It was never about productivity or making more money (they'd save more if they didn't blow shitloads of corporate real estate), it's about control (oh, and the shitload of corporate real estate they spent shitload of money on)
this post was submitted on 29 Jan 2024
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Oh, it is about making money. Just not making the company money. Check who leases the building to the company. You'll often find a shell corp which is owned not by the company but by folks at the top who are funneling that cash into their own pockets. Then add in the "exclusive" deals the owner shell company makes with service companies and you'll often find a bit of cash headed to the shell corp as well
Nailed it.
The math is quite simple.
Every office worker has a commute. The commute is just money wasted. The employee needs to consider the commute in the time they actually spend for work. So the employer ultimately pays for the commute, as an employee would always choose the shorter commute if the work conditions are otherwise equal.
By removing the commute, employers get the same productive working time. They give the workers a pay increase, because the total time commited to work is reduced and the costs for the company are often zero or even negative, as they can start closing down offices, dont pay for electricity and so on. With commutes often in the area of 1 hour per way, that means a 25% raise by comparing total time spent for work.
To think about it. A return to office mandate is a significant pay cut to the employee, yet the employer still has to pay the same labor costs and often also increase other costs related to the labor.
It only makes sense in companies, where the performance working from home is extremely lower than the performance working at the office. This is an indication of severe missmanagement and a company set to fail sooner or later. if only the whip of the managers is making people work, the companies culture is fucked.
The commute is just money wasted.
It goes even deeper than you mention. If you have fewer people commuting, you have less pressure on the methods of commuting - roadways and public transit require implementation and maintenance, which is paid for by taxes. Less demand on those infrastructure things, and the public expense for those things also gets smaller, or you get better infrastructure. Crowded commuting makes transit longer and more stressful for people who do have to physically be somewhere, not to mention for commercial travel and emergency services. Then there's the expense of the unnecessary pollution generated by unnecessary commuting.
Then there's the ability for companies to have a vastly wider pool of workers if they're not tied so tightly to people who live within commuting distance of an office, not to mention workers having a wider choice of employers. Not only does this allow business and labor to fine tune more for better outcomes on both sides, it has a secondary effect of allowing wealth to transfer from high cost of living areas to lower ones, which contributes to a stronger overall economy, in which secondary businesses which serve people where they are (entertainment, restaurants, telecommunications), and in the long term can support people's ability to choose to live outside of metropolitan areas, further reducing overcrowding in terms of housing and public infrastructure, pollution, and the like.
The more people who can work remotely, the better off we will all be.
thats not even the start. Offices cost money. The larger the office the more they cost. So just keeping a smaller emergency office or using an office share membership for workers that need it will save money.