit in Emergency Preparedness and Response – that considered 1,930 academic papers on home and teleworking found that WFH allows employees to eat more healthily and induced a reduction in stress levels and blood pressure. Psychological evaluations have also been conducted, with a six-month investigation of hybrid working implementation at tech-firm Trip.com (~1,600 employees) concluding that job satisfaction increased and resignation rates were reduced by one-third: anonymously conducted surveys at the company at the end of the experiment found that employees showed significantly higher scores on a scale from 0 to 10 in ‘work–life balance’, ‘work satisfaction’, ‘life satisfaction’ and ‘recommendation to friends’, and significantly lower scores in ‘intention to quit’.
Ed Zitron, CEO of EZPR, a public-relations company, recently penned a Business Insider article rebuking claims by executives of inefficiency due to WFH lifestyles: ‘the RTO push is eyewash for investors to prove that drops in revenue and profitability aren’t a result of poor managerial decisions but the result of lazy workers sitting at home in their pyjamas.’ This example of poor performance scapegoating has grown increasingly popular within financial C-suites, with the probability of RTO mandates higher for firms with poor prior stock market performance. It too asks for a certain level of naivety, imploring stakeholders to disregard the younger generation of employees’ technological proficiency and adeptness. However, what cannot be ignored is that, since the dawn of WFH, plummeting employee engagement has continued to plague economic productivity, particularly in the UK where it has (as of 2023) sunk to 10%, the fifth lowest in Europe. According to Gallup, the impact of low engagement is estimated to cost the global GDP US$8.9 trillion annually, yet still businesses fail to adapt their way of work in spite of the multitude of platforms and technologies that enable comprehensive work accountability and engagement. This is particularly astonishing given that almost one-third of workforces in OECD countries will be made up of Gen Z by 2025.
As such, an embrace of technological tools is therefore requisite in order to both acknowledge the demographically-evolving workplace as well as adapt to the new WFH status quo. Traditional methods for conducting workplace training, presentations, and meetings are simply not fit for purpose; and since the context in which they are now experienced has completely changed, it is imperative that organisations use communication and project management technologies to make them more impactful and inclusive in a WFH world. To fail to do so is to risk disaffecting a core and captive employee base. It is also integral that the normalisation of telecommuting should not be deemed an alarming symptom of youth idleness, but instead an effective means of employee re-engagement. Amrit Sandhar, CEO of &Evolve, an employee engagement consultancy, succinctly expresses the most appropriate attitude to adopt: ‘we are at the threshold of a new dawn and trying to hold on to past mindsets will have a direct impact on the caliber of people you attract going forward.’
James Micklethwait
James leads the growth of the Kahoot! at work business area. In his position, he oversees revenue, usage and strategy for building out new use cases. He joined Kahoot! in 2017 as VP of Products and has led Kahoot! at work since its inception. Previously, he held leadership roles in product development and strategy in the UK for the BBC, ITV and Rightmove.
