From what I’ve seen, every push to have everyone return to the office has either been that they just want control over employees or they want butts in seats because the seats aren’t free.
Yes, exactly.
Everyone keeps pointing to the real estate issue, but the simple fact of the matter is that most office-based employers don’t own any commercial real estate. It’s a great theory as to why the media has been promoting back-to-office stories, but it doesn’t explain why employers are actually doing it.
Raw, unmitigated distrust of and disrespect for employees, though…
but the simple fact of the matter is that most office-based employers don’t own any commercial real estate
That’s not a fact. The reality is that all these rich assholes are friends with each other. The owner of the business is friends with the owner of the building and friends with the owner of the vendors and friends with the owner of the retailers. They all go on camping trips and to each other’s kids weddings.
The owner of the business renting the office space might not literally own the building, but they’re all friends.
Most of them are not. The reality is, workers in the US are more or less equally split between big businesses and small-to-medium businesses, and outside of the States it skews much more toward small-to-medium. These are companies that often have less than amicable relationships with their landlords, because landlords have this nasty tendency of acting like landlords.
On top of that, much commercial real estate is owned by REITs, which are managed from the biggest cities, and aren’t really entities small and medium businesses get to have real relationships with, any more than an apartment renter gets to have a relationship with their residential REIT.
They’re not buddies. They don’t even have a direct line of contact.
Also it looks good for client-facing businesses. Clients like it better when they can see the peons that will be working for them - a lot of them don’t like to accept “well our employees have lives and it’s better and easier for us to simply have them WFH rather than maintaining a huge office space for the sole reason of having an office.”