Yahoo work-at-home edict squanders benefits

Marissa Mayer’s decision to order Yahoo! Inc. staff to work in the company’s offices runs counter to new research published by the National Bureau of Economic Research.

About a month after the biggest U.S. Web portal told employees to end workfrom-home arrangements, a working paper released March 11 by the NBER concludes there are benefits for companies that allow staff to telecommute.

While about 10 percent of U.S. employees are allowed to work without leaving their front door, economists includ- ing Stanford University’s Nicholas Bloom said in their study that there are concerns the practice leads to “shirking from home.”

They studied CTrip.com International Ltd. (CTRP), a 16,000- employee Chinese travel agency listed on the Nasdaq Composite Index (CCMP), which sought volunteers and then assigned some to work at home for nine months.

The results showed home-working led to a 13 percent increase in performance, mainly reflecting reductions in sick days and breaks. The rest was attributed to making more calls per minute thanks in part to the quieter working environment.

Home workers also reported they were more satisfied with their employment, leading fewer to quit. Still, their improved performance didn’t lead to more promotions.

The company reacted by allowing the whole firm to choose whether to work from home, and the performance gains almost doubled. The economists acknowledged call-center work is particularly suitable for telecommuting and the activity of such workers can be more easily monitored.

Although the study didn’t mention Yahoo or Chief Executive Officer Mayer, the Sunnyvale, California-based company is at the heart of the debate over flexible working arrangements after Jacqueline Reses, the executive vice president of peo- ple and development, last month told employees to make their way to offices, starting in June. Being side-by-side fosters collaboration and improves work “speed and quality,” she wrote in a memo.

“The practice of working from home is worth further exploration,” said the report’s writers. “After all, much of the research for this paper and its writing were done by the authors working from home.”

A study based on companies listed in France’s CAC 40 Index (CAC) found those with women in a third of managerial positions have enjoyed significantly better stock performance than the other companies over the last six years.

The Femina Index, created by professor Michel Ferray at Geneva University’s Skema Business School, shows the ten companies where women made up a third of management lost an average 5.28 percent between 2007 and 2012. The French benchmark stock index fell 34.7 percent over the same timeframe.

The companies which included a higher proportion of women in management included BNP Paribas SA, Danone SA and L’Oreal SA. Federal Reserve policy makers have a bigger effect on financial markets when they speak as a group rather than individually. The release of statements and minutes by the policy-setting Federal Open Market Committee each had roughly four times the average effect of speeches, said Macroeconomic Advisers LLC in a March 8 report. FOMC statements had the largest impact, moving the 10-year note yield by an average of 3.5 basis points last year. The minutes of meetings and Chairman Ben S. Bernanke’s press briefings moved the yield by about 3 basis points on average.

“The substantial impact of the minutes and press briefings may reflect that these proved to be excellent guides to the evolving Committee consensus in 2012, often providing the first signals of an emerging consensus,” authors Laurence H. Meyer and Antulio N. Bomfim said.