I know this is on the 'work reform' community so I understand most of the comments have that 'bent' to them. I appreciate that.

And I dont want to legitimize giant corporations doing shitty things to employees, so I hope it doesn't come across as defending that behavior.

BUuuuuuttttt, I understand why and how this happens. Lets say hypothetically, you are in a big company or even a public sector/gov't organization. You've moved to remote work across the board. That's awesome!

Now imagine if you had a team that is struggling with competing priorities and limited resources. But you also have 3-4 people on that team that could have retired years ago, but they haven't. Why? Because they can just fucking mail-it-in at home and do little or nothing. As a manager that's overworked yourself, starting the "removal" paperwork process, especially on a public sector employee or an employee at a large company, is daunting. That can be a full-time job in and of itself. Now, multiply that x3 or 4 because you don't just have one employee doing this. That's going to be brutal.

What's a much easier option? RTO. Is it a sure-fire way to get those 3 or 4 to retire? No, they might just come in and be lazy in the office, but there is a good chance that commute, parking expense, extra time away from their family is going to push them over the edge.

There are absolutely, without a doubt, people abusing remote work. RTO is a 'lazy' but semi-understandable way for managers to drive some of those bad apples away. At least in theory. The article suggests not all do.

From my own anecdotal evidence, when people started returning to office, the retirements went up and people moved around more. This freed up positions and let organizations, who were stagnate, grow and promote people.

The down side is: some of your top talent will leave if they get caught up in the RTO mandates.