It’s true that a business is only as productive as its workforce; recruiting the best possible players to drive your company forward is crucial if you want to succeed. Indeed, each individual employee will have their own role to play in the progression, and longevity, of your business. A good employer will know who to bring on-board, how to nurture their natural skills and help develop other talents.
Generally speaking, there are a set number of personality types you’ll come across professionally. However, which of these are best for your workforce will depend on some key criteria:
1. What type of work you are in?
Reflect upon the industry you are part of, and the key purpose of your business. If you work in sales or hospitality, you’ll likely want your overall workforce to have a different personality compared to a team who write code or do lab work.
You can lean upon stereotypes here — extroverted individuals, who thrive with interpersonal skills, are more suited to hospitality, while introverts who can focus on a single task for a long duration of time do better in solo work such as coding and writing. That’s not to say you won’t find personality types that challenge these norms, so don’t become too narrow-minded in your expectations.
2. The personalities already employed in the team
Overall, you’ll want to achieve a workforce that is balanced in its diversity — that is, a team that doesn’t suffer from ‘group think’ (for they are all too similar in their personality type) but that has a harmonious working environment (i.e., they don’t clash heads). This can be tricky to attain, so you should work with Human Resources to vet interviewees on how they’ll fit with the company culture and existing team players.
If you’re unsure of the personality types you’ve got in the team already, Sage have compiled a list of the most commonly used personality types in business today, and how they can be used.
3. What roles do you require?
Indeed, there will be a need for most personality types within an organization, as you’ll have separate teams with roles dedicated to specific tasks and processes.
When it comes to roles such as to project management, finance or logistics, an individual who has a conscientious personality — displaying traits like forward planning and reliability — will reassure you they are getting the job done. If you’re putting together a team of trainee lawyers, a person who shows low agreeableness traits — isn’t afraid to assert their view or challenge the status quo — would have potential.
One of the biggest differentiators between professional personalities types is whether an employee tends to respond emotionally or pragmatically to a situation. This doesn’t mean whether they’d cry or not, but if — when faced with a problem — their first thought is of the people involved, or the logistics. You can see why you’d need both of these personalities in a successful business.
Finding the best personalities for your workforce
As we’ve seen, the best personalities for your workforce will be the personalities which easily take on the tasks your industry, job roles, and current employees require. You should seek balance, but diversity, within your workforce too. If you’re ever unsure about how a job candidate would fit into your company, feel free to offer them a trial that could lead to a job offer and full-time employment.
