King's College London

Instead, limited but co-ordinated office contact has been found to improve productivity, strengthen workplace communication and reduce staff turnover in fully remote teams.

The findings emerged from a new study which involved a nine-month trial of customer-service employees at a large multinational service firm. Employees were randomly assigned either to remain fully remote or to come into the office together on one fixed day each month.

The results showed that even a small amount of face-to-face contact matters. Employees assigned to co-ordinated monthly office time handled 7.8 per cent more calls per hour in the period after the trial than employees who remained fully remote. The increase in productivity did not come at the expense of measured customer-service quality.

The office contact also helped employees communicate more with one another. In the week after coming into the office, employees spent an additional 36 minutes communicating with colleagues. Workers who were randomly seated next to each other during the office day were also 11 percentage points more likely to communicate afterwards.

The policy also helped the firm retain staff. Attrition fell from 21 per cent among employees who remained fully remote to 13.7 per cent among those assigned to attend the office once a month, a reduction of about one-third.

The business case was also positive, with the estimated value of higher productivity and lower staff turnover around about five times larger than the cost of running the programme, including transport and meals.

The paper was co-authored by Dr Cevat Giray Aksoy of King’s College London and European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), Nicholas Bloom and Steven Davis of Stanford University, Cem Ozguzel of the Paris School of Economics, and Victoria Marino of the EBRD.

The authors said: “Our results suggest that the benefits of proximity do not require a full return to the office. Even limited but coordinated in-person contact can improve communication, retention and performance in fully remote teams.”