Listened to a podcast about this earlier in the week. The research test case was call center workers. Seems like bullshit to generalize like this for all work types. Also, let’s remember how high productivity was during the pandemic when everyone was working from home.
For me personally, my productivity is boosted. Without a commute I end up working an additional 2 hours a day. I have more time to focus and spend less time at lunch. In the office, my coworkers and the environment is distracting. I spend an hour at lunch with my coworkers.
Additionally, all meetings are now remote. Even in the office, people call in from their desks. There is no reason to be in the office.
The reason to be in the office is that the office real estate value is going to plummet if they can't get people working in them again as demand will drop.
Yeah, I agree that this is the real reason why everyone is being forced back to the office and why Forbes is pushing this crap. A year ago the studies all showed that remote work was great for productivity or that there was no impact. Now that a few rich people looked at their commercial property investments and didn’t like what they saw, it’s a different story. The fact is though that a lot of that commercial real estate is a waste of space built around a car-centric existence. Workers prefer remote. We should convert all that real estate into housing. We have a housing shortage. Seems like a good idea.
100% agree. I wonder if they'd recoup their investment doing that or if housing is worth less than commercial real estate and that's why they don't want to do that?