For anyone who is a WFH employee, and your company is either testing the waters for a return to office policy or scheduled your return, you need to fight tooth and nail and get your other colleagues to do so as well.
Here are a couple real reasons why the “return to office” is happening (please add yours as well):
1) Bloated egos and self-important managers. some of these office managers whole job was to manage in-office responsibilities and workers. without that, they themselves are worried about their security as executives wisen up. so the fear is stoked and the narrative of the “lazy WFH employee” is written to get us back to the office. all the while they've been having record profits without loss in productivity. There is also the property they may be renting to justify their budget, and they'd rather force people to return than swallow their pride and accept that offices are unnecessary in a covid/post-covid world.
(on a side note, you ever notice how the people that also want to you to return are the ones that always send out social gathering event invites and you ask yourself “WTF do they even do at their job??” I don't want to hang out with you. I want to do my job, get paid, and go enjoy MY time.”
2) LOCK YOU DOWN as an employee. this is the most important factor to me as to why these companies are doing returning to office. If they have you return to office, your ability to leave that position is greatly dwindled. Your job search just went from the entire country (WFH positions) to just your city as more companies follow suit. Getting interviews, and accepting positions are tough enough, and now you just lost 99% of your potential search results. your ability to negotiate and bargain for better salaries is greatly reduced when they know the likelihood of you moving your life to another state is highly unlikely unless its an exorbitant salary increase. but a WFH employee can just switch for $3/hr more without skipping a beat. They know this and want to be able to retain you and abuse you for all you're worth.
We all know the rules of negotiation. Aim high and settle somewhere in between right? Well that's what they're expecting you to do with the “return to office”. They're going to say “Return to office full time”, and you'll say “well shit can't we at least do hybrid?”. “HA! GOT EM” This is exactly what they want, a hybrid is not a compromise because it accomplishes the same thing as forcing you in the office everyday. is the daily burden reduced, sure. But our goal is not just preventing commuting time. It's being able to take care of our everyday lives, and not be micro managed to death. As more and more companies adopt this, your ability to freely explore new options and bargain your way to better salaries is greatly reduced. So understand that this hybrid return compromise is a ruse.