Fact is, at the beginning, remote work was a requirement for companies to keep operating (aka, printing money for the execs and shareholders), so it was freely discussed as a positive thing.
Now that shareholders and execs can require RTO, the narrative is reversed. If you look at most of the articles surrounding WFH “not working” there’s a very high chance that the motivation for such statements revolves around what management says about WFH, with no actual data to corroborate the message.
If you do your own research, a lot of what was true for WFH at the start of the pandemic is still true. The numbers and studies show that on the whole in the majority of circumstances, WFH increases productivity and makes workers happier overall. There are a few exceptions to this, I’m sure of that, and for each person, WFH or in office should be a personal choice, but it’s not. You should be allowed to work where you feel most productive and happy. As long as it doesn’t negatively impact your output, then it shouldn’t matter, but to execs, it does matter.
IMO, the motivation for forced RTO is twofold: first, control. The company you work for wants to exert control over you, so you have to do something that maybe you’re not a big fan of doing, simply because they say so. Additionally, they have more control over your day to day actions while you’re at the office. When you get to converse with others, monitoring how much time you’re spending away from your desk, the ability to walk up to you and grill you for any reason (or no reason). The second, is justifying office expenses. Either to be able to write it off, or pay their real estate owning buddies so those people can get money that could otherwise go to, IDK, wages (lol, it wouldn’t, but you know), and by having the vast majority of their workforce in house all the time, they can keep that going.
I’m sure there’s more to it, but that’s my impression. Fact is, very few companies are allowing RTO to be just an option. Everything is either part-in-office (aka hybrid), or forced full time RTO. Full remote positions are evaporating.
Companies exerting control is most of my issue personally. When you realize how much of your life they own and control, you don’t want to give that back. And I never will.