During the pandemic, I held a job that required production folks to come in while engineering, management, and support personnel were required to work from home. As my company tracks productivity on a quarterly basis, we found that we had an 80+% increase in production. The reason? Less interruptions. If your organization involves manufacturing, there is likely data supporting this same type of argument. Fast forward to today where those same people have been required to come back to the office. As we track our time in 6 minute increments, I know for a fact that we lose 2-3 hours a day in distractions primarily from people who should be WFH popping over to talk. This begs the question as to why would any management team that access to this data want to lose that kind of increase? I have yet to hear a compelling argument for forcing people back to the office. Having over 35 years of work experience, the one thing I’ve learned is when a group wants something but doesn’t have a solid reason for getting it, you get several months of weak, flimsy arguments until someone comes up with something that “sounds” official and good. I’m seeing this from the guys wanting to end WFH. What I don’t know (but can guess at) is why? What perceived benefit outweighs that kind of improvement? While I am not one to normally buy off on conspiracy theories, I find it really hard to come up with a rational reason as to why a group of people (who are primarily motivated by money) would want to give up the higher output of a production team just to bring people back into the office. There has to be a gain somewhere. I’m just not certain what that is if it’s not about control. Thoughts?