What about letting each person choose for themselves. If I want to work remote 100% of the time, I can. If I want to work only in the office, I can. If I want to work remote 3 days and in the office 2 days, I can. If I want to work 10 hours 4 days and take the 5th off, I can.

> I want statistically significant proof of the correlation between working from home and company profits.

Let's start with statistically significant proof of the correlation between working from the open office and company profits. That game cuts both ways.

Or, simply let everyone work as and where they wish and apply the same evaluation and retention criteria to everyone. No need to discrimiante against one group.

So "because not everyone is productive", everyone should be mandated to go back into the office?

No, but I am in favour of communication this beforehand during the interview. There are on-site companies and companies who allow remote as well as companies working only remote. Also, I am in favour of making exceptions if you can prove that you are more productive within the course of several months and afterwards while being completely remote. You can tell that I am suspicious to the remote == productivity mantra. Because we are working in a team unless you’re a freelancer or a one man project guy (which in a well managed company is a rare thing) and as human beings need eye to eye communication to work efficiently.

Why is the past year and a half of ratings while working remotely enough "proof" of productivity? Really, why is my opinion as an employee about how I work best not enough? You are exhibiting the same issue described elsewhere in this thread - you do not have enough trust for your employees to allow remote work.

Because it is always always more about the team dynamics and chemistry than about you as an individual. If you’re a lone wolf and do-all guy this doesn’t mean you will be valuable in a team, well connected with your colleagues OR on the other hand, outperform several people. In the end of the day, the company size, business domain, etc. has more impact to whether you work remote or not and have to be evaluated and assessed. We allow remote but these are exceptions for those who cannot move easily.

So explain my company. My team is split into two primary locations. The HQ, where I work is a typical multistory office building, while the remote site is more stripped down. The remote site has no managers for my team, our managers are all at the HQ.

So essentially, the workers at the remote site have been working (tada) remotely for over 13 years. And they do a great job. We communicate via email, by Teams/Webex, and there's no real difference.

And then COVID comes along and we all WFH for the last 18 months. Now when things appear to be getting better, mgmt is all in a rush to "RTO."

So not only have we proven that we can work well remotely in non-COVID times, but under the immense pressure of COVID, we had record profits.

So now we're going with the worst of all worlds for my team; hybrid. We're allowed to work 1-3 days a week remotely, but the other days we'll be in the office in desk hotels. Sounds like so much fun.

It really boils down to old school VPs/Managers who think butts in seats is how you get work done. And I say this as someone who's closer to retirement age than most.

Why should "more productive" be the standard?

If a person is equally productive but happier, why not let 'em be happier?