My perspective on this after all my experiences over the past three years or so, working at three different jobs that service hundreds of customer sites and thousands of professional workers, is simply: forcing either work from office, work from home, or a combination of both (aka hybrid), is the wrong move. Your best talent will walk of you force them to do something that they don’t want to do. I have seen coworkers and users alike, find new jobs both when forced to WFH and RTO and even with hybrid.

The take away is, work should be flexible. It should be where the workers are most effectively able to complete their duties. If that’s the office, workers should have the ability to do that. If that’s at home, they should be able to do that. If it’s some combination of home/office, again, they should be able to do that.

If I’ve learned only one thing about work over the pandemic and this “post pandemic” hell, it’s that above all, people want to be able to make that choice for themselves. Any worker worth employing is going to be productive regardless of their location, and for short durations, workers can accept working from home or the office or whatever, even if it’s not their preference (eg, the 2020/1 lockdowns). A bad worker will be able to find ways to look busy will while not doing work regardless of if they’re working remotely or not, though, in my experience most workers just want to put in the effort, and get paid, and they do. Those that are there to do as little as possible and collect a paycheck are actually pretty rare. People want to work. Giving them the option of choosing where and when to do that is empowering and beneficial to their attitude and work ethic; not to mention, it’s also beneficial to their mental health.

Simply, forcing them into either working from home, or the office, or both via “hybrid” is going to have at least a few, wanting to walk.

We have the technology to support both styles of work and taking that choice away from workers will only serve to make those that want the opposite, disgruntled. If you value your workers, then let them choose.

Bluntly, given what I’ve seen from business owners over the same three+ year time period, they don’t care enough about workers to make them happy. It demonstrates a complete lack of shits given about what works want.

If you’re a business owner and you have any consideration for those you employ, give them the choice and you will be rewarded with more work, and better work done by those you employ. Anyone who forces the issue, one way or the other, will have some that are happy and some that are very unhappy about it. Choose wisely.