Many CEOs are are currently nixing work-from-home programs and forcing all of their employees back into the office full time.

And without fail, they all seem shocked and appalled when employees dare to question their decision.

Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JP Morgan Chase, in particular was just outraged that thousands of his employees spoke against it and signed a petition to preserve flexible working. He went on an angry rant full of curse words in a town hall meeting where he claimed that being together in the office is the ONLY way to be creative and productive because there you can communicate and collaborate in person.

He said that he didn’t care how many people signed the petition and added things like:

Don’t give me this s— that work-from-home-Friday works. I call a lot of people on Fridays, and there’s not a goddamn person you can get a hold of.

A lot of you were on the f— Zoom…and you were sending texts to each other about what an a— the other person is.

Most recently, Danish pharma giant Novo Nordisk announced not only a massive round of layoffs but also that all office workers must be in the office full time going forward. This triggered a lot of pushback from employees because Novo has had a very flexible policy of letting people work from home when it makes sense for them and the team.

So I thought I should do a public service for all of these CEOs and try to help them understand why their employees don’t just accept it and knuckle under when their freedom to work from home is taken away.

There are three main reasons why.

1: Loss aversion

The work of Daniel Kahneman and many others has proven that we humans hate losing stuff. Taking something away from us – even stuff we don’t necessarily value very highly – can trigger intense negative feelings.

If employees currently have the freedom to work from home, taking it away from them will absolutely trigger loss aversion.

2: Working from home is amazing

People who have the flexibility to work from home at least part time love it. Research shows that it has a large number of positive effects, including:

Productivity – people get more work done, partly because they experience fewer interruptions than in the office.

Better work-life balance – it’s easier to handle all of your responsibilities outside of work when you can work from home. You also spend less time commuting.

Feeling of trust – employees feel trusted by the company and therefore more loyal and engaged.

Of course they don’t want to lose all of this and of course they’re going to push back against any decision that would make their work lives significantly worse.

3: Forcing people back to the office is meaningless

If the company could demonstrate conclusively to employees that the only way the company can move forward and be successful is by stopping working from home, then I think people would accept it.

For instance, if my job changed from an internal role to a customer facing role that required me to be physically present in a location, then it’s clear why I can no longer work from home and that decision would have a legitimate purpose to back it up.

But companies never do that. Instead they make a lot of noise about “fostering collaboration” or “making faste decisions” or “strengthening the culture” while never actually demonstrating why that can’t be done while still giving employees the option to work from home some of the time.

And here’s another thing: Even on days where people are in the office, a large percentage of the work or the coordination they perform is still digital through email, chat or video meetings. Even more so, if the company has people in different locations.

You don’t go to a coworker’s desk and interrupt their workflow every time you need help with something. You don’t call a meeting every time you have a question. You don’t go to your manager’s office every time you need to make a decision. Or at least, I really, really hope you don’t!

If 50% of your work day in the office is virtual anyway, you’ve gotta ask yourself why you couldn’t have spent 50% of the week working from home.

And that’s why employees will see the decision to force them back into the office and thereby make their work-life significantly worse as a bad and meaningless decision.

The upshot

All of this of course also means that if the company doesn’t listen and reintroduce flexible working, employees are going to vote with their feet and go find better jobs. And who’s going to go first? The most qualified people as always will find it easiest to get new jobs. That leads to brain drain.

Some people see this as a good thing. Just today I heard the dumbest argument I have ever heard for forcing people back to the office: It will help the company identify who is not committed to being in the office full time.

Wow. Just wow. That rationale could be used to justify any mistreatment of employees; anyone who speaks out is just not committed to the organization!

The good news is that many companies are deliberately choosing to be remote, like Spotify, Canva and Atlassian.

Even Dimon has since apologized for his rant. Not for maligning his remote workers. Not for claiming that they’re all slacking when they work from home. No – he apologized for cursing.

Jamie, Jamie, Jamie… the problem was not you dropping some F-bombs. The problem was your complete inability to trust your employees and to recognize that there are more ways of working effectively than the one you prefer.