Overall, the analysis, released as a pre-print, found that RTO mandates did not improve a firm’s financial metrics, but they did decrease employee satisfaction.
Drilling down, the data indicated that RTO mandates were linked to firms with male CEOs who had greater power in the company. Here, power is measured as the CEO’s total compensation divided by the average total compensation paid to the four highest-paid executives in the firm.
This is an interesting metric. And the research outcome makes a lot of sense.
Also, RTO policies are garbage - but I’m stating the obvious.
Even if it did improve company value, I don’t think you need a study to show that taking away a privilege makes employees unhappy.
Believe it or not, they’d be unhappy if you took away the coffee machine too. Just far less unhappy.
The problem is that sometimes when something seems obvious, it’s actually incorrect. A big example is that if people didn’t bother to think about it, and actually do something to confirm it, we might still think the world is flat. It’s understandable to believe, if you just walk outside and look around, that it is flat.
I agree with you that this is “obvious” but that doesn’t negate the need for a study.