Struggling electronics retailer Best Buy, long known for a corporate culture that rewards employees for performance rather than office attendance, is following in Yahoo’s footsteps.

A week after Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer banned working from home, Best Buy announced that it is ending its flexible workplace policies and will require its 4,000 or so headquarters staff to work a traditional 40-hour week at the office.

Best Buy spokesman Jeff Shelman said the decision is “totally about making sure we do everything we can to reinvigorate the company for all our stakeholders.” 

The new policy applies to the electronics retailer’s headquarters in Richfield, Minn., and not to most of the company’s 160,000 employees – dubbed “blue shirt” sales associates -- who work in stores.

Shelman emphasized that the new policy doesn’t mean an end to all flexibility.

“If you have a sick kid or say, like today, there’s nine inches of snow on the ground, or you have to go to the dentist, you can have a conversation with your manager,” he said.

The move comes a week after Best Buy announced it would lay off 400 employees at its headquarters, which the company said would help save about $150 million. The electronics retailer also had some good news: On Friday, it posted promising fourth-quarter results, as revenue from U.S. stores open longer than 14 months rose 0.9 percent.

But the last year has been hard on Best Buy, during which it announced the closure of dozens of stores. In July, the company announced it would lose 2,400 jobs; a company statement this week said there would be more layoffs this year. CEO Hubert Joly took the helm in August after former CEO Brian Dunn abruptly resigned in April 2012.

Best Buy had long-touted its unorthodox workplace, which began in 2005 with a program called Results Only Work Environment, or ROWE. Employees were evaluated on performance alone and were not beholden to a schedule or to the office.   

Jody Thompson, a former Best Buy employee who implemented the program there, said that when she left the company in 2007, about 80 percent of the corporate office – between 2,500 and 3,000 employees – had been trained in ROWE. She said nearly all took advantage of the flexible schedule that came with a ROWE-focused work environment. Thompson left Best Buy to co-found Culture Rx with another Best Buy employee.

“It was going really well,” she said. “But over time, more and more happened in terms of new management coming in. There wasn’t the right thinking in place to continue to evolve, so they just decided go to back to 1952.”  

Best Buy’s CEO doesn’t blame ROWE for its woes, Shelman said.

“There is no cause and effect that the struggles we’ve had as a company is directly tied to the flexible work schedule,” he said. “It’s just that this time and place the decision has been made that we want as many people as possible physically in position.”

After an investor presentation in November, Joly told the Star Tribune that he wanted employees to feel “disposable as opposed to indispensable.”

Key Banc analyst Brad Thomas has watched Best Buy for 12 years and said he’s not surprised by the company’s decision, noting that the new management team comes from outside the company. “This kind of policy would be the type of thing they’re trying to change about the company from top to bottom,” he said.

But he said even the smartest management team may not be able to save Best Buy in the long run. The practice of “showrooming,” in which customers visit a Best Buy store to check out an item like a TV and then buy it online for less, has cut into the company’s sales.

Despite the announcements by Yahoo and Best Buy, working from home appears to be growing rather than shrinking. The U.S. Census Bureau reports that 13.4 million people worked from home at least part-time during a typical week in 2010. 

And research indicates that telecommuting doesn't hinder productivity. Washington State University psychology professor Tahira Probst said via email that research suggests that telecommuting also helps boss-worker relations.

"Telecommuting is associated with significantly higher levels of job satisfaction, lower turnover intentions, reduced role stress, and higher supervisor-ratings of job performance," Probst said.

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Yahoo's new CEO Marissa Mayer has taken a lot of heat for her ban on working from home. The lion's share of TODAY.com readers disagreed with her decision, too, but Kathie Lee thinks that much of the outcry has to to with the fact that Mayer is a woman. KLG said that radical decisions made by other executives haven't been met with as much resistance.

TODAY

"She's trying to get her ship in shape," said KLG, noting that the policy wouldn't be how she'd personally run things. She also pointed out that the value of the company's stock has increased since Mayer took over, and that it's important to give her credit as a leader.

Hoda said that employee happiness is important to consider, too, but that working from home is a potential sap on productivity. When she's home trying to work, Hoda admitted, "I watch soaps."

KLG agreed that it's better for some families to have the option to work from home, but that the job of a CEO is to think about the bottom line. "A lot of people work really hard… and I feel for everybody. But we live in a world where there's a system in place," she said.

"Let's talk about something trivial that doesn't matter," sighed Hoda, transitioning to a much more hard-hitting topic: Ben Affleck's newly shaved beard.

What do you think of the work-from-home debate? Vote here in our poll. 

Julieanne Smolinski is a TODAY contributor who is glad she never got into soaps.

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When Yahoo relayed to its employees on Friday that they could no longer work remotely, one of the reasons given was that “speed and quality are often sacrificed when we work from home.”

It may seem logical – the internal Yahoo memo leaked to The Wall Street Journal's AllThingsD.com said that some of the “best decisions and insights come from hallway and cafeteria discussions” – but workplace experts say that may not be true.

"Telecommuting is associated with significantly higher levels of job satisfaction, lower turnover intentions, reduced role stress, and higher supervisor-ratings of job performance," said Washington State University psychology professor Tahira Probst via email. 

Probst, who researches workplace issues, added that working from home doesn’t hurt worker-boss relations. “The data actually suggest telecommuting is associated with a more positive relationship with one’s supervisor.”

Telecommuting has been a growing trend over the past few years. The U.S. Census Bureau reports that 13.4 million people worked from home at least part-time during a typical week in 2010, and the number of telecommuters in computer, science and engineering fields increased by 69 percent between 2000 and 2010.  

The federal government has pushed for its employees to be ready to work remotely, should disaster strike. Last fall, thousands of workers were forced to work remotely after Superstorm Sandy knocked out power to much of lower Manhattan. 

Natural disaster aside, when it comes to day-to-day work, Mayer may not be alone in wanting her employees to put in more face time. Google Chief Financial Officer Patrick Pichette didn’t seem keen on telecommuters on a recent trip to Australia. When asked how many Google employees work remotely, Pichette replied, according to Sydney Morning Herald: “As few as possible.”

After the Yahoo memo about telecommuting was leaked Friday, critics were swift to call the move anti-woman and anti-family. But the Census reported that more men (51.3 percent) worked from home. Of telecommuters, 64.5 percent reported that they did not have children younger than 18 present in the home.

Carol Roth, a brand consultant for the virtual office space company Regus, argued that workplace flexibility allows employers to retain the best talent.  

“I was disappointed to hear about this mandate from Yahoo because they’re a tech company and it’s made us more flexible and allowed us to work from anywhere,” Roth said. “To say that the only way to be connected is if you’re side by side with somebody is completely backward and at odds with their own mission.” 

Susan Cain, author of "Quiet," a book about introverts in the workplace, said she thought Yahoo’s decision could hinder creativity.

“The kind of person who is in Silicon Valley is a person who is at the top of their game as an engineer and has a creative mind,” Cain said. “Also it’s a type of person who wants to control their own destiny much more than working for a corporation. They want to dictate their own working terms. They tend to be pretty committed to what they’re doing.”

In an online (nonscientific) survey, NBCNews.com readers also questioned the policy.

My quality of work is much better by telecommuting than by actually working in the office. I'm an introvert and I get stressed out by being around people. When I'm at home working, I can get so much work done because I'm not distracted and stressed out by all those around me.

Wrote another: 

Some managers think that the only way work gets done is to perform bed checks to make sure everyone is at their desk at a certain time and think work only occurs when they are breathing down their necks. Other bad managers can't express what they want done unless they are waving their arms in front of the worker and pointing vaguely at what they want done.

But I've also seen workers that can't hold their attention to the screen when they could be puttering in the garden or in the garage.

Others were more sympathetic.

An employer has a right to ask people to actually COME to work, I think. On the other hand, EVERY employer, even if they don't allow daily telecommuting, should be increasing their family-friendly policies to allow for plentiful personal/sick/vacation time and some flexibility with scheduling when needed. The whole country could benefit from that!

Probst said Yahoo’s decision could result in more stress, more work-family conflict and “greater intentions to quit working for Yahoo.”

“I don’t think that is what Yahoo is hoping for as a result of their decision,” she said, “but it may be what they see.”

"The baby's been easy!" Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer told an invite-only crowd at a Fortune "Most Powerful Women" event on Tuesday evening in Palo Alto, Calif.

"The baby's been way easier than everyone made it out to be. I think I've been really lucky that way but I had a very easy, healthy pregnancy. He's been easy. So those have been the two really terrific surprises: the kid has been easier and the job has been fun!" Mayer said, referring to her son, Macallister. The crowd chuckled along with her.

It turns out the former Google executive, known for her planning skills and extensive use of spreadsheets to make major life decisions (and determine the perfect cupcake recipe), can still be surprised when it comes to both motherhood and corporate leadership.

"I think that there's two surprising things," Mayer told the audience, comprised mostly of women, "I knew that the job would be hard and I knew that the baby would be fun. And the thing that surprised me, and really puzzlingly so, is that the job is really fun! Yahoo is a really fun place to work." 

In a television exclusive, TODAY aired excerpts of the interview this morning, which may be her last public interview for some time.

The 37-year old, Mayer, who became Yahoo's CEO while 6-months pregnant and gave birth shortly thereafter, returned to work after a two-week maternity leave, sparking debate about whether she could both lead the embattled internet giant and be a good mother.

More broadly, her story has kindled a national conversation about whether women can truly "have it all" in terms of work-life balance. As a female CEO in the male-dominated tech world, and pregnant at that, some have pointed to her ascent as evidence of "The Fall of Men."

"What's the most important thing that you do, to get it all done?" Mayer was asked onstage at the FORTUNE event.

"You have to ruthlessly prioritize," replied Mayer. Doing interviews haven't been high on the priority list lately. 

"And that's one of the reasons I haven't been talking and I will go back to not talking after tonight." said Mayer.

So far investors agree with how Mayer prioritizes her time. Yahoo's stock is up 18 percent since she took over.

A native of Wisconsin, Mayer cited legendary Green Bay Packers coach Vince Lombardi as an inspiration.

"And you know Vince Lombardi says, in my life there are three things: God, family and the Green Bay Packers, in that order. For me, it's God, family, and Yahoo, in that order."

In a few hours Mayer will join a group of CEOs meeting with President Barack Obama to discuss their priorities for the so-called "fiscal cliff" of tax hikes and spending cuts set to take place Jan. 1, unless Congress acts.