According to The San Jose Mercury News, Hewlett-Packard, the Silicon Valley company known for pioneering flexible work arrangements four decades ago, is canceling telecommuting for a key division of the company. [via News.com]

While other companies nationwide are pushing more employees to work from home to cut office costs, HP believes bringing its information-technology employees together in the office will make them swifter and smarter.

The decision shocked HP employees and surprised human resource management experts, who believe telecommuting is still a growing trend.

… According to HP division’s change, Randy Mott, “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.