Best Buy Follows Yahoo in Banning Remote Work

bednarz writes "Is telecommuting the new scapegoat for poor performance? Best Buy, in the midst of a corporate restructuring, has canceled its flexible work program and expects corporate employees to put in traditional 40-hour work weeks at the retailer's headquarters (they used to be able to work whenever and wherever they wanted). The announcement comes on the heels of Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer's decision to end telecommuting, which ignited a firestorm of criticism. It also follows news of Best Buy's plans to lay off 400 corporate workers as part of a plan to cut $725 million in costs and restructure its business. This could signal the beginning of a trend, or be an indication that telecommuters need to actively justify their preference for working outside the office."

Comments

Terrible move by a dying entity

[ModernGeek]

This is a terrible move by a dying entity that is showing its irrelevance by going back further into the dark ages.

Re:Terrible move by a dying entity

[MrEricSir]

Are you referring to Best Buy or Yahoo?

Re:Terrible move by a dying entity

[Radres]

It's just a way to lay people off without having to pay severance.

Re:Terrible move by a dying entity

[afidel]

Yes

Re:Terrible move by a dying entity

[Radres]

There is no need for evidence, it's pretty obvious that if you tell your employees who live 1,000 miles away to either come into the office or quit, a good number of those will quit.

To the contrary, what is the evidence that remote employees perform worse than local? Why do we need more office space and people commuting generating pollution and congestion on our roads?

What industry do you work in and what occupation? I'm sure certain fields are more workable remote than others.

The problem with having it be a "justifiable accommodation for an especially good performer" is that everyone thinks that they are good performers and everyone will think they deserve it. It's either all or nothing.

Re:Terrible move by a dying entity

[RabidReindeer]

Agreed. Best Buy is circling the drain. I imagine the reason they are asking folks to come in to the corporate headquarters is because they have to see them in person to lay them off.

I thought the "in" thing these days was to lay people off by email or SMS. Right before Christmas.

Re:Terrible move by a dying entity

[ShanghaiBill]

Yes

Indeed. BestBuy has been closing stores and laying off. I have a Yahoo! account, and haven't noticed any improvement in years. I started using their email service in 1998. Three minutes later I realized that, although I could put mail in folders, there was no way to create sub-folders. So I could have a folder for "Friends", but I could not have a folder for "Friends/Joe" and "Friends/Betty". I didn't see how that could work for any serious email user, so I sent off an email, and received a response that said plenty of people had asked, and it was a "top priority". Today, fifteen years and fourteen thousand employees later, still no sub-folders. I am curious what any of these employees actually do.

 

Re:Terrible move by a dying entity

[LordLucless]

Nope - that's the point of the exercise. You're not fired - you're quitting.

Re:Terrible move by a dying entity

[jrumney]

Any management that tries these techniques needs to be fired by the shareholders immediately. The people who leave voluntarily when pushed by these types of harassment are always the most valuable ones, who funnily enough find it easy to get a job elsewhere. The ones you're left with are the ones who are pulling you down in the first place (along with the management team, who are obviously deficient if they think reducing headcount is all that matters in saving their ass).

Re:Terrible move by a dying entity

[Exitar]

The didn't implement subfolders because they were slacking at home!
But now that they will be forced to work at their HQ, no user will ever complain anymore!

Re:Terrible move by a dying entity

[Karl Cocknozzle]

Nope - that's the point of the exercise. You're not fired - you're quitting.

If this is truly what they're up to they'll be disappointed. A great many states unemployment laws explicitly take into account a fundamental change in the terms of a job as "involuntary termination." It is hard to imagine that a person being required to move thousands of miles as a condition of continued emplyment wouldn't be viewed as a "fundamental change of terms."

Since a lot of these people will likely be moms or people with family "situations" they're coping with lawsuits seem almost to be a given. They must really be short on cash if this is how they choose to conduct a layoff.

Re:Terrible move by a dying entity

[jrumney]

It used to work out well for me. My kids were in daycare, which ran from 8:30am (not a minute before), until 5pm (punctual pick up). So I delivered them in the morning, put in most of a day's work before picking them up in the afternoon, then put in some more time in the evening after they were in bed. Meanwhile my wife could work a regular office job where she was expected to be in the office 8:30pm - 5pm, with a 45 minute commute on top of that.

Re:Terrible move by a dying entity

[jrumney]

I don't know what labor laws you have in California or Minneapolis, but changes in the terms of your employment that require you to relocate are usually legally treated as a layoff if you chose not to take up the relocation.

Re:Terrible move by a dying entity

[Austerity Empowers]

Hush now, you're implying that employees aren't fungible. If they had some unique value they'd be rich, and/or a CEO of something. If your job is "HW Engineer, Senior" you're just a lazy old guy who blackmailed the right middle managers into keeping his job.

Re:Terrible move by a dying entity

[c0lo]

Any management that tries these techniques needs to be fired by the shareholders immediately. The people who leave voluntarily when pushed by these types of harassment are always the most valuable ones, who funnily enough find it easy to get a job elsewhere. The ones you're left with are the ones who are pulling you down in the first place (along with the management team, who are obviously deficient if they think reducing headcount is all that matters in saving their ass).

It bears a name: it's called Dead Sea effect.
After a while, you know for sure which employees you don't want to have: the ones that are still with you... So the best you can do: fire them and close the business.

Re:Terrible move by a dying entity

[girlintraining]

But now that they will be forced to work at their HQ, no user will ever complain anymore!

Yeah, the shock change in the corporate culture as thousands of telecommuters either relocate, lose their job, or suddenly start seeing people in real life that they'd largely only interacted with online will surely not have any significant impact on business process.

Reminds me of another company I worked at where an executive declared that 2/3rds of all IT must be outsourced, and then fled for "unspecified personal reasons" from their position nine months later. Meanwhile, the IT infrastructure fell down around everyone's heads, and the replacement workers, having been suddenly thrust into positions without any knowledge transfer or documentation by the previous crew, struggled to reinvent the wheel to disasterous effect.

Whenever you see an executive make a bold and unseasonable move in the company that promises to have far-reaching implications, and there isn't a clear and unambiguous reason for it beyond "I read it in a trade mag!" or "everyone else is doing it!" I have one word for you: Run. Run fast. Run very fast. Run like you're in Pompeii on volcano day, because baby, shit's about to get hot and explosive in short order and you don't wanna be one of the screaming villagers on fire n shit when it happens.

As a former Employee

[Anonymous Coward]

I can tell you Best Buy treats their employees like total crap. I did not work in a retail store, I worked in one of their service centers. Worst run company ever. They actually had a VP come down one week and tell us we needed to tape yellow lanes on the floor to tell people where to walk and then 3 weeks later another VP came down and made them change it to red tape, then 2 months later another VP came down and wanted all the lines moved because he didn't think it was clear which areas were for walking and which areas were work areas. Ridiculous.

Re:As a former Employee

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

If the peons are so smart, why didn't they have their parents pay them through business school, like I did?

It's laziness like that that keeps them from making something of themselves; but at least it justifies how much more money I make...

Real motive

[asmkm22]

has nothing to do with working from home. They need to get rid of a bunch of employees and this gives them a way of doing so without actually having a reason to fire them. They know a certain percentage won't be able to work locally, and will have to "voluntarily" quit.

Re:Real motive

[Whatsisname]

Best Buy is headquartered in Minnesota, an at-will employment state. They can eliminate anyone at any time for any reason, and don't need a bogus excuse to do so.

MBAs and Investment Bankers ruin companies.

[Anonymous Coward]

Look at the history of companies like DEC, Compaq, Dell, the list goes on an on.

They all did great until MBAs and Investment Bankers got control.

Then the value was squeezed out and the carcass disgarded.

Re:What firestorm

[MickyTheIdiot]

This while she was building a nursery in her office so she could spend time with her kid at work.

http://healthland.time.com/2013/02/28/how-yahoo-ceo-marissa-mayer-is-building-a-nursery-by-her-office-and-dissing-working-moms/

If that's not her giving her workforce the finger then I don't know what is.

Best salaried employee behavior

[bobstreo]

Work exactly 40 hours per week, and not at all from home.

Just Do Something (even if it's dumb) Management

[ebno-10db]

Person sits at desk from 9-6. Person taps keys. Appears to be breathing. It tells you nothing about whether they're doing their work, so if you can't tell by other means, you're an incompetent employer. And if you can tell by other means, then there's no problem with telecommuting.

OT: /. drives traffic to corporate sister site

[guanxi]

Should Slashdot include a disclaimer when linking to a corporate sister?

In case you don't know, Slashdot is owned by Dice Holdings (see the bottom left of the page you are reading), which also owns this link from the front page story:
http://news.dice.com/2013/03/05/yahoos-telecommuting-policy-could-find-fanboy-ceos/

Very misleading headlines

[Wister285]

Does anyone seem to realize that work from home is not being banned, but PERMANENTLY working from home? There is a huge difference. Casual work from home is much different than never seeing your coworkers. Is permanent working from home a scapegoat? Perhaps, but it's not unreasonable that troubled companies need all hands on deck while at their most vulnerable.

Re:What firestorm

[c]

If that's not her giving her workforce the finger then I don't know what is.

She was at Google for a long time. Probably has a heck of a lot of pent up Evil she needs to burn off...

This is worse than it sounds

[Saxophonist]

Best Buy headquarters is in one of the areas of the Twin Cities metro with the worst traffic congestion already, and it is not well-served by public transit. Public policy in Minnesota is starting to tend toward encouraging more remote work and/or flexibility because the cost of maintaining and upgrading roads and transit is becoming unaffordable. I don't know about other areas of employment, but competent programmers are not usually having trouble finding work in the Twin Cities metro. Granted, many of Best Buy's developers are contractors anyway.

This move is likely just to drive away people with other options, and with a company that's already a sinking ship, it's certainly going the wrong direction.