why are companies trying so hard to have employees back in the office?

I am surprised they don't just cut costs by not having a physical location then? Or is this just while waiting out lease agreements.

I’ve never understood the empty buildings argument. Wouldn’t the company be “wasting” just as much money if the building was empty or full? Might even cost more to have it occupied since then you need hvac.

Not just rent, they own those big buildings. They're assets, and what happens when everyone realizes they don't need those buildings at the same time? Corporate real estate crashes and those assets are worthless. Nobody wants a huge asset dropping off their balance sheet because they let their employees wfh before they could offload their offices.

The shitty middle management who think like your second point are convenient, but I don't think they're the ones making the decision to call employees back in a lot of cases.

That does not make sense at all if you consider the number one priority of any company: money. If they make just as much or even more when people work more efficiently they would not care.

I just wanted to say that this is pretty much the most well thought out answer on WFH I've seen. It's nuanced and balanced.

Thank you.

To speak to your points, I started with about 1 year ago in a new career in IT. We initially were coming in one day a week and this has moved to two days.

First, when we moved to two days, I have it about 6 weeks, then started crunching numbers. By the sole metric of closing tickets... My team as a whole is more productive in the office. I didn't break down exactly who was more of less productive, but I have my ideas. I'm willing to bet that I work better at home, but it's a moot point as the team is better on site.

As far as learning new skills, even at one day a week, I've caught up to the rest of my team and have surpassed them technically. Again, it's IT and I've always had a strong interest, whereas I see some of the team probably view it as "just work" I'm actually enjoying the work. Again, it's a second career so maybe maturity is in play here too, but even the younger guys who were hired after me are growing very quickly.

You're absolutely right about networking. I felt so isolated when I started. It wasn't until I learned a few people a few steps above where I was that I learned who is a good resource, and who I can trust. Once I got my head around that, I think people actually see the work in doing and redirect me for it. If I were 100% wfh I don't think I would be having as good a time.

Just my experience

Thanks for helping bring this perspective to light. Most threads on work from home go all in on productivity being higher, but don't take into account the longer term consequences of working from home on knowledge sharing, education, training, and team building. Even if productivity is higher now, that doesn't mean it will remain that way in the long run.

Great summary, I wish all the WFH fanatics would read and understand this. I really hate how in most online spaces they make it seem like 100% WFH is the answer for everything.

while generic work productivity is about the same level, teaching new skills isn't.

As someone who did his last year of college and first two years of career from home this is spot on. My senior simply refused to teach me anything, or even answering my chats and my manager didn't care. I had to learn doing inverse engineering on the excel files because I cannot even sit at his side and saw him work ans learn. I changed companies a month ago to a full-time in office position and I'm learning more in this month that what I did on the past two years (its also helps that my new manager is also a college professor and have like 40 years of industry experience).

Your comment reflects what my own experience has been over the past few years.

They outsourced because they could pay their employees less.

Some companies attempted to pay workers who moved to areas with cheaper cost of living, but that failed. My guess is that full remote companies are going to shift wages so that they are closer to the national average than the region.

Ironically that probably ousts out their minimal value harder. Not a good look forcing your "underlings" if productivity was good prior, and subsequently falls flat.

Middle management has gotten absolutely out of control in America

Imo (and this is largely conjecture) it’s an end result of stagnant wages. It used to be that you might stay in the same position but get actual pay increases 50 years ago. Now you don’t get the pay increases really, maybe a 3% annual bump if you’re lucky. They need something to retain talent so a lot of places end up creating bullshit management positions out of thin air to retain staff that come with a slightly more modest pay bump.

So instead of the 3% bump you get a 5% bump and now you’re “director of clinical programming” or “associate manager of marketing and sales for eastern iowa division” and have 10 employees “report” to you but in reality you’re neutered and have no actual power to do anything to them but tattle to the actual boss. But then the company doesn’t have to give you a 7-10% bump that outpaces inflation and feels like an actual raise. They save the real promotions for nepotism.

But this happens constantly and now industries are jam packed with employees that just bother other employees all day and/or create systems that slow down employees en masse to “increase accountability” that are constantly updated and replaced without removing old ones.

Whenever someone goes on about fixing healthcare this comes to mind. I’ve worked in healthcare for years and it is absolutely full of this. Pharma, insurance, hospital admin, all of them are loaded up with tons of these kinds of staff. I can’t tell you how many useless staff I’ve seen get promoted to positions that were literally created for them to supervise a handful of people. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had to fill out 7 sets of paperwork that takes 2 hours and is all redundant copies of each other because 9 middle managers from the hospital, insurance, and state administration are all constantly convinced I’m a fraudulent liar despite being a licensed professional with a decade and a half of clinical experience and absolutely no investigations or citations on my record whatsoever.

Single payer healthcare is definitely a great idea that should be pursued but this is a huge problem that also needs to be addressed regardless of who’s paying the bill if you want to see changes with actual costs, wait times, clinician burn out, etc.

I’d imagine it’s similar for other industries too. How much wasted resources are in middle management at tech companies, at food production, at basically anything? How much of rising costs are basically going to pay the glut of middle managers that being nothing to the table but resource drain? Who do nothing in terms of bringing in money, who do nothing in terms of providing value? How much cheaper could my cellphone, bread, wood, etc be without these parasites sucking up resources

But then the societal impact comes up. If you addressed this problem tonight that would mean millions of people go from comfortably middle class to jobless overnight. America isn’t known for great social supports as is, what happens when you throw a 7-8 figure number into the mix (with the reduced tax income from the loss of their job income).

Fwiw I genuinely think that point is a huge factor in why our government resists proper single payer healthcare; a true program would displace millions of workers overnight as it would make companies like Aetna, Cigna, etc largely redundant and reliant on their much less lucrative life/home/auto/renters insurance divisions. They would slash workers left and right. If we ever get one it will be a two lane system where the private insurers stay alongside it as a “boutique” option for the rich to receive better service, guaranteed. Plus you know, those companies literally own politicians lol and that’s the other much larger problem

I think what they don't realize is that it's basically Pandora's box at this point, and what's been let out is a ticking time bomb. Unless something changes, remote work will always be on the cards now and will probably always be preferable.

Yup. A lot of companies benefiting off the inefficiency of commuting.

I really feel like this makes the most sense. It beats out all the other arguments.

Middle managers need more control? Big bosses never care that much about what middle managers say, why now? And across tons of companies? Seems silly. Middle managers are notoriously ineffective.

They want to retain control/keep you tired? Maybe, but it would take a large conspiracy coordinated between the execs, which seems like a stretch. There would need to be a massive Illuminati-esque organization like that Stonecutters episode from The Simpsons.

But as always, it comes back to "follow the money." The people making the decision will lose money somehow, so they are trying not to lose, or to minimize losses. All board of directors people have multiple investments and interests, so of course they are trying to make the best of their situation. They own part of the IT company renting the space, but also have investment in office retail space and some local businesses. If the office life drives an area to stay alive, its dying will shift the money away from all their investments. As usual, they are making those decisions without giving a shit about anything but money and their own interests.

This is definitely a good point, when everyone is wfh things like slack or (bleh) Teams has everything in it. I am an internet kid and used im to communicate with my friend base for a long time, it works for me and I can stay connected with people that way, it seems like some people aren't able to utilize that effectively.

I work for a large Corp that has offices in several location, prior to covid wfh, information was often silo'd just to certain locations and there were people on teams I didn't know because they never post in slack/teams and instead just do everything in person. All of a sudden I'm seeing them post and ask questions/comment when they rarely/never had before.

The company is now instituting RTO and claiming it's in the name of collaboration and culture, but if anything I think wfh helped a lot to make cross-site collaboration and culture more prevalent.

Thanks I agree. Pre COVID, my company closed some very small offices to only keep a few HQs and a handful of people were offered fully remote contracts. They were generally very unhappy, being basically cut off from training, career growth, most of the context around work discussions, company events...

WFH is great when working from home is the norm for everyone. The office ALSO works only when most colleagues are in the office (otherwise you just add commute time to the same zoom call you could have from home).

Yeah, our company had hybrid available to everyone, so going remote was simply increasing the hybrid days to 100%. Our productivity skyrocketed because instead of having to waste 5-10 minutes per hour walking across a stupidly huge campus, or battling people for meeting rooms, we could just meet in virtual rooms, and instantly "teleport" to the next one. We had no commute, people would meet early or late, or during lunch.

Nobody asked us to work more but we did because we COULD. We were already fully aligned on hitting our goals, and being in the office was an obstacle rather than an aid. We're increasing our in-office days over the overwhelmingly negative feedback (why even ask for input if you're just going to ignore it?). I'll just have to mentally pull back on available bandwidth for the time wasted on in-office days, reject more meetings, and extend deadlines accordingly. I'll need to free up all that extra time for the small talk and "networking" they want me to do instead of working.

Talking to people isn't really boosting my productivity. I need peace and time to think. The office is the last of all places where I can find that.

If you’re going in to talk to people it means you’re not working. Unless… the company pays you just to talk to people. 🤷‍♂️

Don’t forget all the people that hate their kids (and “family”) too. That was one of the biggest driving forces at the immediate end of the pandemic lockdowns. Then they changed course and said it was about productivity because hating your kids sounds bad.

I kind of agree that remote working every single day gets very socially deprived very quickly. Although the office isn’t a place for socialising, not having anyone to talk to day in day out at work drives me a bit mad.

But I also think 90% of the time, working from home is better. Maybe a hybrid model where you only go to the office once or maximum twice a week or something could work for most people. The introverts and the extroverts reaching a compromise.

This is the truth. Or someone is and those someone's are putting pressure on bosses who are amenable to it anyway because they like control/lack empathy for employees/etc

I actually have ADHD and the opposite is true for me. Working from home I can concentrate without distractions of office workers walking by, or talking about something that I'm not interested in but can't block out. I work in my office at home with the door closed for practically the whole day and it's great. My work has it's own built in structure, but I imagine that other kinds of less structured work could be very difficult for someone with ADHD.

I can tell you from experience, there is nothing more distracting than having your manager walk up behind you and tap you on the shoulder while you're working on code. While this problem doesn't go away completely with remote work, at least you have time to compose yourself and bookmark your work before you respond

Also for me there is value in occasionally seeing people in person. The exact ratio will depend on the job, but for me it would be about 2-3 days per month in the office. We see each other, talk about how things are going, blockers, stuff we need to change, a little office gossip and then off we go again.

In that sense, a lax hybrid schedule works best for me personally. However, for it to work, everyone should agree to be in the office in the same days. Coming to an empty office and doing the same zoom calls you could have done from home is less than useful.

And since, again, the ratio of individual work Vs collaborative work varies by person and team, we'd need to find an average that sort of works for everyone and agree on a common schedule That is where I think the idea of hybrid comes in: 2 or 3 days per week in the office for everyone. My company is trying this and asking (but for now not forcing) people to concentrate attendance in the days in the middle of the week.

This clearly works better for some and worse for others.

I heard from a colleague that some companies are trying a different model. They shut down the offices and used part of the savings as budget for managers to create more frequent team events, so teams can e.g. meet in person at a restaurant a couple of times per month. I have no idea who these companies are and how this approach is going.

I think it should be on a case-by-case basis. I'm in the legal field, and there's definitely days I don't need to be in the office as almost all of our work is online now. State and federal mandatory efiling, e-discovery is online, and even our document management system is headed to the cloud, so no need for remoting in, just log into Microsoft 365 from any browser. Don't even need to own any Microsoft apps natively anymore.

On the other hand, there are days that I do need to be in the office: depositions and prepping witnesses, trial preparedness, and sometimes, you just need to touch base with everyone to see how things are going. I work in securities litigation, and those are frequently very complex, document and fact intensive cases.

We have a entire practices that are 100% remote now. The partners are either elderly, or they live far away from the office and were hybrid remote before the pandemic. The paralegal that works with those attorneys is also 100% remote.

Lastly, I am much more productive at home than in the office. I do not have ADHD, and do not have a problem with attention, and do not get distracted easily. On the other hand, I'm an introvert, and really loathe the interpersonal nonsense and constant interruptions of ppl barging into my office, more often enough that just to chat. Last month, I had to do a major document review of going through 10s of thousands of emails, and to just plow through that at home, comfy in my bed, where my bathroom is just a few steps away, made me so much more productive than being stuck in the office.

Last year a company I wowed at the first interview didn't follow up. When I asked why, they said that since Facebook was slowing hiring, they were too.

They're not even related businesses other than both broadly being tech companies.

Managers are managers because they're good at playing power games, not because they're competent at their jobs. Power games are much harder if you never see the people you manage. Managing in a predominantly WFH environment will be very different and a lot of people who are successful now will fail in this world. That's what they're scared of.

I think there was literally a management consultant quoted on CBC that said most managers rely on time in office as their only measure of productivity.

Humanity has done many atrocities, but that's somehow just as disappointing if true. Like, measuring and increasing productivity is the entire point of that job, isn't it?

I think you're attributing far more coordination to these guys than they're actually capable of.

2,3,4 sure but I don't think 1 is plausible

I honestly think this might be pretty close to the mark. My company just announced RTO today but interestingly was pro WFH even before Covid with many of their staff hired as remote workers. They recently had to lay off a number of people and aren't projecting to be making their numbers this quarter. So I do wonder if this is an attempt to shed more staff without taking active action to lay off more people and the moral hit that comes with that.

I've been helping a Chinese company and it includes getting on the phone at 9am to talk to them right as they're leaving the office. For an international team there can be time zone issues like that, but if you can find overlap between Europe and China then you can find overlap between anywhere

I would agree with most of what you said.

There are also a not-insignifigant number of people that struggle when at home 100%. Some people are rock stars and able to just get stuff done. But a lot of people are not, sadly, organized enough to handle such an unstructured environment and able to still be effective.

This isnt a new thing due to covid or the move, but a LOT of folks just do better with a hard separation of work/life and a lot of folks arent self aware enough to know they need it.

As someone that can and has worked remote, and chooses to come back, it can be frustrating working with people that struggle with these things, and I definitely see differences between home work and office work in some. I actually work in an office because its much easier to maintain balance. I tend to work too much from home and it causes burnout but I also have kids/family that come home early and dont really understand that just because im home doesnt mean i can sit down and talk at their convenience. What I mean is that work/life balanace is harder. So i choose to commute 99% of the time and can WFH when needed.

But i have one guy that had had this issue chronically for years where he often struggles to communicate, is easily distracted, often needed to be micro managed or have his tasks organized, prioritized and in some cases, even steps spelled out. He does well enough to mostly be of help (so hes not gonna get fired), but he complains about lack of upward mobility or lack of raises, but when the SHTF, hes always got excuses locked and loaded about why hes behind or cant complete a project/task.

Conversely I have a guy thats AMAZING from wherever. Never has issues and is always way ahead of the curve. Hes also full time remote but excels at it.

It just depends on the person in a lot of cases and frankly, in my very small use cases, many/most arent the type that are capable of the self discipline needed for the task. Now that said Im not at google or one of those places that hires rockstars in buckets, so they reasons they are RTO are likely different from my orgs.

Of my team, i would say at least a cool 60% are just much less....themselves from home and easily distracted. Either because they segment their life (which is fine and awesome, i do that too), or because they dont have a good setup at home, or because they are just too easily distracted at home.

That's probably it, having every interaction possibly logged/recorded by the employees is pretty bad for a lot of bosses/managers.

That could be a consideration, yes. Funny enough, our whole Legal team has been consistently the one with the LEAST attendance in person in the office.... Overall it seems like forcing your call center employees in office because you're afraid they'll leak strategic company secrets is a bit of an over-reaction. I doubt that the most high-level, secret discussions on mergers and acquisitions or mass layoffs have ever happened in our office to begin with.

That makes a lot of sense. But I wish "So we can cover up our bullshit easier." wasn't a reason for it.

That could be a driver, yes. The problem is that the first people to go are usually the ones companies want to keep, either because they are star performers or because the job market requires their specific skills more (so they find something else easily and their roles are also harder to fill again).

But yes, I can see how a company might be more or less lenient applying their return to office policies, so that attrition is concentrated more in some teams. And firing people does have side-effects too on PR and morale of the remaining employees.

I do generally see more people leaving my company than new hires, though, so you might be on to something with the attrition rates...

What status quo are we talking about? Sorry, my English sucks...

Thanks for the article, interesting read!

“Many companies are realizing they could have been a lot more measured in their approach, rather than making big, bold, very controversial decisions based on executives’ opinions rather than employee data,” Larry Gadea, Envoy’s CEO and founder, tells CNBC Make It.

Yeah, business as usual (added the strike)

WeWork was already having problems before Covid, and WFH would actually benefit WeWork since it means more mobile staff that could use a remote office in places where they can't find room at home.

A lot of companies get large investments from investors. Investors generally have a lot of stake in real estate.

Probably the same reason why small startups get fancy offices in the city center as soon as they get their investments, but there's no budget for salaries.

Correct, my (large) company was literally getting bullied in the newspaper for no longer "contributing to the local economy by letting its employees work from home*.

one guy spent three weeks doing something no one needed done because he didn’t have the presence of others to remind him about what really mattered

So management is relying on the workers to self organise, instead of providing clear direction on deliverables and the quality of those deliverables.

Sounds like the labor cost of quality management is being offset by travel costs incurred by the workers.

Well yes, I do feel we might have collectively given more thought to this here than my company has...

It's just that I work in one of those places where a trivial change that our users are asking for requires a business case and endless discussion, so it's weird to think that a big, life-changing decision like this would just be taken without a particularly strong motivation.

But maybe I'm just starting from the wrong premise here. The purpose of the business case is for us little guys to obtain buy-in from the top management, but if a decision comes directly from the top management they don't need much more than their own gut feelings?

Maybe especially so if they have to make a decision based on an unprecedented situation with no data and no guidance from what other companies have done before.I can see how the least risky bet would seem returning to the previous, proven situation where most people were working in the office.

This is true. I just had trouble picturing the CEO of a big company going "I'll force everyone back to the office! WFH is sooo convenient but I can't do this to Mr Joe's hamburger joint around the corner".

However as someone else pointed out, if WFH becomes the norm, a lot of business might be impacted and fail, generating turbulence in the economy. This I can picture getting a CEO's attention

That's a side affect, but those retail stores could also move out to where the houses are with some legal changes.

It would be a nice suprise but I doubt corporate really cares about Jane and Joe's coffee shop, or the local Hugo Boss

I can see the points on it, but I also know that I am prone to ordering delivery from my local shops or going to the mom and pop restaurant around the corner. The only ones who will really be hurt by a mostly WFH society (at least in this vein of thought) are big corporations who have heavily centered their efforts around the offices. Starbucks will have problems justifying having 4 shops in one block in NYC with 1/10th the foot traffic. I would rather buy from local small businesses and actually support my economy than funnel more money into some gaping dragon's maw. I have been WFH for 7 years now and pray I never have to go back to working anywhere else.

People need to learn to post in public (in the Corp) channels and then be able to search for answers.

In office you can just go walk over and ask someone and it's often never documented anywhere. In chat programs you can search and find information instead of asking your go to.

People showing pictures of their crotch goblins every day would be a excellent reason to embrace work from home.

Community (It is far easier to “other” someone that you rarely or never meet in person. Not so easy if they are showing you pictures of their kids every day. “Sally just got a new particle accelerator! Isn’t she so lovely! This is her sinking Manhattan!”)

That's just super relative.
All my active friendships are 90% online and many of those people I very deeply care about. We meet every now and then, on vacations or for special occasions, and have a really amazing time. But we also have a really good time doing online activities together, keeping in touch more or less daily via messages and actively sharing our lives with each other.

On the other hand, othering is very much a thing that happens in person and feels a lot worse when it does happen in person. When every day you see 2-3 colleagues acting differently with you than amongs themselves or with others.
Working from home it is a lot easier to be selective with people you interact beyond the work stuff and avoid negative interactions, or interactions that drain your social batteries.

These are mostly excuses.

1. If your employee isn't paying attn during meetings and not performing well due to that, that's a performance issue. Not a location issue.
2. If they're not paying attn and are still performing well, maybe the meeting has no value.
3. Companies should provide the necessary equipment to do the job. That includes an adequate headset, camera, etc... Not providing a $50 headset is not a reason to enforce a commute.

I've had a remote managers and remote teams for almost a decade now. When I had an office to go to I was often less productive due to all the distractions. Being in a physical location makes it too easy for people to try and jump the queue and just walk over to my desk.

While I miss (and I very much do miss) the socializing aspect of a shared workspace it didn't make me more productive.

My current job, which is completely remote, with a geographically spread out team, takes steps to mitigate the separation. Most work related convos take place in an open text channel unless they're private. So you get that, "I heard you taking to Bob about XYZ".

We use cameras on team meetings. It helps with the human connection as well as with being present when you can see other people and look them in the eye.

But a business doesn't need to own office space for sporadic meetings. There are rentable meeting rooms in many cities, in libraries, in some coffee shops, universities, colleges, conference buildings, etc. Plus they're a lot nicer than dingy offices.

We're supposed to be doing hybrid, 50% in the office. I don't think we ever went over 30-35% of people in the office. My company tried the carrot, more than the stick to get employees back, like events. Everybody hated the almost-full office in those days. Most teams tried to have in-person team meetings, so there were no available meeting rooms and nobody is really used to the noise of an open-office plan full of people. There is clearly some push from above on our managers, because they try to sound happy but they mostly look as miserable as everyone else.

How was the return for you? Is the whole company back in the office or just you/your team?

Since 2020, my specific team only meets in person 3 times per year, with one or two members deciding to come into the office once every 2 weeks (because they want to).

We discovered early on that we were more productive WFH (with metrics to back it up), so we only have live meetups to organize big projects. We then take those big plans home with us and get it done remotely.

I can’t say it would work for every team, but I definitely don’t see the value in “being in the office” as someone who works entirely on the computer.

I see a lot of propaganda about how teams are more productive when they have “spontaneous interactions around the water cooler”, but in my experience that was never really a driving factor of our work.

I will take improved productivity over improved company culture. People don't give a crap about company culture as they don't stick around for 35 years anymore.

the evidence they have says people overall are more productive in office.

It really doesn't, quite the opposite. But a bunch of people seem to think it does for some reason.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/glebtsipursky/2022/11/03/workers-are-less-productive-working-remotely-at-least-thats-what-their-bosses-think/?sh=24a80c5e286a

Found the Blackstone bot.

people are more productive in the office with more oversight and build relationships with their coworkers that help them to do their jobs better.

Not true for all types of employees. There are job functions that work great or even better remote. Your scenario also depends on if the employer has a good office environment and truth be told a lot don't (many embraced the "open-concept" which does increase communication but also the noise-to-signal ratio).

The war on remote work likely has nothing to do with productivity but all about preserving the commercial real-estate market (and the auxillary businesses) and stop them from crashing. A lot of influential people invested in that industry.