Is it time to go back to the office?

There's a lot to be said for working from home, but the office has plenty going for it too. And it might not be too long before we're all back, says Merryn Somerset Webb.

Commuters trudging to work
65% of workers say they plan to return to the office this month
(Image credit: © Chris Ratcliffe/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Should you go back to the office, or lobby to keep working from home indefinitely? Part of the answer might lie in the productivity levels of classical composers. In a 2011 academic paper, Karol Jan Borowiecki of Trinity College Dublin looked at how much they produced when they worked alone compared to how much they produced when they lived in a geographic cluster.

The answer should, I think, have you planning your return to your own cluster as quickly as possible. Prominent classical composers born between 1750 and 1899 were approximately 33% more productive when in a cluster: they created on average one more work every three years than they might have otherwise, with those who migrated to be in the cluster being the greatest beneficiaries of it. The more intense the cluster, the greater the impact on overall output.

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Merryn Somerset Webb

Merryn Somerset Webb started her career in Tokyo at public broadcaster NHK before becoming a Japanese equity broker at what was then Warburgs. She went on to work at SBC and UBS without moving from her desk in Kamiyacho (it was the age of mergers).

After five years in Japan she returned to work in the UK at Paribas. This soon became BNP Paribas. Again, no desk move was required. On leaving the City, Merryn helped The Week magazine with its City pages before becoming the launch editor of MoneyWeek in 2000 and taking on columns first in the Sunday Times and then in 2009 in the Financial Times

Twenty years on, MoneyWeek is the best-selling financial magazine in the UK. Merryn was its Editor in Chief until 2022. She is now a senior columnist at Bloomberg and host of the Merryn Talks Money podcast -  but still writes for Moneyweek monthly. 

Merryn is also is a non executive director of two investment trusts – BlackRock Throgmorton, and the Murray Income Investment Trust.