It depends on the type of work based on The Atlantic article in the comments.

If it’s personal productivity, letting people work where and when they want produces greater output with less interruptions.

But if it’s the type of work that needs “collaborative efficiency”, where the speed in which a group solves a problem, then distance can drag efficiency down.

An IBM study of software developers found that workers in the same office exchanged 38 communications about issues they needed to collaborate on, versus 8 when it was a virtual setting.

It states email, phone, video, instant messaging has an inherent weakness as one has to choose to use them and the farther apart we are, the less likely people communicate.

The article uses an example of business being like an airplane cockpit when there’s a fuel leak: diagnose a problem, put together a solution, get feedback, course-correct and repeat, which can happen in a much quicker setting face to face.

I’m sure there’s opposing views, but I thought this article had some valid arguments.