Here’s a good theory by Bruce Daisley about the real reason why productivity might be falling in organizations:

If you want to understand why productivity is falling, we need to look first at high levels of employee turnover. If we want to solve productivity issues the first step needs to be to lower the resignation rate.

We all know well when people quit their jobs a period of unproductivity commences: bosses and colleagues need to cover the work of the person leaving, the recruitment process takes unproductive attention and new starters take months to ramp up. As Ton says, ‘high employee turnover is ruinous for productivity’.

Blaming “low productivity” on the rise of remote work—like some publications are trying to do instead—seems pretty lazy.