3 Competencies That Lead to Remote Work Success

As organizations wrestle with the decision to make remote work permanent, a litmus test to see who will struggle and who will thrive working from home is more urgent than ever.

To tackle this question, we performed an analysis of our big data on employed folks across the United States. By measuring 50 different psychological traits, we identified the key workplace competencies that lead to remote work success.

The 3 Competencies Needed for Successful Remote Work

The picture that emerged tells a clear story about the kind of candidate your organization should be looking for in a remote environment. The three top-weighted competencies of successful remote workers were:

So, what do these competencies mean?

• Performance Monitoring: Performance Monitoring is the behavior of establishing and tracking goals or metrics around one’s own performance and that of others, to ensure that work progresses at an appropriate pace, that high performance is easily recognized, and that small setbacks don’t snowball into larger issues that prevent progress.
• Results Orientation: Results Orientation is a focus on creating realistic daily tasks that regulate day-to-day work, tracking one’s success, and otherwise acting to ensure steady progress toward overall goals or milestones. These behaviors help people keep progress on track without any negative surprises.
• Follow Through: It is often easier to begin something than to finish it, and yet we harvest value from our actions only when we finish them. Follow Through is the practice of returning to our projects and communications until they are seen through to the end and completed thoroughly and effectively.

Together, these key three competencies depict an employee who keeps their eye on the prize and stays motivated to get there, leading to remote work success.

The 2 Traits Underlying These Workplace Competencies

Each competency is comprised of a number of traits that interact with each other to create the competency. The top-weighted traits underlying the three key competencies that lead to successful remote workers were:

These two traits will keep your employees motivated even when they’re not immersed in an environment or climate that dictates performance as a priority. Here’s how they’re defined:

• Grit: Grit is the tendency to persevere in order to succeed, exerting a continuous and high degree of effort to pursue goals to their completion. 
• Competitiveness: Competitiveness is the motivation to outperform one’s peers.

To sum it up, what should you be looking for in remote work candidates?

People who succeed in a remote work environment have the tenacity to stay motivated, ensuring that everything runs according to plan despite the obstacles a remote work environment presents.

How do you figure out who has these traits and competencies?

Cangrade offers an easy-to-take assessment that identifies the level of these traits and competencies in 14 minutes and an out-of-the-box success model built to predict remote work success.

Want to get even more tailored to your company’s unique profile? We also build success models on a specific organization and role basis that are customized to the values and metrics your company cares about most. Contact us to learn more.