Yahoo—that has struggled to come up with new ideas—is making a smart call.
Most studies of telecommuting focus on how working from home affects employees. Less often discussed is how telecommuting affects employers. And the research on this suggests that for Yahoo the costs of telecommuting dwarf its benefits.
On the simplest level, telecommuting makes it harder for people to have the kinds of informal interaction that are crucial to the way knowledge moves through an organization. The role that hallway chat plays in driving new ideas has become a cliché of business writing, but that doesn’t make it less true.
When employees just hang out in the coffee room (or meet when leaving the rest room) they aren’t wasting time; rather, they are having highly productive conversations about problems encountered on the job.
To illustrate the importance of knowledge to a company, think back in time to remember the disruption that occurred when a key person left the company without sharing his understanding of how to get things done. Effective corporate leaders know that unshared knowledge loses value. Yet, how knowledge is shared is crucial in determining whether it serves to enhance the reputation of the person sharing it or not.
Success is not an individual matter--it depends upon our relationships with others. Connection and coordination with others matter. The manner in which the professional connects with others matters. Increasing one's social capital is all knowing how to share knowledge so it not only adds value to the organization but also to your recognized worth within it.
Effective corporate leaders know that unshared knowledge loses value. Yet, how knowledge is shared is crucial in determining whether it serves to enhance the reputation of the person sharing it or not. The formula for both personal and corporate success is:
Success = Human Capital (what you know and can do) X Social Capital (who you know and who knows you) X Reputation (who trusts you).
While all industries are knowledge-based today, personal knowledge and social capital capabilities are critical to professional service firms (such as consulting, investment banking and law) and research-driven firms that depend upon the capabilities of knowledge workers, both individually and working together.
The professional knowledge worker needs to look at him or herself as the hub of his personal and business networks. How he or she connects to a community of networks will determine if s/he obtains the resources when s/he needs them.
By making the 'invisible structure' of personal and business relationships visible, s/he will work more effectively through increasing one's personal bandwidth.
Since personal development leads business development, understanding and practicing social capital building methods should be an important element in a company's business development strategy. Professionals need to make skills of influence and collaboration part of their everyday tool kit.
The fundamental point is that much of the value that gets created in a company comes from the ways in which workers teach and learn from each other. If telecommuters do less of that, the organization will be weaker. On top of this, there’s evidence that telecommuting can make it hard to foster trust and solidarity—an issue that matters a lot to Yahoo right now. Face time is still the easiest way to build connections.
Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/talk/financial/2013/03/18/130318ta_talk_surowiecki#ixzz2NEJvinNA