An interesting idea, wonderful for some, disastrous for others. Through the pandemic, most people worked from home, and some studies even showed that productivity went up. Commuting time (stupidly sitting in traffic for hours every day) went away for many people, and if you had to go to the office during and closely after the pandemic, traffic was a breeze.
Of course not everyone can work from home – if you work in retail for example… Then, of the people who can theoretically work from home, not everyone can work from home. Due to a lack of self discipline and discipline from management.
The people pushing to get back to the office was of course the landlords. Bad for business if everyone works from home.
Then also the micro managers. They have to see a body in a chair at the office – which means that body is productive. Yea right. So instead of managing the output of individuals, it is just so much easier to get everyone back to the office.
There are of course downsides to working from home. For some people, the days just keep on getting longer. The problem with that is that working longer hours does not make you more productive. On the contrary. Also – you are now expected to be available long after normal working hours. When you go to an office, there are definite hours you are supposed to be there – so there is a cut-off point somewhere in the afternoon where the work stops and personal time starts. Not so much when you work from home. Another thing is (only for extroverts) loneliness. Most introverts get along happily without seeing other people, but extroverts need to see and interact with people.
So this is one side of the story. The other side is of course the people who cannot work unsupervised. Get up late, binge watch TV, shopping and other such not so much productive activities. And then, as I mentioned earlier, these people are the cause that many people are called back to the office.
The solution (OK, my solution) is to have a hybrid system, with some sliding scale of how much you can work from home – from 100% down to 0%. The biggest problem with this is – management. You need some real good and strong managers to make this work. And, realistically you will have to compensate the people who can’t work from home – retail and such – but not the people who do not have the discipline…
There is also the drive from some companies to force people back to the office with the hope that many will resign so the companies can downsize.
Think of the advantages – if half the people work from home, you halve the traffic, and fuel consumption, and carbon emissions. And best of all – dead time spent commuting.