Why do companies want to return to the office?

Like RedXIV example I've worked in lots of tech places (including some of the big multi nationals) that do a lot of statistical work lots of complex data collected, then extensive analytics. But none had anything on productivity. Closest you'd get is ticketing system, or code repository. Which is a flawed metric. Was never used for that anyway.

It's well known, widely reported that the twitters or Amazon's of this world, haven't referenced any productivity metrics when doing mass firing or RTO mandate's. They've just slashed and burned and actually got rid of the wrong people having to hire them back.

What you're suggesting just isn't credible in the face all evidence to the contrary.

Besides why would spend any time or resources on it. They don't have to. Not for RTO.

there’s the minority who’ll ruin it for everyone. School I drop kids off to in scd has a coffee hut across the road. You’ll see the same group of about 10-15 parents there every morning chatting for about 30 min while having their coffee. All “working from home” after dropping kids off to school then hanging around chatting and having coffee for 30 min

I know they all wfh if that’s what you’re asking.

Agreed, non productive employees WFH ruin it for everyone else and then companies have to enforce coming to the office. The non productive employee will still probably be as unproductive in the office but companies feel they can at least keep an eye on them rather than having them doing jobs around the house on company time. It will be interesting to see what 2025 brings in terms of the jobs market. If there is downturn Id imagine companies will try and enforce full time office but if there are lots of jobs hybrid roles will still be on offer.

There are huge variations across companies in terms of reporting, KPIs etc and monitoring productivity. Companies that struggle with this and do not have proper review processes are not willing to trust employees wfh. The lazy worker in the office will be the lazy worker at home. The strong worker will can be trusted to work from anywhere. However if everyone is in the office at least you know the lazy worker is not doing house work.

There have been previous cases where people have taken photos or notes from their work computer while in the office.

I quess they should be concerned about people working in offices also.

You're clearly missing the point. Of course employees in office can take pics also but it's the fact that her boyfriend and someone else also took pics and used the info maliciously is one new risk of wfh.

You're missing the point. People HAVE done the same thing in open plan offices. Copy the information and bring it home. It's as old as the hills.

No one's watching over everyone's shoulder 100% of the time in an open plan office. It's a complete myth.

They get tracked on the system. Thats is how they get caught. They leave a massive digital fingerprint. Same if they are in the office or remote. Makes no difference.

That anything thinks it's easier, more secure to watch people using computers, than actually digitally tracking them, it's ridiculous.

If they are taking advantage of wfh then the issue is with the gobshi*e managers who are not giving their staff enough work and not with the staff wfh

I think it's fair to say that generally working from home is not as productive, not as good for businesses, and not good for active lifestyles or mental well being.

Now you may be that amazing individual who has a dependable work ethic, a great sense of pride in your personal performance, getting up at 6am for a run and hitting the gym at 7pm, and meeting your friends and socialising in the evening. That is possible. If so you are a very small minority. And it doesn't mean you are so special that you get to decide how the entire company operates.

To be very honest, I highly doubt that kind of get up and go, self motivated individual would be complaining or campaigning to say at home all day and work from there. Again it's possible, but highly highly unlikely that kind of person would be p*ssing and moaning about having to go to work.

And people working in the office have lost sensitive information, or someone in their house could have eyeballed it… because they printed out stuff or copied stuff to disk\USB so they could work on it from home. If fully working at home, they wouldn't have needed to do that.

There's risks everywhere, and the 'old' world had its risks too.

@kowloonkev I don't think it is fair to say. The company I was working for had to switch to work from home when CoViD happened. The project had a team of approx. 20 and was delivered ahead of schedule and higher quality when compared to similar projects before work from home.

I saved an hour and a half to two hours commute each day which I was able to use working in the garden, bringing the dog for a local walk and when restrictions eased, get to the nearest beach.

Similary in the role I'm in now, I could work when I had CoViD rather than take the best part of two weeks sick leave. I can complete some tasks much quicker than if limited to 9 to 5 - in a day rather than days. I can support out of hours requests far more easily.

For me and teams I've worked on, work from home has improved both quality of life and quality of work.

A well run company will be a well run company, a badly run company will be a badly run company. For a well run company work from home gives access to a much wider pool of potental empoyees to find the best for a particular role.