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Imagine you're a CEO had signed a 10 year lease on an office building in 2019. You're likely stuck paying for that building regardless of it you use it or not. If you feel like working in office improves productivity (not saying it does, this is just a perspective a CEO might hold) how would you rationalize to yourself and the shareholders that you're paying thousands (or millions) for something that you could be utilizing to benefit the company and leaving it empty.
Much of commerical real estate is actually leased, these companies are contractually obligated to pay for the property regardless of if they have people in office or not. They might not be able to exit these leases for years.
Also they could be angling for the entire work force to return to work (including other companies) as a means of restoring demand for office space. Which would benefit those who flat out own the land.
Giant sunk cost fallacy. Plus old school thinking plus desire for control.
Pretty much this. A surprising amount of executives are like"we already paid for it so we should use it" with no regard for the actual bottom line impact of forcing people back to work.
You made an unfortunate investment, don't make it worse with your boomer corporate ideology
But the other way also exists, my employer is pushing hybrid work with flex desk, so they can do a building renovation without renting one more building.
But indeed before that came on the table many top managers didn't liked the flexible work. But it was already in place as a concession to thc unions (cheaper than a raise)
Out of all the responses here, this is the only one that takes into account the actual psychological forces motivating the decision-makers.
The CEOs cannot justify their real estate expenses to their boards when employees are not filling those seats, and they likewise are contractually obligated to pay millions, hundreds of millions, or billions of dollars (depending on the company) for years to those lessors or lenders. There is a simpler motivation than "industrywide collusion and conspiracy to profit" - it is the motivation of these individual CEOs to appear competent and intentional despite that boulder they've placed around the company's neck.
It isn't a cross-company conspiracy. It's each CEO's personal but widely-shared motive to avoid embarrassment and their inability to adapt. Whether consciously or not, this is all those CEOs need to look at the "data" selectively and post-hoc rationalize RTO with platitudes like "increased collaboration and productivity" while ignoring the decreased morale, lost productivity from 2 hours of daily commute time, etc. It maintains the status quo that they assumed when committing to their property leases, and resolves any cognitive dissonance in the way most flattering to themselves (at the cost of their employee's time, mental health, and personal freedom).