IMO there are a still a ton of benefits outside productivity such as life satisfaction, housing costs and maybe this can cure the fertility decline that make it worth the productivity decline.
From our daily experiences in the tech industry, most people would likely observe that WFH has not led to a decrease in productivity. Instead, factors such as low morale have had a much more significant impact. Issues like layoffs, employee turnover, wages not keeping pace with living costs, mismanagement, a global pandemic, economic uncertainty, lack of prospects for homeownership and family-building, and generally declining life satisfaction weigh more heavily on work engagement than the WFH arrangement.
In fact, remote work is often viewed as a perk and is optional—many companies that offer WFH still maintain offices that employees can choose to work from, but few opt to do so. This means that the perk is desired and has a positive effect on morale.
In terms of direct counters to the notion that WFH inherently reduces productivity, consider the following sources:
- https://www.apollotechnical.com/working-from-home-productivi...
- https://timeular.com/blog/remote-working-affects-productivit...
- https://www.business.com/employees/remote-work-productivity/
- https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/intentional-insigh...
- https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/businessreview/2021/09/29/remote-wor...
While these sources provide counterarguments, the broader sentiment seems to be that a lack of trust in employees and mismanagement in WFH environments can hinder productivity, but properly managing remote work can actually enhance it. WFH in itself appears to be a poor predictor of productivity changes within a company when such a policy is implemented. The correlation is weak, with the noise of poorly managed companies struggling with remote work drowning out the success stories of well-managed companies that achieve higher worker effectiveness in a WFH environment.
It shouldn't be funny that people feel protective about the benefit that increases their work satisfaction, morale, and in many cases, productiveness. And if a company fails to implement WFH properly, then I'm sure it's not too difficult to imagine how it would go poorly. But this is c-suites not doing their jobs properly, not employees who struggle to keep morale high as is.