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Re:Working from home is powering productivity by Terr_ on Friday October 11, 2024 @07:05PM (#41814758)
"RTO is definitely the play: the CEO says all his friends are doing it; activist-investors want RTO for their own porfolios, PR says breaking the lease on our newish HQ is embarrassing while Legal says it makes more work for them; Accounting says we'll pay more in tax unless we can prove X jobs created locally; our middle-managers need it in order to tell if work is happening, and HR notes that we can slim our workforce by prompting a lot of 'voluntary' departures! Seven key stakeholder groups."

"But will the employees be happy, and will good ones stay?"

"Seven to one, my friend. They're just grumbling like always."

Re:Working from home is powering productivity by cjbgkagh on Friday October 11, 2024 @09:16PM (#41815522)
While all of that is true, I wonder how much of it is re-affirmation of a social hierarchy.

From the bosses point of view RTO is a costly signal that demonstrates how much people want to work for them - signals must be costly in order to be effective. Promoting WFO as more productive and less costly destroys the signaling aspect. Perhaps workers could offer other costly signals - maybe regular arduous in person team building exercises that management can show their friends photos. I really can't think of many alternative socially acceptable costly signals that can be required from employees which is probably why RTO continues to remain so popular.