Blog #1 of 5-Part Blog Series: Your Hunch About the Difference Between Hiring for Remote and Onsite Jobs was Right…and We Have the Data to Prove It

This 5-part Blog Series will examine the critical need to assess for the key factors that differentiate success in remote roles versus onsite/hybrid roles—and what the most critical differences are in these roles to maximize your hiring decisions.

Traditionally, the key elements of a great hiring assessment process contain highly validated measures of varied aspects of the job candidate (e.g., working memory, situational judgment, personality, experiences/biodata, competencies and fit). However, now that the world isn’t going back to completely onsite roles because of COVID, it is critical that we move on from just assuming and speculating about how remote roles are different—and what makes certain people a good fit for them—and start measuring and incorporating those differences into our hiring processes for those role types. Hutrics, with our industry-leading hiring assessments, conducted the first study of its kind to uncover the key differences that drive both performance and loyalty (i.e., retention) for remote roles versus onsite/hybrid roles—and created the hiring profiles that yield up to 97% accuracy.

The Data

The validation study used assessment data collected across all industries. When we examined the data, the differences between remote employees and onsite/hybrid employees were so stark that they warranted not only further scrutiny but also a distinct hiring profile to maximize their validity. Continuing to keep the remote, onsite employees in one bucket when creating a hiring process (as other assessment firms do) did not make practical nor scientific sense. Quite frankly, it would be doing a disservice to all job candidates who are trying to find a job that will maximize their performance and loyalty. We will focus on the numerous insights that our study revealed in this blog series. Yet, a few over-arching themes became apparent very quickly:

  • Onsite and Hybrid Connection: The key drivers of loyalty and performance were nearly identical for hybrid and onsite roles, so thinking of those role types similarly makes sense.
  • Key Drivers Differ: The exact role performed remotely versus onsite/hybrid has very different key drivers of performance and loyalty – a candidate can be a high performer in a remote role and fail in an onsite/hybrid role (or vice versa) – in other words, the environment makes a huge difference.  Applying the same criteria and selection process for remote and onsite/hybrid roles can easily result in poor hiring decisions (i.e., low performance & low loyalty).
  • Critical Missing Factor: Location/Modality is a new core job characteristic that, left unassessed, can greatly harm performance and loyalty—it must be considered alongside the traditional key factors that need to be measured in any hiring, management or development process.
  • Significant Profile Differences: The differences between remote versus onsite/hybrid roles emerged across numerous facets of the job candidates—personality, culture/values fit, experiences, and situational judgment. This was not just one isolated area of difference; the profile of success for each role type was significantly different.

It is critically important to remember that although the core job tasks can be the same for an onsite/hybrid versus remote role—the manner of work completion differs (e.g., fewer interpersonal connections via remote, fewer spontaneous interactions, no face-to-face meetings). By not accounting for that in our hiring process, we miss important information to maximize performance and loyalty. This blog series will dive deeper into the critical areas where we found the largest significant differences in the key drivers of loyalty and performance between remote and onsite/hybrid roles, which include:

  • Personality Factors
  • Culture/Values Fit
  • Experiences, Skills

“The ability to uncover and assess whether a job candidate will thrive (or not) in a remote versus onsite/hybrid role is a critical next step in the recruiting/hiring function—it takes the subjectivity out of a critical part of the hiring decision process—and allows us to maximize our certainty that a candidate will both perform at a high level and be loyal to the organization.” –Brian Wright, CEO, Pionear

This 5 part blog series continues with:

For more information about Hutrics’ comprehensive leadership assessments (that include competency assessments along with personality, working memory, culture fit, experiences) and how they can help you achieve better business results, contact us today.