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!

• Guardian: Yahoo chief bans working from home
• BBC: Teleworking – the myth of working from home
• Wall Street Journal: Yahoo ban on working from home is misguided
• Fox News Business: Mayer Mistake? Is Yahoo work-from-home ban a morale killer?
• ZDNet: Why Yahoo’s ‘no home working’ rule will lead us back into the office

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.

Beleaguered internet firm Yahoo! surprised many on Friday when it announced an end to working from home in the company.

In a memo widely leaked by disgruntled employees, Yahoo!’s Head of HR Jackie Reses explained:

To become the absolute best place to work, communication and collaboration will be important, so we need to be working side-by-side. That is why it is critical that we are all present in our offices. Some of the best decisions and insights come from hallway and cafeteria discussions, meeting new people, and impromptu team meetings. Speed and quality are often sacrificed when we work from home. We need to be one Yahoo!, and that starts with physically being together.

The Intranetizen team are often asked advice about intranet vendors that supply software and hardware solutions to run your intranet. Whilst we have 35 years of blue-chip intranet experience between us, in common with many intranet practitioners, we have relatively limited experience of the 200+ software systems that companies use.

To help you, to help us and to help the vendors themselves, we’re running a series of posts over this week showcasing five intranet companies. We’ve supplied them with the same standard set of questions and will publish their answers in their own words to ensure equity! All the images have been supplied by the company themselves and are reproduced with permission.

Today, we showcase Igloo.

It’s been a busy week for the four Intranetizens – publishing a whopping three posts – but that’s not stopped us from keeping up to speed on the latest news in the world of intranets, web design and the digital workplace.

With intranet pros returning to work after the Christmas break, there’s been a raft of comment and predictions for the year ahead, as well as round ups of 2012 reading.

Last week Nielsen Norman Group published the 2013 edition of their design annual, widely regarded as the most comprehensive guide to trends in intranet design. Since 2001, usability guru Jakob Neilsen and his team have tracked changes in design and functionality for intranets and made recommendations for the year ahead.