JimllFIxIT

Interesting elsewhere: Yahoo!, WFH and the flexible working debate

When Yahoo! issued a memo a week ago to call time on home working, they could hardly have imagined how much debate this would provoke.

When we reported the story on Monday, many of you were quick to comment with your thoughts on why Yahoo made this decision, and what it means for other organisations, and for the future of the digital workplace.

Within days, the story was picked up by mainstream news outlets, who questioned the logic of the decision for a high-tech business like Yahoo!

Other business leaders quickly waded into the debate, most notably Richard Branson, who wrote a passionate blog post arguing employers should give people the freedom of where to work.

Yahoo!’s move also prompted several stories on how to make a success of home working, including this one in the Guardian. Our favourite, however, was this tongue-in-cheek version from the Daily Mash. More useful advice can be found in Martin White’s excellent research paper on managing virtual teams.

Other things which caught our collective eye this week:

And what made us laugh this week?  An early contender for Tumblr of the Year is Jim’ll Paint It. A man (Jim) with an eye for detail and far too much time on his hands, takes commissions for bizarre original artworks, which he creates using Microsoft Paint.

Examples include: “Dear Jim, please paint me a Tyrannosaurus Rex playing Connect 4 with Heston Blumenthal on a lake of fire whilst a Care Bear watches them lustfully” and “Please paint me Jimi Hendrix explaining to an owl on his shoulder what a stick of chalk is, near a forest”.

We approve.