There’s two reasons for a push to return to office work.
1: as the title of the thread, real estate prices. A lot of companies have long ass leases they can’t get out for sometimes decades. Or they outright own the properties and said property is virtually worthless if no needs to come to work on location.
2: antisocial and narcissistic personality disorders and tendencies in that direction fill a very high percentage of management, especially higher management. These people need people to physically lord over to feel powerful and stroke their fragile egos.
They don’t give a flying shit what the numbers say. They don’t care work from home is better for workers or productivity, as they don’t give a shit about workers or productivity to begin with.
Issue 1 is, for the vast majority of companies that lease their offices, an entirely invalid reason. It’s the sunk cost fallacy in its most pure form. You’ve already paid for that lease. If paying but not using it ends up being better, that’s what you should do—and even better, plan your downsizing next time your lease is up for renewal. Paying for something but not using it isn’t an issue for a rational business decision-maker.
But issue 2 is very much a problem that’s difficult to overcome.
