I personally love working in the office and I hate working from home. I worked at a remote-only company during the pandemic and I never felt so unproductive, twiddling my thumbs waiting to hear back from my coworkers because I didn't know where they were, or they would be MIA for hours on end.

However, I don't understand why WFH isn't a discussion entirely between the manager and the employee. Why is this something that's being mandated from high above like the Ten Commandments. If someone wants to WFH and the manager is okay with it, and the employee can justify it with performance reviews, why does anyone care?

This should strictly be a performance issue, and if the employee is unproductive at home, then either force RTO on her, or fire her. It feels more like the higher-ups don't trust their own performance review system, but it seems like that's really the answer. If the manager is unproductive because of unproductive employees, then fire the manager as well. This is NOT a hard problem to solve, what it requires is accurate attention to performance on all levels. It shouldn't be a blanket edict because this is 2023 and we've already shown that WFH can definitely work for many people.