???
The least productive place is the office, between useless conversations, drive-bys where someone swings by your desk to drop off a hot mess, and where conversations are so stilted as to avoiding offending anyone.
There is no such thing as back to the office for people who were never there. We have people from four states away who run circle around the locals. We have process that previously took weeks that can now be turned in 2-3 days.
We have meetings back to back that previously would need to be scheduled on separate days due to travel, or to avoid having different vendors run into each other during negotiations.
Those who are going back into the office log in to Microsoft Teams and have meetings all day with people who aren't in the office. That's nothing but a waste of time and effort.
I should become a consultant. There would be a lot of middle & upper management that would get the ax, based on what I’ve read in this thread.
Let’s just leave out trades and manufacturing (because they all have to be on site or in the field), for the obvious reasons, and just focus on office environments, which I am actualy very familiar with. I hear people talk about dry by conversations, and in a healthy office, a social bonding is actually a positive thing, but in a productive office, people can collaborate very quickly, even if it’s only to ask a quick question. I will admit this works better in a small to medium size office and falls apart in a huge corporation (but those have dysfunctional policies anyway). “Where are you on project A, and have you spoken with engineer x yet?” “Bing bang boom.” “Okay thanks”. Then zip off to get something done.
Places I’ve worked, people who were “never there” had better be on medical leave, in the field, or in sales. Otherwise, they’d be canned and finding a new employer to ghost.
I have also talked to people who seem to be stuck in meetings all week long. These tend to be in larger corporations, but always, but no matter what, it’s a terrible kind of dysfunction that kills productivity time. Meetings are good for group brief/debrief information dissemination as well as for higher management to hold people’s feet to the fire in groups and in person (where frankly it’s much more effective). I will grant you that teams/zoom meetings can accomplish some of this though but those tend to be even slower than in person. The only groups that should be meeting frequently or daily are collaboration intensive, such as writers or programmers. Whether online or in person, meetings kill productivity but remote work lends itself to a lot of brain numbing electronic conferences.