Return-To-Office Mandates Aren’t Fixing What’s Actually Broken

Forbes ^ | February 10, 2026 | Vibhas Ratanjee

[DoodleBob]

A chief operating officer at a mid-size technology company recently described her return-to-office rationale with unusual candor. “We don’t actually know if the work is getting done well,” she said. “We know it’s getting done. We just can’t tell if it’s excellent or mediocre until something blows up. When people were in the building, I could walk a floor and know within ten minutes which teams were thriving and which were drifting. I lost that.”

She didn’t mention culture. She didn’t mention collaboration. She described, with precision, an assessment problem—the inability to distinguish between work that’s adequate and work that’s exceptional without physically observing people doing it.

That honesty is rare. When major corporations announced return-to-office mandates last fall, the justifications centered on culture, collaboration, and innovation. But the productivity data never supported that framing.

…

Before dismissing executive concerns as unfounded, consider what organizational leaders legitimately noticed during extended remote work.

Strategic projects that should have taken three months stretched to nine—not because people weren’t working, but because the informal coordination that happened in hallways evaporated.

Decisions that used to get resolved in spontaneous conversations now required scheduled meetings, calendar coordination, and delays that compounded across dependencies.

Junior employees stopped developing at the expected rate because the observational learning that happened when they sat near experienced colleagues—overhearing how a senior person handles a difficult client, watching how someone structures a complex analysis—disappeared.

Innovation pipelines slowed as early-stage idea generation became harder to replicate on video calls.

These observations reflect genuine organizational friction. The question is whether the root cause diagnosis is accurate and whether mandated returns address what actually needs fixing.

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TOPICS: Business/Economy; Society
KEYWORDS: productivity; returntooffice; workfromhome

[ealgeone]

Disagree.....I've been WFH since covid. Haven't missed a beat.

Our team is spread out across the country so being in an office would be of little, if any, benefit.

It's more about vacant offices and lost tax and business revenue in urban areas.

[jimfree]

When my work went WAM in March 2020 the companies that did this sort of thing realized that those who goof off at home were the same ones who goof off in the office. The major difference was the ability to give up the leases on downtown office space while paying a fraction of that for the remote environment. A rather clear business decision. We never went back.

[T.B. Yoits]

From the article: Strategic projects that should have taken three months stretched to nine...

Bullspit. We had processes that took weeks get shortened to two or three days.

As for not knowing what's going on, having every file in OneDrive/SharePoint shows exactly where we are and who's dropping the ball.

And our team members who are two or three states away run circles around the locals.

This sounds like a bad CEO desperately searching for a scapegoat.

[Political Junkie Too]

It's not simply about lost business revenue, but business closures due to lack of urban office workers.

How many small businesses closed and workers lost their jobs because the downtown ecosystem was disrupted by COVID-19?

-PJ

[UCANSEE2]

How can you disagree with the statements in the article if you state the you have no experience with working in an office and then going to WFH and then having to transition back to the office routine ?

[Empire_of_Liberty]

Workers learned how to collect a paycheck without doing work.

That will be hard to un-learn.

[DarrellZero]

So she can’t just examine the work product to see if it’s good or not?

And how does seeing butts in seats help her judge it?

Calling BS.

[MinorityRepublican]

Workers learned how to collect a paycheck without doing work.

That will be hard to un-learn.

Office jobs can be automated. For a corporation like Microsoft, it used to be that maybe you need 10,000 workers. Maybe now you can get it down to 10 employees.

Since they're all working from home, they'll get an email and they will get severance pay for a couple of months. Easy.

[UCANSEE2]

We had processes that took weeks get shortened to two or three days.

Maybe we could get the California Bullet Train operating/tracks laid by having the employees all work from home.

What I am saying is that not all 'strategic projects' are the same.

------------------------------------

We had processes that took weeks get shortened to two or three days.

What exactly changed that shortened those 'processes' ?

[Mean Daddy]

My company was in an older building and when COVID hit, we immediately went to WFH. Since then, the building has fallen into disrepair and there’s not much call to build a new building (we’re leasing couple floors in a building) we’ll be WFH for several more years. If they said I had to come in, I would retire and as things are looking, I’ll probably retire out of my basement office in early 2027.

[Right_Wing_Madman]

“We don’t actually know if the work is getting done well,” she said. “We know it’s getting done. We just can’t tell if it’s excellent or mediocre until something blows up."

Forbes could talk to someone who knows what's going on in the company, but they don't want to talk to Forbes.

This lady is clueless, that's why Forbes had access to her.

[Some Fat Guy in L.A.]

I am way more productive working from home - no more office bs interruptions. But then I’m not part of a collaborative team - I can see where it would inhibit teamwork. The kid I’m mentoring to take my place when I retire can call, text or email any time, and he keeps me up on the company gossip.

[sauropod]

.

[ealgeone]

I was in the office for about 31 years prior to Covid. We did WFH and then were asked to come in once a week. I was the only one on my floor. We finally got the green light to continue WFH.

[Mozzafiato]

A chief operating officer at a mid-size technology company recently described her return-to-office rationale with unusual candor. “We don’t actually know if the work is getting done well,” she said. “We know it’s getting done. We just can’t tell if it’s excellent or mediocre until something blows up. When people were in the building, I could walk a floor and know within ten minutes which teams were thriving and which were drifting. I lost that.”

Evidence of someone promoted beyond their capability. She's the COO and doesn't know if the work is being done well unless she can prance around the office and see the backs of employee heads buried in their computer? No, this woman is just on a power trip.

[Secret Agent Man]

What stretches projects from 3 to 9 is:

Companies fire american workers.

Companies hire Indian workers who don’t make what the project required.

Companies then have their remaining american workers fix/redo the nonworking junk the Indians put together.

[Myrddin]

Sometimes there is value is "walking the floor" to find and fix roadblocks. One of my developers was building a graphical text editor for the project. He concepts of handling UI were excellent. His skill at handling file I/O were deficient. He had been fighting a 30 MB text file for weeks. I examined his C code and found that he would allocate enough space to read a few lines. If there was more to read, he was REALLOCATE the existing space and expand to accept more content. Reading the file was taking almost 30 minutes. I showed him a faster way. Run "stat" against the file descriptor to get the file size, allocate memory for that size and perform a read system call to pull the data into the buffer. Iterate the in-memory data pulling the lines one at a time and add them to the X Windows text window. Read and generate the text window was achieved in under 10 seconds. His block to completing the task was removed. That is one concrete example of the benefits of management by walking around. It was done in 1992 when we were necessarily working in a closed, classified environment. It wasn't work suitable for working remotely.

I have no objection to remote work. I have done it since 1980. My last 11 years with my last employer was 100% remote. I had lots of remote work between 2003 and 2009 as well. The model works well with the right tools for team collaboration. Skype meetings. JIRA for tasking. git or svn for source code control, crucible for code reviews, Jenkins for automated builds. Automated test tools to evaluate the completeness, quality and stability of completed work. I supervised a 25 person team building a flight training system for a foreign customer including ISO-9001-2015 certification. All remote. It's feasible with the right approach.

[Myrddin]

The major difference was the ability to give up the leases on downtown office space while paying a fraction of that for the remote environment.

My employer started that process around 2005. We went from employee owned including properties to a publicly traded corporation. Next up, all the owned properties was sold to a holding company and individual contract leased back space by the square foot as a contract cost. Over time, many contracts that had been in CA completed. Space was released to the holding company. A big savings over holding vacant property with high taxes and no revenue stream. It also allowed relocation of contracts to states with more favorable business regulations and lower cost labor.

Remote environment costs? Just a company laptop and reimbursement for "office expenses" associated with mailing and shipping items. The floor space, utilities (heating, electricity, network connectivity, cell phone connectivity) was 100% borne by the remote employee. The company invested heavily in better networking and secure VPN to protect both the company and employee assets. It paid off in a big way when COVID came to play. We were already properly postured to keep working and not infecting each other inside a company workspace.

[Myrddin]

Another thing that stretches projects is incompetent and protracted contract negotiations. A contract is allowed to run out and the trained employees (many subject matter experts) must leave the company for a different job to keep food on the table. When the contract gets signed, another round of hiring and training is required to resume work. Significant productive time is lost to this stupid contracting practice. Some expertise is lost permanently.