Nigel Farage, leader of Reform UK, recently dismissed working from home as “a load of nonsense,” arguing that people are more productive when they are physically together. “People are not more productive working from home,” he said. “They are more productive being with other fellow human beings and working as part of a team.”  

The implication is clear, if you want output, innovation and teamwork, get people back into the office. 

Is working from home less productive? 

For many employers and policymakers, this question has become shorthand for a broader cultural debate about discipline, work ethic and economic growth. But research from INSEAD suggests the answer may be more psychologically complicated than either side admits. 

Published in Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, research by INSEAD Professor Nadav Klein finds that people systematically overestimate how often they interact with others, including collaboration with colleagues in workplace settings.

He calls this bias the “small world illusion.” Interactions with colleagues, the moments that often spark new ideas and information, tend to be unplanned. We bump into someone in a corridor, exchange a few words before a meeting, or have a quick chat by the coffee machine. These moments are socially vivid and easy to recall. 

What we do not recall as easily are the many times those interactions did not happen, the days when schedules did not align, when colleagues were absorbed in their screens, or when people simply missed one another. According to Klein’s research, this imbalance creates an availability bias. We judge frequency based on what comes easily to mind. 

Across multiple experiments, participants predicted how often they would interact with specific acquaintances and then reported how often those interactions actually occurred. Consistently, predicted interaction exceeded reality. In other words, people thought they were interacting more than they actually were. 

Spontaneous in-person interactions are overestimated 

Crucially for the return to office debate, the effect held in workplace contexts. Employees working in person overestimated how many times they would interact with colleagues during a given week. Even when researchers collected reports frequently to reduce memory error, the pattern remained. 

The study does not claim that remote work is inherently more productive, nor does it argue that offices reduce output. Instead, it challenges a central assumption behind calls to end remote work, that physical presence automatically translates into rich, frequent collaboration. 

If organisations assume that bringing people back to the office will naturally reactivate informal networks, they may be relying on a cognitive illusion. The research suggests spontaneous interactions happen less often than people believe. 

That matters because weak ties are often credited with driving innovation and opportunity. If we overestimate how often those ties are activated, we may also overestimate the informational and creative benefits of simply being in the same building. 

This does not mean remote work is a universal solution. It does mean that presence alone is not the same as interaction, and interaction is not guaranteed by proximity. 

Should I get a remote job? 

The answer may not hinge solely on productivity statistics. The better question may be how interaction is structured. Whether in office or remote work, collaboration depends on deliberate design, scheduled touchpoints, clear coordination, and intentional relationship building. 

The political framing, including from Farage and Reform, often reduces the issue to a binary choice between discipline and flexibility. But the evidence suggests the real divide is between assumption and measurement. 

It is right that human connection matters. But research by Professor Klein suggests we may simply be overconfident about how often it actually happens, and that mandating attendance may not, by itself, deliver the productivity gains its advocates expect. 

Physical presence creates opportunity. Opportunity is not the same as collaboration. 

By, Alex Lopez

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