Over the past few months, we’ve been creeping back to the office, navigating packed commutes to our desks and in-person meetings. The rise of the omicron variant might have us wondering if we will be asked to work from home again but, according to new research, our bosses may well want to keep us within sight. 

A paper published this week in the Journal of the Royal Economic Society suggests we are doing our best work while actually in the office. Researchers at the Rotterdam School of Management in Netherlands examined 215,000 moves made by a group of world-class chess players, some of whom were playing digitally and others at in-person tournaments. They found that the quality of moves made by those competing at home was significantly worse than those who were in a “real life” environment.

“Our results show a clear decrease in overall performance in the remote setting,” says Dutch academic Dr Dainis Zegners, who studied the moves using artificial intelligence. “This was particularly pronounced at the beginning of the time period when players had to adapt to the new setting.”

“Chess is, in many ways, is similar to the work of the knowledge society’s office workplaces,” says Zegners. “The game is strategic, analytical and takes place under time pressure. Cognitive skills used in chess are also used for complicated tasks and strategic decision making such as drafting a legal contract, preparing a tender document or managerial decisions – the kind of tasks that require clear and precise thinking.”

Zegners went on to suggest that the initial drop in cognitive performance and the adaptation time “might be even more pronounced for most other workers”.

You’d be forgiven for thinking that working from home puts you in a far better frame of mind for complicated mental tasks – no office gossip, no ringing phones, no interruptions for group tea rounds. So why is this so?

Cary Cooper is professor of organisational psychology at the University of Manchester. “Even before the lockdowns, we had the technology to move to remote working and there were very good reasons why we didn’t,” he says. “The chess-playing analogy can easily be exported to more general professions. Face-to-face with one another, the players will be looking at non-verbal clues: whether the person’s eye is twitching, or their body language is otherwise unsure.” 

There is no way one can pick up on these clues remotely, he says. “Similarly, in an office, you’ll be able to pick up on more subtle clues about your performance and modify yourself accordingly.” Cooper points to other “softer” benefits that lead to clearer thinking: better communication, information sharing and collaboration. 

The Rotterdam research isn’t the first to suggest the benefits of in-office working. A study in September this year of 3,000 workers reported that travelling to and from the office each day had a positive impact on mental health. 

Forty-five per cent of people in the study said they felt more productive in the office, compared with 29 per cent at home, as they could share ideas with colleagues without having to schedule a call. A similar proportion said they were more distracted by household chores, deliveries and longer lunches when working from home.

Neuroscientists at University College London, who analysed the results of the survey, said physically going to the office boosts wellbeing as it allows employees to separate work and home life. 

“The commute delineates boundaries between home and work life and can be used to switch one off and transition to the other, which can have a positive impact on cognitive performance, wellbeing and productivity,” said lead author Joseph Devlin, professor of brain sciences at UCL. “Just going to work generates more diverse experiences than working from home, especially through interactions with other people.”