Comment by BrenBarn
There is a middle ground though between "employees can't be trusted" and "all is well". It's possible for there to be a genuine difference in affordances such that people are more productive in some places than others. I think many people would be less productive in a dank basement than in a pleasant office, but then again maybe you don't want it to be too cushy or productivity may go down. I don't think it's realistic to expect everyone to be equally productive in all environments.
That said, I share your fear that all such considerations are just a smokescreen. In a larger sense the entire issue of "productivity" is a smokescreen. We don't need "more productivity". What we need is for people to be happy, and potentially that may be achieved by reducing productivity in some ways.
> What we need is for people to be happy
that is irrelevant to company management - in so far as that happiness has negligible effect on productivity.
However, from anecdotal evidence i've gathered (only sample size of 5-7 or so), in office has been more productive, but they (with the exception of one, who lives 5 mins from their office) all dislike RTO and would've preferred WFH; but not enough to quit over it as it's not a 5 day mandate, but a 3-4 day mandate.