Remote Score: Boost Your Remote or Hybrid Working Strategy

The pandemic has reshaped the world of work. Among the most enduring developments: remote work. Whether we're talking about work-from-anywhere policies, full remote, or hybrid, remote work is at the top of the list of new challenges for companies, and at the heart of new expectations from employees or candidates. These work formats are indeed much more engaging and effective. Studies by Prithwiraj (Raj) Choudhury, a professor at Harvard University, or Nicholas Bloom, from Stanford University, show that remote workers see their productivity significantly increase.

However, implementing a remote work strategy cannot be improvised: better supporting your teams in remote work relies on a delicate balance between workplace well-being and performance objectives. Engaged in a profound transformation of work, companies must therefore remain attentive to their employees.

So, how do you identify employees who will have the most difficulties with remote work? How do you identify those who will be able to get started in the blink of an eye? How do you prevent and anticipate the feeling of isolation that some might experience? How do you support them, in a concrete and operational way?

At AssessFirst, our ultimate goal is to help you identify the potential of your candidates and employees in the face of work evolution. Also, our Science team has conducted extensive studies to understand the behavioral characteristics of people who manage remote relationships most easily and who perform best in remote work.

Anticipating success in remote work

To support the implementation of your remote work strategy, AssessFirst gives you access to a new feature: the Remote Score. This indicator will allow you to benefit from all AssessFirst intelligence, and to predict, for each person:

• The most suitable work environment: full remote, remote first, hybrid, mainly in the office, or 100% of the time in the office;
• How the person will manage remote relationships: will they be able to thrive without physically seeing their colleagues and manager every day? What is their level of relational independence?
• How the person will manage their remote work: concretely, do they have a natural ability to be effective, consistent, demonstrate self-discipline, and get started easily each day?

And to go even further: for each profile, you have access to precise and directly applicable recommendations, to know how to support the person and improve their remote work experience!

A solid methodology…

To carry out this work, the first step was to precisely define what characterizes suitability for remote work and the major issues that HR professionals and managers wish to address. A review of scientific and management literature allowed us to isolate two axes of work:

• A "Relational" axis: in a remote work situation, communication methods and relationship modes change. Also, a major concern lies in the feeling of relational isolation that employees may experience, and in their ability to manage remote relationships;
• A "Work" axis: employee performance in remote work is necessarily a topic of interest for many. Without the structure and stability brought by the office, some may have difficulties adapting, getting started daily, and being as - or more - performant.

We then collected data on samples ranging from 366 to 1224 remote workers, in order to study the links between different psychological factors (personality, motivations, reasoning), and indicators quantifying the two axes presented above.

Regarding the "Relational" axis, the analyses show that profiles who manage remote relationships least well and feel most isolated share personality traits and motivations related to:

• A need to have "Work" centered on relationships and collaboration with others;
• A need for recognition;
• A very operational way of thinking, anchored in the present.

Regarding the "work" axis, it appears that the most performant profiles possess:

• Strong natural autonomy and an ability to make decisions;
• An ability to navigate uncertainty;
• A natural ease in framing their work and self-disciplining;
• Reasoning abilities above average.

Based on these analyses, our Science team then developed cutting-edge algorithms, allowing to calculate "Relational" and "Work" compatibility scores for each person in remote work. On average, the top 20% of people with the highest scores (most compatible profiles) on these indicators feel 3 times less isolated and are 4 times more performant in remote work! Our research will also be presented at the European Congress of Psychology 2022!

How to use it?

In your daily life, the remote score feature can be used in 3 main ways:

• To recruit new employees: even if the goal is not to recruit solely based on these indicators, they allow you a complementary view on the profiles most likely to perform and thrive if you are recruiting for a position with a certain amount of remote work;
• To support your employees: the recommendations proposed in the feature give you access to very practical and directly applicable management advice, allowing you to optimize your teams' remote work experience;
• To drive your remote work strategy: through each of your employees' potential for remote work, best design your remote work strategy by identifying who will be more performant/thriving in the office… or in remote work!

It's your turn

To discover the Remote Score feature, go to your AssessFirst application! Or try it yourself for free for 14 days, by opening an account here!