Obvious

HP is cutting back on telecommuting for it's IT people. Bringing them together in the office. No doubt words were tossed around in the conference rooms about synergy so on.

MercuryNews.com | 06/03/2006 | HP cuts back on telecommuting

``It's usually cheaper to have people operating in their own space than in your own. There's obviously something not going right or not to their liking for them to want to regroup or to change,'' said Manny Avramidis, senior vice president for global human resources for the American Management Association.

Well gee, what could going on at HP to cause problems in the workforce? Things are all hunky dorey there, nu? Oh wait ..

The architect of the HP division's change, Randy Mott, is regarded by Wall Street as a mastermind of operational efficiency based on his days as chief information officer at Wal-Mart Stores and Dell.

"Mastermind of operational efficiency" is usually a great thing in the boardroom, less than great in the cube farms. />

Mott said by bringing IT employees together to work as teams in offices, the less-experienced employees who aren't performing well -- which there are ``a lot of'' -- can learn how to work more effectively.

In an office, ``you're able to put teams together that can learn very aggressively and rapidly from each other,'' he said.

So there ARE problems with retention in IT there. No surprise.