Why are we still talking about return to office?

Bosses have been trying to make employees return to the office for years now. Why are we still having the same conversation?

Think of how much has happened since March 2020 when millions of employees started working from home: Two presidential elections, war and humanitarian crises, countless climate disasters, a roller-coaster economy of inflation and interest rates, the birth of ChatGPT and AI anxiety, eight Taylor Swift albums, and an endless string of debates about if, how, and when employees should return to office (RTO).

The first wave of RTO started in late 2021 and early 2022. But here we are at the end of 2024 still debating the topic. So what’s really behind the yearslong struggle over return to office and where do we go from here?