I was asked to track my total work time and commute time between office and work from home on a day-to-day basis for two weeks. Here is what I found.
When working from home, I am working (in front of a computer actively doing something) for, on average, 8.7 hours. That excludes approximately 30 minutes of getting up for the bathroom, grabbing food, or making personal calls. But includes working time while eating at my desk. When working from the total work time is 8.7 hours on average per day. I will sign on between 8:00 - 8:30 am and will sign off between 5:00-5:30 pm.
When at the office, I spend between 60-75 minutes on my commute both ways. I am working an average of 7.2 hours when at the office. That excludes about 60-90 minutes of breaks, having to go somewhere to grab food, office chit chat, and walking around to stretch legs and rest eyes from the fluorescent lights. I have to leave the office no later than 4:30 pm to hopefully get home before dinner time. I leave my house between 6:30 and 6:45 am to arrive by 8 am and get a good seat, and as mentioned earlier, I leave by 4:30 to get home to have any sort of time with my family in the evening.
I WFH two days per week for a total of 17.4 working hours, and am at the office for three days for a total of 21.6 working hours. The company is losing over four productive hours of my time each week by mandating RTO instead of allowing me to work from home, which I have done for 12 years now. That is 208 hours per year, or the equivalent of 26 days lost because my but has to be in an uncomfortable chair at an office location with none of my coworkers or peers. My work at home and office is the same. I spend most of my day on the phone on team calls to the rest of my team, also spread out across different hubs.
RTO is costing the company time and money, not saving them time and money.