Work-from-Home policy inhibits innovation

The example of CEO Yahoo, Marissa Mayer (see an earlier link HERE) is an important one that you want to remember, her having breached the glass ceiling at all fronts: she's a woman, young, beautiful, married, a mother and pregnant when she was chosen to be CEO! (CEOs usually man, older; if woman, then not much in the looks department, may even look like a man! if female, they also tend to be unmarried with no children, hence no distraction from family commitment. And pregnancy is often considered 'career suicide' for women!) The only thing she's not is that she's not a black, a lesbian nor a handicapped!

In this article, note the arguments for working from home, and the main argument about how doing so inhibits innovation. Note also the dilemma for Singapore, as according to the Worker's Party recommendation, we should be tapping more on our residential labour and relying less on foreign talent. But this would require working from home as an option to entice women and the elderly into the workforce, esp in the climate of low fertility rate and ageing population. (women are more likely to give birth if they have the assurance that their jobs will not take time away from their children, elderly have mobility problems) Yet innovation is crucial to Singapore's survival, esp if it wants to move up the value chain into knowledge-based economy.

Sample Qn: Consider the view that most work these days could and should be done from home. (2010)


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