A lot of times, when people discuss the phenomenon of employers ending work-from-home and try to make their employees come back to the office, people say that the motivation is to raise real estate prices.
I don’t follow the logic at all. How would doing this benefit an employer in any way?
I suspect the real estate prices is a fantasy. I suspect the real reason is management addiction to close supervision and their lack of trust.
That’s not really a fantasy at all. It works exactly the same way as the US health insurance practices.
Picture this. You break your leg, go to a hospital, but thankfully you have insurance. So they fix you up, then give you a paper with a number that says 140k$ (I wish I were kidding, this is real) on it. You sit there, completely fucking flabbergasted, but then it all makes sense. This number doesn’t even have to be what your leg operation is worth. This 140k$ is what they pulled out of their ass on that specific day, and then negotiated to get that money from your insurance company. The day goes by, you feel like garbage, the hospital has made a ton of money, and your insurance isn’t even mad, because they make orders of magnitude more, to the point where this is pocket change to them.
This is practically the same. A business would overpay you to sit in the office, your boss pays for the office, and that arbitrary amount of money goes to whoever owns the building. Issue is, they can keep cranking up the prices on non-residential buildings endlessly, because people keep paying them. Especially when it comes to hot locations like NYC, or anything similar, you know that someone’s either already paid for that office for 5 years ahead of time, and needs to justify the absurd cost, or the office floor is sitting empty, because the landlord is delusional
I believe it’s more about CEOs seeing the investor trend of making people go back to the office raising the company stock price. Simple as that there’s no need for logic when following a trend nets you several millions extra valuation
Ding ding ding ding! 1000% this. It’s not about money, property or “collaboration.” It’s about control and the fear you’re off not working when at home.