Bad mentors creates bad mentees = bad productivity
I do see how returning to office does increase collaboration, the culture and leadership. As a mentor at work and in a very “fuck you, got mine” attitude, I don't care. The value of working in office is more for new employees rather than someone more established like me. The value of better collaboration or culture or leadership is a benefit to newer employees and to the company, which I am neither.
Value of face to face
When I was a mentee, in person was very important to me. Being able to bug someone during onboarding because documentation was bad/lacking, getting things fast tracked and learning the ropes in person was more valuable than watching pre-recorded videos or screenshares.
Being able to insert myself into projects and conversation allowed me to get more experience and network in the company when I was first starting out. Grabbing coffee with co-workers or your manager or your skip
When I was a mentor in office, I could quickly grab my mentees over to my desk and talk about a impromptu situation that came up around us. Now if I want to do the same, I have to chat to see if they are available, wait for a response then set up a call and fill them in. I rather just let that moment pass and not call at all.
Why I'm a bad mentor
As a mentor now I don't train people in the same way as I did in person because they cannot access me in the same way. They can ping me and I can ignore them. But if they shake the back of my chair I pretty much needed to respond. During covid I wrote extensive documentation and screen recorded a ton of content so that I didn't need to interact with mentees until they are pass the onboarding and training sessions.
I would say that people trained like this will not be as collaborative and productive due to the virtual nature and how mentors are not equipped to train people virtually (or care to). I suspect this is why Google and other tech companies are bring everyone back to the office. If a company has not set up a process and culture of online collaboration people won't naturally do it like they would in person.