I've been thinking a lot lately about the whole "return to office" (RTO) and "work from home" (WFH) tension. I don't have any deep insights, and certainly won't be presenting any research findings one way or the other, but there do seem to be a couple of themes that I inevitably end up with when thinking about this issue.
Being physically in the office does not necessarily mean that you are working better or more efficiently (or even working at all). Unless you have a job that entails some kind of extensive physical interaction with objects that are only present in the office environment, the mere fact that you are in Place A (office) rather than Place B (home) is basically irrelevant. This is particularly true for "knowledge work" that takes place mainly in your head or on a laptop (coding, writing, analyzing, planning, etc.).
That said, there is nothing inherent in being at home that necessarily means that you are working better or more efficiently (or, indeed, even at all) compared to being in the office. Again, unless there is some kind of physical object that you only have access to at home that is vital for your job (and if that is the case, why haven't you been provided with it at the office?), there isn't really a difference between Place A and Place B.
I can hear the comebacks on both sides. Fans of RTO will claim that there are very real benefits to working socially with other humans. Moving sticky notes around on virtual whiteboards with a mouse is not the same as discussing things in person in a conference room, manipulating real sticky notes that can be easily rearranged or discarded. The subtleties of body language and looking people in the eye to see if they are really convinced that your timeline is reasonable are difficult to discern over Zoom. The ability to drop by someone's desk to get some quick help with something blocking your progress is more efficient than playing email tag. And, of course, there is the social cohesion and espirit de corps that happens when people work together on a common goal.
On the other hand, fans of WFH will claim that the theoretical benefits that RTO proponents espouse are rarely encountered in the daily reality of working in an office setting. Working alone in a cubicle with headphones on doesn't feel socially cohesive, and face-to-face meetings and random interruptions take precious time away from working on assigned tasks. The daily commute (particularly if it is long) is a huge time and energy suck right at the beginning of the workday, leading to an office full of tired and irritated employees. What's the point of coming to the office to sit in front of a computer screen all day when that could have been done with less hassle by just sitting in front of the computer at home?
On some level, both of these positions are conflating aspects of the work (how you interact with teammates, what is the responsibility of a team member to others on the team) with location. This reminds me of the argument between face-to-face courses and remote courses -- a good face-to-face course will be better than a bad online course (and vice-versa) all things being equal. But things are never completely equal, so there is also the complicating aspect of the proclivities of the learner that needs to be taken into consideration. A learner that is not terribly self-directed may flourish in the face-to-face course because of the structured social element, particularly if the online course is asynchronous, for example. The same is likely true of WFH versus RTO.
If there are benefits to RTO and benefits to WFH, it seems that some combination would be warranted. And perhaps this gets to an idea that transcends both -- flexibility. Because of the Covid lockdowns, many people realized that seemingly small affordances of being at home, such as the ability to quickly start a load of laundry before hopping on to the next Zoom meeting, had positive impacts on work/life balance. As the lockdowns went away, people liked the little "life hacks" that they had discovered while WFH.
But we should probably recognize that just as with online courses, maybe not everyone has the correct mental mindset to work effectively from home and/or maybe some teams ("courses"?) are not conducive to a primarily WFH arrangement. If your "life hack" during the lockdown was to get a second job while pretending to be working on your first job, or to travel the country while claiming you were in your home office, that's a problem.
At the end of the day, it comes down to mindset and balance. If RTO means that you are expected to have your "butt in a seat" from X o'clock am to Y o'clock pm all day everyday no exceptions, that ignores the improvements in work/life balance that many found as a result of lockdowns and seems like a step backwards for a humanistic workplace. This is especially true if you are the person primarily responsible for dealing with kids or household chores where the ability to do a task that only takes a few minutes in the middle of the workday (turn on the dishwasher, take the chicken out of the freezer to thaw, etc.) can make a huge difference. On the other hand, if your mindset when working from home is all about the "life hacks" ("I'll do the laundry, clean the kitchen, meet so-and-so for lunch, and tell my boss that I'm still not done with the report and need a few more days"), then there is an obvious problem. Yes it is true that there are many "distractions" in the office (loud conversations, random interruptions, etc.) but don't pretend that your home office is distraction-free even if you are the only person home.
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