>we find that people with less in-office time tend to have qualitatively worse performance. At least in my field, being in the office, spending time with your co-workers, and getting to know them has value.
I think you are confounded by the fact your most overeager overachievers are going to return to office no matter what.
I'm not persuaded that's the only thing going on here, but I'm sure that is part of it. Nonetheless, I think this is why many employers pushed for RTO.
I think RTO/WFH also kind of hits on a fundamental cultural divide that is beginning to emerge in our society. There is idea of who are we working for that I think people are starting to reckon with: in support of ourselves or in support of someone else, maybe even to the point of detriment to ourselves.
The arguments for and against fall along these lines. For RTO: in favor of the company over the self. It is more "productive" by some invented measure to work in the office, so it is the correct choice damned any other factor. A total trump card to those with this logic, like arguing the sky is blue.
And then what is the for WFH argument but the following: in favor of the self over the company. Perhaps if one pushed as hard as they could, they could get more done. They could sacrifice their sleep. They could grey their hair, increase cortisol, have an early heart attack and die. But in that time, they'd get a whole lot more done for the company certainly. WFH argues that affordances toward the employee ought to be made and even favored. Things like having choice in where one might live, not being saddled with a commute costly in time or money or both, being able to parallelize tasks such as taking the two minutes to start the laundry machine then returning to the desk, being able to see pets and loved ones for more than a few fleeting hours at the end of the day, better food, the list of benefits pretty much endless and also bespoke to the worker in question.
To be pro RTO, you have to be able to sacrifice the self like an ascetic, to deny all these tradeoffs and to grant the company control over you, your family and life outside of work (as where you live and how your family has to then live is a factor with RTO), all to benefit the company over yourself. The company that will never show you loyalty, that will use the same logic you are using to return to work to one day fire you.
Among my peers, on the younger side, no one really likes working in the office at all. They all are stuck with it and would desperately like to not work in the office. I expect over time, RTO will die as the generations that are culturally inclined to put the company over themselves retire from the workforce.