It's easy to say productivity relating any metrics convenient for me so productivity matches my expectations. Why don't they share their metrics. And even when they do, as I see Microsoft's vision is so opinionated, I would doubtedly believe on their methods for collection and accuracy.
Being realistic, whenever you work from home you are more responsible of what you do, so if you finish what you do in fewer hours but the "manager" gives you extra work because of his expectations from "work from home" where higher from the beginning, thus manager's expectations will always be higher than what is possible in reality
Something I read about in "Remote: Office not required" is a key issue and that is about having the means to measure productivity, even if very roughly or in comparison with colleagues in the same job. Many companies don't have that so they are understandably worried about people slacking at home.
Being in the office doesn't force you to work but with less distractions and ability to watch TV etc, I think you are more likely to do more work in an office than you would do at home if you are not engaged in your job.
Now if you do have something like articles per week for a copy writer or tasks per week by a Dev, you can at least call out the people whose numbers are much lower than others and find out what is going on, maybe they are struggling or they always get given the hard stuff or they are being put in too many meetings. I think Employees should expect their Managers to make them accountable for their output.
I think the interesting angle here is not whether or not remote working is more productive (which has been done to death) but the complete disconnect between worker and manager perceptions.
I doubt that workers doing less from home is true. Probably they just now realize how terribly inefficient the average white collar worker is. People are very adept at being unproductive in the workspace while looking productive and busy. Remove the smokeskreen ...
Fact is that despite people often being able to slack off (in-office or otherwise), productivity is still magnitudes higher than it was decades ago, and is continuing to increase.
Maybe we should stop trying to squeeze every ounce of work out of people? Most businesses could happily reduce working hours, even give an extra day off every week, and see very little (if any) reduction in profits.
