Working from home increases your risk of making mistakes, scientists say

Working from home increases your risk of making mistakes, a study examining the quality of chess play has found.

The standard was significantly worse when players competed online instead of face to face, researchers discovered, suggesting that not being in the office is harmful to productivity.

They monitored nearly 215,000 chess moves made by players during in-person and digital tournaments, checking them against what was the best play by using artificial intelligence.

Such was the impact on performance when playing remotely, it would have taken Norwegian grandmaster Magnus Carlsen, the world’s top-rated player, to the same rating as the current 20th-best player, according to Dainis Zegners from Rotterdam School of Management, one of the study’s co-authors.

He said the research showed that remote working could hinder people’s ability to carry out mentally-intense tasks while alone.

Working from home increases your risk of making mistakes, a study examining the quality of chess play has found (stock image)

WFH stifles creativity, communication and teamwork – study

Working from home reduces creativity, communication and teamwork, a study from researchers at Microsoft found.

Researchers at the Redmond, Washington-based tech giant looked at data from more than 61,000 employees at the company from December 2019, prior to lockdown, to June 2020.

They found working from home (WFH) made workers ‘more siloed in how they communicate’ and forced them to engage in fewer real-time conversations.

It also made it harder for employees across different departments to acquire and share new information, which could have implications for a company’s ‘productivity and innovation’.

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‘Chess is in many ways similar to the work of the knowledge society’s office workplaces: the game is strategic, analytical and takes place under time pressure,’ Zegners said.

‘Cognitive skills used in chess are also used for complicated tasks such as drafting a legal contract or preparing a tender document — the kind of tasks that require clear and precise thinking.’

He added: ‘For these kinds of tasks, our results imply that while workers might be able to conduct them on a sufficient level from home, there will be a drop in the productivity that can be sizeable.’

The study found that the impact of playing online was particularly pronounced when tournaments started going digital at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic.

This effect then gradually diminished as players adapted.

In the paper, the researchers wrote: ‘Our results show a clear decrease in overall performance in the remote setting, which is particularly pronounced at the beginning of the time period when chess players had to switch to the new setting…

‘We think the initial drop in cognitive performance and the adaptation time might be even more pronounced for most other workers.’

One of the researchers involved in the study was inspired to carry it out after being frustrated with his level of play when tournaments were forced online because of various lockdowns around the world.

Christian Seel of Maastricht University holds the chess rating of international master and is ranked 855th in the world.

The study did not look at whether blunders were the result of more creative play, or just mistakes.

‘During the Covid-19 pandemic, traditional (offline) chess tournaments were prohibited and instead held online,’ the researchers wrote.

The quality of chess play was significantly worse when players competed online instead of in person, experts found, suggesting that not being in the office harms productivity (stock)

‘We exploit this unique setting to assess the impact of remote–work policies on the cognitive performance of individuals.

‘Using the artificial intelligence embodied in a powerful chess engine to assess the quality of chess moves and associated errors, we find a statistically and economically significant decrease in performance when an individual competes remotely versus offline in a face-to-face setting.

‘The effect size decreases over time, suggesting an adaptation to the new remote setting.’

The research has been published in the journal of the Royal Economics Society.

The ‘hybrid model’: Two days in the office could become new normal

Having three days at home and two in the office could become the new normal as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, some experts believe.

Large companies, including Microsoft, are promoting a ‘hybrid model’ of working post-lockdown, comprising a mix of work from home and office work.

The oil company BP, which sold its London headquarters last year, said staff would work from the office three days a week.

The accountancy firm PwC said it expects workers to be in the office or with clients between two and three days a week from September, adding that flexible working would be the ‘norm rather than the exception’.

Chairman and senior partner at PwC, Kevin Ellis, said office life is particularly important for those starting out in their careers.

This group will be in the office two to three days a week in order to ‘learn, network and socialise’.

The Institute of Directors said two thirds of business leaders will allow remote working.

Roger Barker, the institute’s director of policy, said the pandemic had driven a revolution ‘greater than radical reform or regulation ever could have’.

And YouGov found just one in five bosses will require all staff to come in five days a week after the pandemic.

NatWest expects almost nine in ten staff to work at home while Asda said its employees could work from any location suited to their job.

YouGov’s head of data journalism, Matt Smith, said ‘hybrid working will become the norm for many’.

John Lewis has introduced the option of flexible working for all head office staff, unless they cannot do their job from home, saying the pandemic had made everyone rethink ‘the norm of five days in an office’.

The department store chain’s People Director, Nikki Humphrey, said: ‘Being forced to work from home made us all realise very quickly that we could do what we had previously thought was impossible.

‘Now that we can go back to our offices, the seismic change has made us question why we would expect people to do long commutes up to five days per week when they could use that time to improve their lives by spending more time with their families, pursuing interests or other personal commitments.’

The outsourcer Capita said 35,000 of its 55,000 staff can work from home most of the time, while Asda said staff could work from any location suited to their job.

The Very Group, which owns online retailers Very and Littlewoods, said staff could do a combination of office and home-working.

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