Flexible work: there are trends that cannot be reversed
IBM, once a pioneer of flexible working practices, recently announced it was obliging employees with these types of agreements to return to the office. The move, similar to Melissa Mayer’s at Yahoo! following a memo in February 2013 that some critics described as belonging to another age, comes after twenty consecutive quarters of downward income and losses, similar to what happened at Yahoo! after Marissa Mayer took over. The idea was to bring the workforce together to bolster a culture that seemed to have been lost and that were part of the new CEO’s plan to save the company, and that signally failed. Trying to strengthen your company culture by forcing your workers to do things they don’t’ want to do or consider a backward step back does not seem like a good basis for the future.
There are two main problems with changing the terms of your employees’ contract when things go badly: the first is talent flight, valuable workers who considered the freedom to work from home an important part of the terms of their contract, and who will now simply work somewhere else. The second problem is that such measures blame the workforce in part for the company’s losses, which may well not be the case.
IBM’s decision is a big mistake, and anybody who sees it as a tendency or as the solution to problems related to flexible work, is also…
