Bangalore: Yahoo CEO, Marissa Mayer’s decision to scrap work from home policy has drawn severe criticism from techies and diversity experts, reports TOI.

Yahoo explains that face-to-face interactions among employees foster a more collaborative culture, but experts in India say the lack of flexibility would create problems especially for women, who have got responsibility of both home and office.  

Ravi Raman, diversity consultant at IT industry body Nasscom, said, "Flexibility is a gender neutral issue when it comes to work. Stealing that will adversely impact India's leadership pipeline. More importantly, women will be the immediate casualty of a rigid work environment. The number of women in lead positions is already so few."

Saundarya Rajesh, founder of Avtar Career Creators, said: "Flexibility is oxygen for career women."

Introduced in 2004, Working from home has picked up momentum since 2008. IBM began this trend in India some ten years ago. According to some estimates, about 5 out of 100 tech professionals work from home in India. "The number of people who work from home has been growing steadily in the last five years among MNCs and domestic companies. But the working-from-home population is a floating population and it's tough to put a number; the ratio varies every day," said Bangalore-based people expert Geetha Kannan.

The employees of IBM, Accenture and TCS said that these companies too restricted work-from-home arrangements recently.

Also Read: 11 Most Desirable Tech Bachelors and 10 Celebrities Who Extremely Hate Internet