RTO has benefits, just not for employees. Commercial real estate, businesses downtown, municipalities, they all benefit from this slow moving trainwreck.

I don't see how those relate to a company's revenue or bottom line, which is usually what we imagine company's to care about above all else.

1) Investors in the company are also investors in CRE. So they pressure the company into this BS

2) Municipalities give all sorts of tax breaks and incentives to companies, but only if people are in person helping the local economy.

Very large household-name companies often own or otherwise control significant amounts of commercial real estate, which sit on the company's balance sheet.

If commercial real estate in general loses value, the value of these assets is also reduced, which will eventually be reflected on their balance sheets.

Even in cases where the real estate is leased rather than owned, the future rents owned are liabilities that are also a part of the companies' financial reports. If the demand for commercial real estate goes down, they won't be able to fully offset liabilities by subletting or selling their commercial real estate, which will show up as losses, write offs or write downs.

Hence my choice of phrasing: "benefits to results".

There are certainly perceived benefits to management and/or related to real estate interests, including but not limited to: easier observation and suppression of employee organizing, different legal exposure profile as fewer people are casually creating business communication that may later be sifted during legal discovery, propping up commercial real estate investments, etc.