Blog #2 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

As we noted in the first blog in this series, there is a clear business case with deep scientific evidence that distinguishes between remote and in-office roles for performance and loyalty. In this follow-up blog, part 2 in our series, we explore the uniqueness in personality predictors between these roles.

Within the Hutrics platform technology, we utilize a proprietary and highly predictive measure of personality based on the HEXACO model of personality because it is highly predictive of performance and retention—and it does not display cultural differences in the assessments—as is often seen in Big Five personality measures. Given the strong grounding of scientific rigor, our personality assessment bolsters the credibility of the findings in our recent study on remote versus onsite hybrid roles. Here are some of the key findings regarding personality predictors of both Job Performance and Employee Retention/Loyalty across these two distinct roles:

Summary Table of Significant Personality Predictors by Outcome

*Orange checkmarks indicate a unique predictor for either Remote or On-Site/Hybrid

Emotionality (Stress Tolerance)

Emotionality is defined as a tendency to focus on controlling your emotions, withstanding failures, setbacks and stresses, and maintaining and/or regaining your composure. This element of personality was a significant predictor of performance for remote workers, but NOT for onsite/hybrid workers. From a hiring assessment and decision perspective, this is important information because distinguishing strong job performance for a specific role type is critical. Using just a general profile with personality included would lead a hiring manager to potentially hire someone with low stress tolerance into a remote role—which increases the odds of low performance for that individual—they would not be put in a position to be successful.

From an insight perspective, this finding is very interesting. A possible explanation of this finding could be that remote workers need to have high stress tolerance/emotionality because they are removed from the office thereby lacking constant feedback/interactions that onsite workers would. Thus, a remote worker must deal with and prioritize work with fewer feedback cues, requiring a higher degree of stress tolerance.  It is critical to account for Emotionality in the hiring profile for remote workers as it will maximize your ability to select someone who will perform at a high level in, specifically, a remote role.

Conscientiousness

The personality trait Conscientiousness is defined as a tendency to focus on achievement, organization, perfectionism, and prudence—and has consistently been a strong predictor of job performance in organizations. That continues here as Conscientiousness was a predictor of job performance for both Remote and Onsite/Hybrid workers. However, and very important to note, Conscientiousness was NOT a predictor of retention for remote workers in our study—but it was a significant predictor of retention for onsite/hybrid workers.

Again, this is important because hiring decisions are being made on multiple criteria (performance and retention)—so assuming that Conscientiousness is automatically a great predictor of both criteria for all role types WILL lead to less-than-optimal hiring decisions. Specifically, hiring for a remote job and placing significant weight on Conscientiousness will increase the likelihood of short-term turnover in those hires. From an insight perspective, this may be related to the previous finding regarding Stress Tolerance.  Remote workers who are high in Conscientiousness will likely have a difficult time prioritizing workload and be unable to defer less important work.  The bottom line is that understanding this nuance from a hiring perspective will likely lead to increased turnover.

Agreeableness and Humility

While it is the focal point of this research to understand the key distinguishing factors that separate retention and performance of remote and onsite/hybrid roles, it is also important to note that our use of a scientifically valid measure of personality also predicts these outcomes for BOTH remote and onsite/hybrid roles. Specifically, Humility (defined as a tendency to focus on fairness, sincerity, modesty, and avoidance) and Agreeableness (defined as a tendency to focus on flexibility, gentleness, forgiveness, and patience) were predictive of retention for both role types (remote and onsite/hybrid). When constructing our valid selection models for these roles, these two factors are weighted appropriately for their impact on retention for both role types. Doing so will maximize your ability to hire individuals who will want to stay with your organization for the long haul.

Summary of Key Findings

  • For Remote Roles: focus on Emotionality to drive Performance
  • For Onsite/Hybrid Roles: prioritize Conscientiousness to drive Retention
  • For both role types: focus on Agreeableness and Humility to drive Retention
  • For both role types: focus on Conscientiousness to drive Performance

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.