Well it’s Marissa Mayer’s second week of being the new CEO of Yahoo and it’s clear she’s missing her old home over at Google. How much is she missing her position at Google? Well she’s decided to make a ‘few’ changes to Yahoo’s workplace that reflect the culture she just left.
The first implementation of this is probably going to be one of the most forward as the company is going to have major changes moving forward. Yahoo has been struggling for years and major changes are needed to make its future a viable one. To keep everyone in line with a new outlook on the company the first change is a classic from her time at Google – a weekly Friday afternoon meeting with everyone working for the company.
While the entire future of Yahoo isn’t being laid out the first step is employee happiness. In a world where Yahoo has been crumbling for years the ability to retain current talent and, more important, find new talent there needs to be employee happiness. The start of this is (much like at Google) the food in Yahoo’s URL’s Cafe (in Silicon Valley) is now going to be free for employees. No employee will now have to worry about where there next meal is coming from – as long as they are busy at work. Previously the URLs Cafe offered free coffee for the employees though now food will also be covered by the company as well. It’s a small price to pay when it makes for happy and not-so-hungry employees.
What else in the meeting may have been inspired by a certain search engine that dominates the market?
To start with the offices themselves are going to have a very large makeover in the near future. Instead of a boring corporate layout they are going to setup major changes so that the layout of the work spaces are going to enable easier collaboration between employees.
How else are employees going to be made happy? New swag! What that will be though has not yet been announced. These kind of employee motivations in the Google culture though have often been cited as key sources to its success internally. Happy employees are productive employees that want to keep their ideas growing in the company and not at other companies.
Happy employees aren’t going to save a company that has been hit on all sides by a decline in users and ad revenues. Mayers has not been sitting idly by just hoping the better lives of employees will save the company. Her push? A better version of Yahoo. One might question which part of yahoo though apparently the game plan is all of it. Every product of Yahoo is being put under scrutiny on how to make it better. Her focus on Google was products and making them better both as stand alone products as well as interacting with one another. Mayers’ goal will be to make this happen again.
Yahoo’s future is still unstable but with an influx of new talent, a new initiative, and a unified vision that has already worked successfully for one company – Yahoo’s future may just be a bright one after all.
Related Links: All Things D.
