In particular, an evaluation of what soft skills might benefits teams and businesses more widely is really valuable. In the post-pandemic work environment, FM is recognised much more as a people orientated profession, over the typical ‘bogs and brooms’ classification it has had. Soft skills are much more personality focused, and many companies find merit in psychometric testing for their teams to gain a better understanding of individual ways of working and group dynamics.

Personality profiling, using methods such as DiSC, provides a “model for demonstrating common emotional responses to the perceptions and demands of a person’s environment.” For team leaders, it supplies insight on how to create a working environment your team feels comfortable in, leading them to collaborate more effectively, communicate more, and explore ways of fixing problems together.

For individuals, profiling can bring a greater understanding of their own workplace personality, allowing them to engage more fully with colleagues in their own way, and gives them the space to set more meaningful boundaries at work. They are able to mediate more successfully with colleagues too, and navigate the workplace in a more natural way, by quickly identifying situations that will make them less productive, as they are expending more energy working in a way that does not come easily. This awareness produces a less stressful and more productive working environment.

Personality profiling can also be used in recruitment and onboarding processes to make more informed hiring decisions. Companies that are open to considering candidates with the right soft skills profile alongside technical expertise can have access to a wider talent pool, as emphasis on the soft skills can allow for more people outside of the sector to be in the running, or people who haven’t done that role before to be considered.

This can be very valuable to encouraging a diversity of thought in a business; and brings more recognition to the FM sector. This approach requires hiring managers to have a good understanding of the current team and the vacancy in question in order to identify which skills would be necessary. This type of hiring can be targeted at filling gaps in the current team, or ensuring that the new hire will work well within the group, or they can use the personality profile of the outgoing employee to inform on the type of person best suited to a particular role.

For example, many data driven people share similar ways of working and a meticulous and analytical approach to projects, even if they may not have worked in the specific field before. Finding an equivalent soft skills profile could demonstrate a candidate who will be able to take on the work without a lot of experience in the sector.

A similar approach can be employed when looking to replace team leads or other management roles within an organisation. If one manager is roundly praised and works really well with the surrounding personnel inside and outside of a company, looking for someone with a similar soft skills profile may be just as important as the experience they have in regards to the more technical aspect of a role.

This approach does therefore require robust onboarding processes to get people integrated into the company quickly. It can also require sound training processes for people to gain technical skills they need to develop. Using their profile whilst onboarding them can improve the experience too. As noted by workplace consultant, Alyson McNeela, Everything DiSC Practitioner, personality profiling of successful candidates can ensure “their onboarding into the company can be better tailored to meet their needs, ensuring engagement and open communication from day one.”

Profiling can be used throughout the hiring process. When looking for a person who works in a certain way or needs particular skills to fit well into your current team, you can arrange your interview questions to highlight where candidates may have those skills and allow interviewees to demonstrate their use of them. This could lead to more informed decision making when thinking how someone may benefit the team dynamics, and could even make the recruitment process more efficient by having that data sooner. This could lead to fewer interviews, streamlining the process and saving cost, as well as creating a better overall experience for candidates.

Personality profiling is routinely used by businesses to improve team cohesion, reduce tensions and develop relationships both within the team and externally, with clients and other stakeholders. It is also used to better inform decision making in the hiring process, broaden access to talent in the market, and assign certain skills to certain roles in order to create more skills based job descriptions and diversify the workforce.