Those headlines are usually associated with a bump in the stock price; it's unclear why they'd be trying to avoid them. Perhaps they think it undermines future hiring or retention, but so does RTO.
It can be bad optics for companies which took large sums of money from the government recently (say, for pandemic relief or major tax breaks of some kind) to then turn around and announce large layoffs. It guarantees that the CEO is going to have an unpleasant day or two in front of, say, a Congressional committee or maybe a state legislature hearing. And letting CEO's avoid unpleasant consequences of their own decisions is definitely an important factor in corporate decisions.
