Governments are not ready for the majority of people having the freedom to work anywhere.
The whole foundation of our local and state governments control is based on manageable demographics, we are red or blue, we embrace the old or the new ways, etc., they are not ready for a sudden change in the mix, every local government had worked really hard to keep the status quo.
I’m a bit of an exception because I’m in a city that only has a couple hundred employees, but when I do return to the office, it won’t be to collaborate with teammates: I will be joining zoom calls with people in other cities (which was my day-to-day pre-pandemic). Pre pandemic I would travel every 2-weeks to company HQ to be in-person for demo with stakeholders and sprint planning, but even then many people would join via zoom anyway.
I don’t think return for office has anything to do with productivity and more about anxiety around investments in commercial real estate.
All of which makes things worse for the people at home on the zoom meetings.
As soon as a significant fraction of your employees aren’t in office, it starts to become a productivity problem to force people to stay! Well, unless you gave everyone their individual offices with doors. But you can’t do that can you. Because then what would make the senior people special? So you have to use cubes so everyone can hear each other on zoom calls.