3. What role should HR play in helping a company’s leaders decide if a work-at-home policy is appropriate?

What kind of information should HR provide to help in the decision making?

Yahoo’s CEO Marissa Mayer decided as one part of her plan to revitalize the company that she wanted to end the company’s work-from-home policy. In an internal memo from Jackie Reses, Yahoo’s executive vice president of people and development, working at the office rather than at home was necessary because of the need for employees to communicate and collaborate and to reduce the chance that speed and quality would be diminished. Yahoo received much negative press from the decision to no longer allow employees to work at home including comments from Richard Branson, head of Virgin Group and Working Mother magazine. Some of the criticism focused on the message that not allowing home work sent to employees:
Managers can’t trust you to get the work done.
The reality is that working at home is becoming more prevalent in the U.S. workplace. More employees are working from home at least one day each week. One estimate is that 20 to 30 million Americans work from home at least one day each week. Homebased workers are more likely to be employed in private companies than in public sector jobs. Employees in management, business and finance, service, and sales occupations are most able to work from home.
Employees in health care and installation, maintenance, and repair occupations are the least likely to work from home.