Seems like the consensus is that you can do just fine (if not better) if your employees are remote. So why are some companies still trying to force workers back to the office knowing many would rather quit?
Lots of execs and managers believe that groups of people are more innovative and productive when they discuss things in-person.<p>You may think they are wrong. You may not like that they believe this. But they really do believe that in-person is better for getting stuff done, and that's why they want it.
Don't underestimate the paranoia of useless middle management who cannot justify their existence by Teams meetings alone and cannot easily brown-nose from home.
Not only can you do fine, but you can save a ton of money on office operations. The economics will win out in the end, I don't doubt it. A lot of executives and managers are simply in denial.
Some of it is culture. I worked for a large F50 company pre-pandemic that was remote friendly (at least in our org) and all communication was async, all serious discussion happened on mailing lists and the internal github, ad-hoc meetings were generally discouraged.<p>I have joined a FAANG recently and by comparison their culture is painful for remote, despite them having 2 years to refine during the pandemic. It is slowly getting better this last year, but culturally they are still years away from being effective at remote.<p>For those who say Real Estate is the reason, that math doesn't add up there. Apple doesn't give a shit about 5 billion dollars in real estate that is wasted if they think it will make employees less productive. That's a rounding error on most of their products. They genuinely believe it's at worst neutral to demand RTO.
> the consensus is that you can do just fine<p>Consensus where? many managers quote the Microsoft study that Remote work is making productivity and innovation harder for example
My 2 cents,<p>If I need to push a project I'd really love to work face to face, it takes me 5 min to spot the problem or to slip in a conversation easily. Or even just observing what's happening is fun and educating.<p>But in large corps I understand the dilemma, even if you go to the office your job is to hop in remote meetings, that sucks. Then the office might just be cancelled.
Because the banks and local govt bet a lot on commercial leases.<p>Banks says they are solvent because they have "hard" assets to borrow against.
Govts promises the paradise with future taxes.<p>Got to the office? Pay toll<p>Got a coffee? Pay taxes<p>Consume more petrol/gas for your car? Pay taxes.<p>More electricity? pay taxes.<p>You can't expect they let you out so easy right?
Our CEO's decision was based entirely on "Elon Musk revoked WFH so it must be genius." End-of-argument.<p>When pressed, he also suggested that new hires need hands-on, one-on-one mentorship to grow and learn the business. At least that's a legitimate reason.<p>But for mature, distributed teams who already work remotely (COVID or not), return to office is a huge drain of employees time and attention, IMO.