Friday on a Washington Post podcast, their columnists discussed the hybrid/remote work trend, asking why it "seems to be reversing".

Molly Roberts: Why have some companies decided finally that having offices full of employees is better for them?

Heather Long: It's a loaded question, but I would say, unfortunately, 2025 is the year of operational efficiency, and that's corporate speak for save money at all costs. How do you save money? The easiest way is to get people to quit. What are these return to office mandates, particularly the five day a week in office mandates? We have a lot of data on this now, and it shows people will quit and you don't even have to pay them severance to do it.

Molly Roberts: It's not about productivity for the people who are in the office, then, you think. It's more about just cutting down on the size of the workforce generally.

Heather Long: I do think so. There has been a decent amount of research so far on fully remote, hybrid and fully in office. It's a mixed bag for fully remote. That's why I think if you look at the Fortune 500, only about 16 companies are fully remote, but a lot of them are hybrid. The reason that so much companies are hybrid is because that's the sweet spot. There is no productivity difference between the hybrid schedule and fully in the office five days a week. But what you do see a big difference is employee satisfaction and happiness and employee retention....
I think if what we're talking about is places that have been able to do work from home successfully for the past several years, why are they suddenly in 2025, saying the whole world has changed and we need to come back to the office five days a week? You should definitely be skeptical.
"Who are the first people to leave in these scenarios? It's star employees who know they can get a job elsewhere," Long says (adding later that "There's also quantifiable data that show that, particularly parents, the childcare issues are real.") Long also point out that most of Nvidia's workforce is fully remote — and that housing prices have spiked in some areas where employers are now demanding people return to the office.

But employers also know hiring rates are now low, argues Long, so they're pushing their advantage — possibly out of some misplaced nostalgie. "[T]here's a huge, huge perception difference between what managers, particularly senior leaders in an organization, how effective they think in offices versus what the rank and file people think. Rank and file people tend to prefer hybrid because they don't want their time wasted."

Their discussion also notes a recent Harvard Business School survey that found that 40% of people would trade 5% or more of their salaries to work from home....

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