I've struggled to buy into this hypothesis. It's always felt so clumsy as a strategy.
How would that not make top performers want to jump ship? The employees who would struggle in a tight job market are the ones who will end up returning to the office.
So to mitigate that you create exceptions for some employees which means everyone is going into the office yet still conducting all those meetings on Zoom.
My theory is RTO is about satiating a certain type of controlling personality.
So what you are forgetting is top performers get taken care of financially. And they also have special deals where RTO is not enforced. It is much easier to have a blanket RTO with incentived attrition and allowing X% exceptions in secret (X is very small). Leadership (yep not management) knows and wants attrition. This is easier than paying severance etc.
It does feel like a shortsighted strategy, for the exact reasons you claim - the high performers can flee and you're stuck with those who can't jump. But, just because it's a bad strategy doesn't mean it isn't also the one being followed. According to at least one study[1], there is a considerable chunk of employers that hope that RTO will lead to voluntary turnover.
How would that not make top performers want to jump ship? The employees who would struggle in a tight job market are the ones who will end up returning to the office.
So to mitigate that you create exceptions for some employees which means everyone is going into the office yet still conducting all those meetings on Zoom.
My theory is RTO is about satiating a certain type of controlling personality.