Even with mandatory, 5-day-per-week RTO, you may have 2 team members in the US, 2 in Europe and one in Bangalore, all in their respective offices in their respective timezones. The meetings are still happening over Zoom.
True. People need to be at least in the general vicinity, yes.
> you may have 2 team members in the US, 2 in Europe and one in Bangalore, all in their respective offices in their respective timezones
Also true, but even before COVID and 24/7 home office we knew that this kind of team setup sucks and we complained -- loudly -- whenever we had to work this way. And while technology improved the main reasons why we complained haven't changed. In short, that's not an argument for or against RTO, it is one against bad work organization.
Here is an example. Ms. Follett [1] made a good case a century ago that value is not created by people but between people. So you need interaction to add value -- something companies are imminently interested in, even if some employees are not. Some interactions, actually anything with more than 3-4 participants, break down over Teams and require face-to-face contact to be effective. Cutting everything down to 4 participants is to put the tool above the people and, to add insult to injury, will create a new pyramid of management levels, which we chucked for good reasons in the last century. So just get together in the office, which you have anyway to set up your football table. Does this mandate a 5-day RTO policy? No, but it shows that there is at least one good reason to get into the office once or twice a week.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Parker_Follett