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why are companies trying so hard to have employees back in the office? (self.asklemmy)

submitted 1 year ago by andallthat to c/[email protected]

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I have posted this on Reddit (askeconomics) a while back but got no good replies. Copying it here because I don't want to send traffic to Reddit.

What do you think?

I see a big push to take employees back to the office. I personally don't mind either working remote or in the office, but I think big companies tend to think rationally in terms of cost/benefit and I haven't seen a convincing explanation yet of why they are so keen to have everyone back.

If remote work was just as productive as in-person, a remote-only company could use it to be more efficient than their work-in-office competitors, so I assume there's no conclusive evidence that this is the case. But I haven't seen conclusive evidence of the contrary either, and I think employers would have good reason to trumpet any findings at least internally to their employees ("we've seen KPI so-and-so drop with everyone working from home" or "project X was severely delayed by lack of in-person coordination" wouldn't make everyone happy to return in presence, but at least it would make a good argument for a manager to explain to their team)

Instead, all I keep hearing is inspirational wish-wash like "we value the power of working together". Which is fine, but why are we valuing it more than the cost of office space?

On the side of employees, I often see arguments like "these companies made a big investment in offices and now they don't want to look stupid by leaving them empty". But all these large companies have spent billions to acquire smaller companies/products and dropped them without a second thought. I can't believe the same companies would now be so sentimentally attached to office buildings if it made any economic sense to close them.

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[–] andallthat 2 points 1 year ago

Thanks for your answer, you bring some great points. I'm wondering how stable hybrid is; while it does alleviate the issue with training/knowledge sharing and networking, it also looks like a compromise choice that still requires companies to pay in full for a half-empty office.

Either over time "hybrid" companies plan to reduce their office footprint by half (but then have empty days and "overbooked" ones, making the "in-office" part of the experience potentially even worse) or they are just hoping to create some critical mass in the office that will eventually pull most of the other employees there.

WFH works better when most people are at home or otherwise distributed (eg small groups from different offices). If you're the only one calling into a meeting room where everyone else is sitting in person, it tends to suck.

Same for being in-office. It's productive if all the people you need to talk to are also in, on the day you go. Otherwise you just commuted 1 hour or more to have the same zoom calls in a noisier environment.

So I feel like there must be some sort of "gravitational" pull where it gets more convenient to be at home/in the office based on how many people are making the same choice.