I was planning to retire April 2022 for a long time and thankfully it wasn't derailed by everything over the last few years.
My megacorp actually began trialing remote & hybrid work with small groups during the mid aughts. My contact center department was one of the early innovators within the company. The push came from a variety of factors but business continuity was a biggie. We perviously got hit hard by a worm virus, the CIO got canned, the CEO mandated we focus on strengthening our business continuity resilency, and remote work was one of the ideas.
Technology was one aspect (laptops for everyone, VPN, voip, headsets, webcams/video conf, etc) but policy was another. We treated it as a carrot for the staff. Had to agree to come in a few days/one week a month for training. Also had to agree to give up remote work if your performance metrics were problematic. The staff obviously loved it, particularly the ones that had long commutes in. Personally, I liked coming in and socializing with whoever was in that day but it also helped that I only had a 15 minute commute. I do think going in more regularly and building relationships in person helped my career.
Of course it was next to 100% work from home during the pandemic.
The missus felt the worklife balance my company offered was reasonable and that I should consider continuing to work. But the pressure to constantly produce burned me out so work from home or not, that was it for me.