From ‘Paddlers’ to ‘Task-Takers’: The Five Types of Home-Workers

New report demonstrates how online assessments can reveal where home-based workers are struggling

Working from home has become all but universal. According to a new report, the ability of workers to adapt to the new circumstances has been anything but consistent.

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Questionmark, the online assessment provider, has released five typologies that capture the different ways workers are adapting. By assessing the ‘remote-readiness’ of the workforce, organizations can determine which challenges exist across teams.

Questionmark, the online assessment provider, has released five typologies that capture the different ways workers are adapting. By assessing the ‘remote-readiness’ of the workforce, organizations can determine which challenges exist across teams. Leaders can introduce training and interventions.

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The report identifies five home-worker typologies.

  • Seasoned survivors – before the current crisis, millions were experienced remote workers. Working from home is nothing new. They are familiar with the range of technology at their disposal and well versed in the culture and etiquette that accompanies remote working.
  • Paddlers – this group have some experience of working from home. But are they as remote ready as employers might assume? Perhaps in the past, they have been home based every now and then to let a repair man in. But have they exaggerated the effectiveness of their at-home set up?
  • Newbs – the people entering a brave new world, technologically and culturally. Having never worked from home before, this group is experiencing a host of challenges. From the cat jumping on the keyboard to struggling to find the mute button on a video conference, creating a professional environment is taking its time.
  • The anxious – crafting an email from your kitchen table may be a strikingly similar process to doing so from the office. But for the anxious, new ways of working have triggered a sense of crisis. Convinced that their job role is simply impossible to execute from home, productivity from this group is in sharp decline.
  • Task-takers – studies have shown that working from home requires ‘high self-efficacy.’1 But this group are used to taking orders. Without a manager or supervisor sat next to them, deciding what to do next seems like an insurmountable challenge. For some this is symptomatic of job roles performed to date. In others, it is engrained into personality.

Lars Pedersen, CEO of Questionmark said, “in many countries, organizations had to move to remote working in the space of a few days. There was simply no time to conduct a ‘remote ready’ analysis. It was all done on the go.”

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HR TechnologyNEWSonline assessmentPaddlersQuestionmarkTECHNOLOGYtrainingWorking From Home
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