Not even remotely close

RTO as well-being is a pretext for maintaining commercial real estate value

For knowledge-based, task-oriented jobs that don’t require a physical presence, remote work tends to be more efficient, boosting productivity at scale. See the list of quality studies below.

Despite these benefits, there’s a significant push to bring remote workers back to the office. The irony is that, with video conferencing now a staple of daily work, employees are commuting to the office only to engage in remote work from their desks.

In my view, this shift has little to do with the quality of work and everything to do with maintaining the value of commercial real estate. Office vacancy rates have surged, driving down rents. And the trend toward hybrid work is expected to keep demand low, suppressing real estate values. If you want to dive deeper into this, this review article is a good place to start.

Given this, companies can’t exactly punish remote workers for being more efficient and they can’t openly admit that worker satisfaction must suffer to increase the value of their real estate holdings. So, HR departments have begun to push a narrative justifying remote workers' mandatory return to the office.?

We’ve seen a rise in HR mental health campaigns claiming that remote work severs connections with colleagues, leading to feelings of isolation and depression. However, this argument feels more like a convenient pretext rather than a genuine concern for employee well-being. Attacking the quality of remote work doesn’t hold up—productivity and job satisfaction have been proven in numerous studies. Instead, companies are using these narratives to justify bringing employees back, while introducing "wellness perks" and recreational activities to superficially boost morale.?

These efforts infantilize employees by assuming they need to be entertained at work and, more troublingly, acknowledge that the office environment has become so stressful that employees need distractions like pickleball breaks and cold brew on tap in order to cope. HR is not your ally here; their true priority is serving the company's financial interests, and these tactics are part of a broader strategy to achieve that.

The reality is that remote workers prefer a remote setup because it maximizes their well-being. It also eliminates distractions caused by co-workers and serves to avoid team-building events that add little value to actual work. Companies often try to make the workplace central to employees' lives, downplaying "work-life balance" in favor of a work-life blend. Personally, I don’t want to be forced to "have fun" at work based on the company’s definition of fun or be misdiagnosed as depressed in order to justify it. I want to focus on doing my job to the best of my ability, then leave at the designated hour to enjoy the activities, relationships, and interests that are no business of my employer.

But then again, what do I know? That's probably just the depression talking.