In my company, we have observed that work from home has increased productivity in short term. But true collaborations have actually decreased. Often, in office,

In my company, we have observed that work from home has increased productivity in short term. But true collaborations have actually decreased. Often, in office, you would have coffee breaks/lunch with people from different departments, or talk with someone from other departments for may be 5 minutes. And we have noticed that these kind of low-cost interactions are greatly decreased during Work From Home as much because of discoverability as anything else. The effect this has on the company as a whole is that, we get less cross-pollination of ideas between different departments and therefore reduced potential for future growth. Having said that, if you are in an environment where interactions not related to your personal responsibility is mostly negative interaction, then it is understandable that work from home is better. So, in short, I would like to say that, if a company has a healthy interaction between different departments, then work from office is better for the company without much loss of time to the employees. However, in other cases, employees might prefer work from home. This of course can change from employee to employee. Some employees might prefer work from office because they have positive interactions with rest of office colleagues and other will prefer work from home. *EDIT*: I should have led with this. In my office, we have 2 people per office room. So, we have enough privacy if needed.