Like anything, remote vs in-person work is multifaceted
1) For experienced high performers, remote work definitely increases productivity. They're much likely to work longer hours and get more done when they're not in the office.
2) For people who are on the low end or need more guidance, it's more likely for them to slip or get left behind with remote work.
3) It takes longer to onboard new hires working remotely.
4) There's more barriers to cross-team collaboration working remotely. You don't have that natural bumping into each other in the office and unintentional communication that you do on Slack or Teams.
5) Remote work allows you to pull from a much greater talent pool, and you don't have to spend money on office space. This is really beneficial for startups.
6) For larger companies, remote work is excellent for teams that need to support a live product 24/7 since you can pull from many different time zones.
7) For managers and senior leadership, your meetings are all on zoom. And they're all back to back. The natural food or bathroom breaks you get working in an office don't exist. And they're more likely to exist later into the night.
This all leads to high performers picking up a lot more of the team's slack. They tend to thrive. Meanwhile, there's a certain percentage of staff that aren't doing a lot or are struggling. Managers are totally overloaded with meetings and don't have much time to give direct support. And because these are the decision makers, they're more likely to be in favor of RTO.
What I expect to happen with RTO is that junior staff and new hires will pick up more work (hopefully), the meeting burden on managers will be me more reasonable, and there will be better collaboration. But the high performers who teams rely on will be unhappy, will get less done, and are more likely to leave. Productivity will dip at first, and there might be a brain drain. It might be a good decision longer term. But there are tradeoffs any way you do it.