Where my wife works they recently ended 100% WFH. You now have to go into the office 1-2 days a week minimum. People 50 miles and further unless they had 100% WFH contracts were told to move or pound sand.
Who can say lay off without having a layoff
Exactly what Wellpoint, er Anthem, er Elephants Health did a year or so after I started working with them (which would have made it around 2013-2014). Weird way to do a layoff if you ask me. Also, WTF? You allow WFH and you hire outside of offices or allow people to move away from offices and then you turn around and tell them to drive into an office or pound sand? Scumbags.
There are rumblings at my wife’s work that the WFH train might be running out of steam. Most managers simply can’t overcome the need to actively “manage” people. And you can’t “manage” them if they’re not close at hand.
Those are the absolute worst managers. I call them "butts in seats managers" because they can only judge workers by if they're at the desks or not. Never mind it's their job to understand actual productivity, but they like to say they're "old school" and therefore only judge a worker by time spent in their cube/at their desk. F these managers. Learn to be an actual manager who looks at things from the perspective of the actual work being done, not whether the workers are in the office, or working from home. I've been a team lead, responsible for the productivity of workers both in person and remote and I can easily do the job both ways. Then again, I also still do a small amount of the same work, along with my other duties, because I like to understand the impact of changes made to the processes and things like that so I understand the job.
In actuality, most of this trend to go back to the office has more to do with employers b!tching and moaning because they're paying for buildings that are partially empty, or using it as an excuse for layoffs. The main point honestly doesn't have much to do with remote work, it's just a convenient excuse.