Marissa Mayer imposed Yahoo! ban on working from home after spying on employee log-ins

Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer reportedly made the decision to ban telecommuting at the company after checking up on how many times remote workers were logging into the company’s network and discovering it wasn’t enough.

A recently released documentary shows Marissa Mayer criticizing feminism and explaining her own approach to women’s equality. Makers is a PBS/AOL documentary about the “women who make America”.

In the film Marissa Mayer says: “I don’t think that I would consider myself a feminist. I think that, I certainly believe in equal rights. I believe that women are just as capable, if not more so, in a lot of different dimensions.

“But I don’t, I think, have sort of the militant drive and sort of the chip on the shoulder that sometimes comes with that. And I think it’s too bad, but I do think feminism has become, in many ways, a more negative word.

“There are amazing opportunities all over the world for women, and I think that there’s more good that comes out of positive energy around that than negative energy.”

As Business Insider points out, women still earn less than men at every level of education, and women hold just 17% of senior management roles in the U.S.

It has also been revealed that Marissa Mayer banned working from home as she believed employees had being taking advantage of the benefit.

In a business meeting last week Marissa Mayer noted that workers had not been logging on enough, as reported by AllThingsD.

Marissa Mayer, who places huge emphasis on the analysis of metrics and data, had studied the records of Yahoo’s Virtual Private Network (or VPN) which remote workers use and found employees hadn’t been using it as frequently as expected.

This reportedly made up her mind on the telecommuting ban.

Marissa Mayer imposed Yahoo ban on working from home after spying on employee log-ins

Last week Michael Bloomberg weighed in on the debate over working from home, as the opinionated mayor came out in support of Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer.

The billionaire businessman-turned-politician said that Marissa Mayer’s decision to ban telecommuting at her company was a smart one even though she came under a firestorm following the revelation that the new mom had a nursery built for her new son just prior to announcing the rule.

“I’ve always said, telecommuting is one of the dumber ideas I’ve ever heard,” Michael Bloomberg said during a radio interview on Friday.

“Yes, there are some things you can do at home. But having a chat line is not the same thing as standing at the water cooler. And standing at the water cooler is where you get a lot of ideas and information and it’s a euphemism for a lot of interpersonal dialogue,” Michael Bloomberg said according to NBC.

Marissa Mayer’s decision sparked an outcry from working mothers and other companies in Silicon Valley who blasted the hypocrisy of her banning the action but allowing herself an in-office space for her child.

Another big-name opponent was Virgin CEO Richard Branson who called the ban on working from home a “perplexing” decision.

“This seems a backwards step in an age when remote working is easier and more effective than ever,” he wrote in a post on his blog.

“If you provide the right technology to keep in touch, maintain regular communication and get the right balance between remote and office working, people will be motivated to work responsibly, quickly and with high quality.

“Working life isn’t 9-5 any more. The world is connected. Companies that do not embrace this are missing a trick.”

The Yahoo decision will only impact a small percentage of the company’s workforce, primarily customer service representatives or staffers who work in cities where Yahoo does not have an office.

But the internal announcement on Friday has ruffled feathers as many employees say the flexible work arrangement is a key part of their job and will have a significant impact on their personal lives.

Though Yahoo will not publicly comment on the internal matter, employees disclosed the new HR policy to AllThingsD co-executive editor Kara Swisher.

The move is described as harsh since it requires employees to “either comply without exception or presumably quit”.

“Many such staffers who wrote me today are angry, because they felt they were initially hired with the assumption that they could work more flexibly. Not so, as it turns out,” Kara Swisher wrote in a blog posting about the change expected to impact several hundred workers.

Yahoo! headquarters is located in Sunnyvale, California, near San Jose. The public corporation employs 11,500 people in more than 20 countries across the globe.

Marissa Mayer, a 37-year-old Silicon Valley whiz kid who was previously a big deal at Google before switching to the competition, was appointed the head of Yahoo in July 2012.

She instituted free lunches at the company headquarters and started giving out smartphones to employees.

“I want Yahoo to be the absolute best place to work, to have a fantastic culture. We’re working really hard right now to remind people about all the opportunities that are there,” Marissa Mayer said shortly after she was hired at a Fortune magazine event in November.

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