How Managers Can Use the Big Five to Design Hybrid Workdays That Work for Everyone

Hybrid work often looks simple on paper. One team, two or three days in the office, the rest at home. Same policy for everyone.

Yet, for the people involved, those five days can feel completely different, and the work that comes out of them can be just as uneven. One person is energized by the whiteboards and hallway chats. Another goes home exhausted from noise and interruptions. Someone else spends remote days wondering if they are slowly becoming invisible. The policy is identical. The experience is not.

The difference is who’s in the room, and what “a good day” looks like for them based on their natural working style. 

Hybrid Work Through a Big Five Lens

The Big Five is a model of personality that describes people along five broad traits: Extraversion, Conscientiousness, Agreeableness, Neuroticism and Openness to Experience. Everyone has all five traits to some degree. When I managed a big team, I actively looked for people with a mix of traits, because a diversity of strengths made the whole group more resilient. 

In a hybrid setting, these same traits help explain why some people love the mix of home and office and some struggle with it. In fact, some very clear patterns emerge when you consider how people focus and recover across a fixed hybrid week. 

What’s less obvious, as a manager, is how to work with those differences when your basic return-to-office (RTO) framework can’t move very far. Let’s break down the hybrid experience using Big Five trait theory, and explore some strategies that can help.

Extraversion: Balancing People Time and Quiet Time

Extraversion is the trait of gaining energy and stimulation from the outside world, especially from other people and activity. Inside a hybrid environment, Extraverted team members often look forward to office days. They leave feeling clearer because checking in at someone’s desk and talking ideas through face-to-face helps them think in motion. Zoom calls don’t give the same buzz. 

People lower in Extraversion (Introverts) tend to conserve energy in quieter settings and are more quickly drained by noise and social demand. An open plan office plus a heavy meeting load can mean they get to the end of the day overstimulated and short on actual output. 

In April 2021, Truity surveyed more than 3,000 people who were returning to the office after the pandemic lockdowns. We found that Introverts were nearly twice as likely to dread returning to in‑person work compared to Extraverts. It’s naive to think that gap has gone away; it simply shows up now in how people experience the same hybrid schedule.

Practical ways to design for different levels of Extraversion:

• Use office days as intended – for work that genuinely benefits from real‑time discussion and live problem solving.
• Protect clear blocks of quiet time on office days so your Introverts, who tire more quickly from interaction, can still get through focused work without constant interruption.
• Treat remote days as the default for tasks that need longer concentration or more considered, written thinking. Avoid loading them with “overflow” meetings.
• Be explicit about which conversations you expect to happen in person and which should happen in writing, so Extraverted people do not keep waiting for a meeting that quieter colleagues assume would live in a document or channel.

Conscientiousness: Structure Versus Flexibility

Conscientiousness measures how organized, reliable and goal-focused someone is. People high in this trait like to plan ahead and know exactly what is expected of them. They follow through on commitments and often feel responsible for the quality of their work.

People lower in Conscientiousness tend to be more spontaneous and relaxed about rules and structure. They prefer to respond to what is in front of them, which makes them ideal team members in unpredictable, fast-moving situations, and can feel stifled by too many procedures.

In hybrid work, these differences show up in how people react to changing schedules and expectations. Highly Conscientious team members prefer a fixed and predictable RTO pattern; if changes from one week to the next, they will find this stressful. Less Conscientious team members may feel more motivated when they have freedom to organize their own day within broad guardrails.

Practical ways to design for different levels of Conscientiousness: 

• Agree on a clear, predictable rhythm for office and home days and avoid making frequent, last minute changes.
• Make expectations explicit, including core hours, response time norms and how performance is evaluated in a hybrid setup.
• Within that structure, give people room to choose how they will organize their own focus time, especially on remote days. 
• Use one-to-one meetings to check whether highly Conscientious employees are carrying hidden work. 
• With less Conscientious team members, focus on a few simple, non-negotiable habits that support the whole group, such as updating shared boards or arriving prepared for hybrid meetings. 

Agreeableness: The Hidden "Yes" Overload

Agreeableness reflects how cooperative, kind and conflict-averse someone is. People high in Agreeableness want everyone to get along and will often agree with the group consensus just to keep the peace. People lower in Agreeableness are more comfortable with disagreement and more likely to speak up when something does not work for them.

In a hybrid context, highly Agreeable employees may quietly overload themselves. When they work from home, they can feel pressure to prove that they are a team player and committed, so they accept extra tasks and meetings and stretch their day to fit everyone else. Over time, their own priorities slip to the bottom of the list. 

Those lower in Agreeableness may be the first to question hybrid rules that feel unfair or impractical. Their direct feedback can be uncomfortable to hear, but it often points to problems that more Agreeable people are simply absorbing.

Practical ways to design for different levels of Agreeableness: 

• Keep an eye on what people are doing and taking on behind the scenes. 
• Normalize phrases like “I do not have capacity for that this week” and model this kind of boundary-setting yourself. 
• Pay extra attention to team members who rarely complain and always adjust to others, yet still hit every deadline. Check whether they feel able to say ‘no.’ 
• When someone pushes back on a rule or schedule, treat it as useful data. Ask what is not working and whether others might feel the same. 

Neuroticism: Managing Stress

Neuroticism describes how often and how strongly people experience negative emotions such as anxiety, worry and frustration. Those higher in Neuroticism tend to be more sensitive to signs of threat or unfairness and may spend more time thinking about what could go wrong. Those lower in Neuroticism are generally more emotionally steady and less reactive to day to day stressors.

Hybrid work can make these differences extremely visible. Sensitive team members may worry about whether they are being judged differently when they work from home, whether they are missing important conversations in the office, or whether promotions will go more often to people who are physically present. If expectations are vague, their minds fill the gaps more likely with worst-case scenarios. 

Practical ways to design for different Levels of Neuroticism: 

• Be transparent about how performance is measured in a hybrid arrangement and how much in office presence actually matters for opportunities. 
• Explain the reasons behind hybrid policies and changes, so people are not left guessing or assuming the worst. 
• Keep check-ins regular and predictable rather than saving them only when something is wrong. 
• Watch for quiet signs of anxiety, such as overworking, reluctance to take time off or constant checking for reassurance. 
• Give as much advance notice as possible for changes to schedules or expectations and invite questions so concerns can be addressed early.

Openness to Experience: Variety and Stability

Openness is the trait of being curious, imaginative and receptive to new ideas. People high in Openness enjoy variety. They’re often excited by new projects, new ways of working, experiments and change. People lower in Openness prefer familiar routines and proven methods. They feel safest when they know what to expect from their day.

Hybrid setups create a natural space for experimentation. High Openness employees may actively seek new hybrid structures, different ways of using tools, or changes in meeting patterns. If every week looks the same, they can quickly become bored and disengaged. 

Those lower in Openness can feel unsettled when hybrid rules, days in the office or team rituals keep changing. If the way you use hybrid work is in constant flux, they may feel that the ground under their feet is always shifting.

Practical ways to design for different levels of Openness:

• Keep a few core elements of your hybrid setup stable, such as which days are office days and which meetings are in person. 
• When you want to try something new, treat it as a time-limited experiment and plan a review date so change feels safe and reversible. 
• Talk to low Openness team members before major changes and ask what they would need to feel comfortable trying a new pattern. 
• After a trial period, use a short retrospective or survey to decide which hybrid experiments to keep and which to drop, balancing variety with stability.

Bringing it All Together For Your Team

Hybrid policies will probably always be a compromise. There’s no perfect schedule that fits every person in every season of life. The Big Five doesn’t remove that reality, but it does give you a simple way to understand why the same plan feels so different across your team and how you can tweak it so more people can do good work without burning out.

The next step is to turn that insight into a more workable hybrid rhythm. The following strategies are a good place to start:

• Invite your team to explore their Big Five traits. You can easily do this via the Truity@Work team testing platform. 
• Hold a structured conversation about how hybrid work feels today. Ask questions such as “On office days, what helps you do your best work and what drains you?” and “On remote days, what helps you focus and what makes you feel disconnected?”
• Look for patterns in those responses. Are people saying they’re stressed by frequent changes, or struggling with full office days packed with meetings?
• Agree on two or three small adjustments to meetings, communication tools or the way you use office time, based on what you have learned, then review together after a few weeks and refine.
• You can also hold a Big Five workshop for your team where people go a little deeper into their traits and talk about what helps them do their best work in your current hybrid setup. This turns personality language into something practical and normal to discuss.

Remember, you’re not designing five different policies; that would be unworkable. Rather, you’re using the Big Five to spot natural work rhythms and create a fairer setup that the whole team can stand behind.