I contend the folks who goof off like that will goof off in the office.
Everyone knows who the slackers were when we were in the office.
WFH was already gaining traction at least 10 years before the famous “2 weeks to slow the spread”. If you’re looking at an income statement, the “rent expense” line usually jumps out as the single biggest expense, or in some cases the second. It made sense to try to at least try to reduce that line.
So in March of 2020, the entire country tried to figure out how to make it work, for everyone with an office job. CFO’s everywhere realized that they were about to find out just how much of that expense they could eliminate.
Unsurprisingly, results were mixed, but some form of WFH is here to stay, but is probably going to return to something more like the baseline from before the Wuhan flu. With some changes. Companies are building tools and training managers to look at things like work product quality, productivity, and a few other key metrics more objectively, and it’s already not working out so well for the “slackers”.
What no one seems to have figure out yet is how to properly train new graduates doing creative or complex work — new lawyers, especially litigators, accountants (not book keepers), engineers etc. One trend in my industry is that the most senior and most junior professionals are in the office 5 days. It can be good for both parties: a new grad can be mentored by a senior partner, and the partner gets to work with someone who still has a passion for the field.