I've been working remotely for the past 12 to13 years - a long damn time for sure. When Covid hit, the whole company followed suit for obvious reasons. During that time, one in which this country and company may never have seen the likes of, we as a workforce maintained a hyper-focus on our jobs and did what was necessary to masterfully maneuver this company through an unknown, dark period. It wasn't the C-level geniuses that did that, we did that - the people who for whatever reason now cannot be trusted to put in a full-days work, who need to collaborate with total strangers that have no clue or interest in what we do.
If this company can run, no thrive, in an environment where there are so many opportunities for distraction, why all of a sudden are things diametrically different? What changed? Well, we know what changed - NOTHING!
So, my point is this - don't be a coward, be a man and tell the truth. Tell us that the real reason for this RTO and move to a Centralized hub exercise is to eliminate people, not because of the ridiculous reasons that we just overwhelmingly proved to be inaccurate.