The personality type that struggles most with working from home, say occupational psychologists

She adjusted the laptop angle for the third time, eyes darting between a half‑finished report and a blinking Slack cursor. The flat was quiet, but her brain was not. Somewhere between the kettle and the kitchen table, work had dissolved into everything else. The day felt both crowded and oddly hollow, like a meeting that never officially starts or ends.

For some people, that blur is bliss. For others, it is slow‑burn torture. Occupational psychologists are increasingly blunt about which group finds it hardest: people with strong extroverted, high‑structure personalities whose energy comes from clear boundaries, face‑to‑face contact, and visible momentum. The label shifts depending on the framework you use - classic trait theory, Big Five, or the latest work‑style inventories - but the pattern is surprisingly consistent.

This is not about weakness or willpower. It is about a daily environment that quietly clashes with how a particular nervous system stays sharp, sane, and satisfied.

The “trouble in slippers” profile

If you strip away test acronyms and typology jargon, the personality most likely to struggle from home tends to share three ingredients: high extraversion, high conscientiousness, and a preference for external structure over internal improvisation.

They like the hum of an office, the clocking in and out, the sense that someone will notice if they quietly disappear. They get energy from quick corridor chats and the informal accountability of being seen at their desk. At home, those cues thin out. Motivation has to come from the inside, every hour, every day.

Occupational psychologists sometimes call this the “structure‑seeking extrovert”. It is the manager who thrives on in‑person stand‑ups, the project lead who plans everything in 15‑minute blocks, the salesperson whose brain turns on as soon as they hit a busy reception area. Take away their commute, their team, and their routine, and you remove three of their main stabilisers in one move.

Working from home pushes them into a mode they did not choose: self‑directed, screen‑heavy, socially pared down. They can adapt, but the adaptation cost is real - and it shows up in mood, performance, and health.

Why the home office frays this type fastest

On paper, remote work promises autonomy, flexibility, and comfort. For structure‑seeking extroverts, the reality often lands closer to loneliness plus decision fatigue.

The psychology behind their struggle looks something like this:

• Social fuel drops to a trickle. High‑extraversion employees do not just enjoy people; they regulate through people. Micro‑interactions reset their attention and emotions. Swap that for email threads and scheduled video calls, and social input becomes clumpy and effortful.
• Boundaries blur. Conscientious, rule‑oriented workers rely on external markers - office doors, dress codes, start times - to know when they are “on” or “off”. In a flat where the kitchen is the office and the sofa is the break room, work leaks into everything.
• Self‑monitoring spikes. Without the subtle guidance of others’ pace and body language, they over‑rely on internal signals: “Am I working hard enough? Am I visible enough?” That constant checking burns cognitive bandwidth.
• Feedback slows down. These personalities tend to like closure: a nod in a meeting, a quick “good job”, a sense that the project is moving. Distributed teams can be slower and more asynchronous, which feels like driving with the handbrake half on.

Evidence has a way of outlasting noise here too. Meta‑analyses on remote work show that, while average productivity often holds or improves, individual differences matter a lot. Extroverted, routine‑sensitive staff report higher rates of isolation, anxiety, and disengagement when fully remote, even when their objective output stays stable.

They are not failing at home working. The set‑up is failing them.

How to recognise the struggle from your sofa

You do not need a battery of psychometric tests to spot when someone’s personality is clashing with their home‑working reality. You can start, from your sofa or your shared kitchen table, with three questions:

1. Where do I (or they) get energy? After a long day at home, is there restlessness and craving for people, or peaceful relief?
2. How do I (or they) organise work? Does motivation spike when the calendar is full and the to‑do list is colour‑coded, or when the day is loose and open?
3. What signals “job done”? Is it handing something over in person, or quietly ticking a box in a task manager?

If you or your colleague light up around people, like firm plans, and get a real kick from visible progress, you are squarely in the at‑risk zone for home‑working strain.

Do not stop at labels. Watch for changes in behaviour over a few weeks, not a single bad Tuesday. Trust headlines less than context. “Remote work kills productivity” makes good copy; your own patterns, logged over time, tell you much more.

Useful warning signs for this personality type include:

• Longer hours but more errors
• Procrastination on tasks that used to be easy
• Irritability before and after video meetings
• A creeping sense that “nothing really counts” unless someone saw it

The loudest advocates of permanent remote work are not always the ones wrestling with these symptoms. Listening to the quieter “this is hard for me” voices is part of responsible workforce design.

What occupational psychologists actually recommend

Psychologists are not suggesting shipping every extrovert back to open‑plan offices and calling it a day. They are, however, blunt that blanket policies ignore temperament. The most robust advice clusters around three levers: rhythm, contact, and control.

Rhythm: rebuild the scaffolding

Structure‑seeking personalities need their day to feel like a day, not a smear.

• Fix start and stop rituals: a short walk round the block, a specific playlist, changing clothes at “clock off”.
• Use time blocks instead of endless availability: 90 minutes on, 15 off, with activities pre‑decided.
• Anchor high‑focus work to the same time each day where possible, to reduce constant rescheduling.

Contact: swap absence for deliberate presence

Remote does not have to mean socially empty; it does need to be socially intentional.

• Schedule short, regular check‑ins (10–15 minutes) rather than rare, long meetings.
• Mix task talk and casual talk on purpose: “five minutes on the weekend, ten on the sprint board”.
• Use cameras and reactions thoughtfully, not compulsorily; feeling watched is not the same as feeling seen.

Control: give back choice where you can

The least resilient pattern is “high expectations, low control”. Occupational psychologists argue for:

• Hybrid options where feasible: one to three anchor days on site for those who want them.
• Personalised work agreements: when and how people are reachable, agreed in advance and revisited quarterly.
• Micro‑experiments: one small change for two weeks (earlier finish, shared focus sessions, co‑working days) before declaring home‑working “good” or “bad” overall.

“We will not let policies tell us who we are. Bring your flexibility, but bring your ears too.”

For managers, the work is less about diagnosing personality and more about making room for different ways of thriving.

Who benefits, who bends, and what to watch

The stakes are not just comfort. They are performance, retention, and health. When remote set‑ups suit the person, companies keep their best people; when they do not, burnout creeps in behind apparently “flexible” perks.

Focus	What it means	Why it matters
Fit	Matching work patterns to temperament	Reduces stress and cognitive overload
Voice	Letting staff shape their own hybrid mix	Builds trust and realistic expectations
Support	Coaching, equipment, social routines	Turns struggle into manageable stretch

What happens next in most organisations is predictable. Policies will be tested again. New leaders will try different balances of home and office. HR teams will re‑run engagement surveys and argue over which metrics tell the truth.

Employees will hold quiet meetings at kitchen tables and loud ones on internal forums, deciding what they can accept, what they need to ask for, and when to move on. Work is not a building, it is a relationship with your own attention and other people’s time. If we take personality seriously, flexible work stops being a perk and starts being a design principle.

FAQ:

• Which broad personality profile struggles most with working from home? People who are highly extroverted, strongly conscientious, and who prefer clear external structure typically find full‑time remote work the most draining.
• Does that mean introverts always love remote work? No. Many introverts enjoy fewer interruptions, but they can still suffer from blurred boundaries, overwork, or lack of feedback. Introversion simply changes the social part of the equation.
• Is this a reason to end remote work? Not necessarily. It is a reason to avoid one‑size‑fits‑all models and to offer hybrid choices, especially for structure‑seeking extroverts.
• What can I do this week if I fit this profile? Add one strong daily ritual (start or stop), one timed social touchpoint, and one firm boundary around availability. Track how your mood and focus respond over 10 days.
• How should managers respond? Ask team members how they actually experience home working, offer options where possible, and treat personality differences as standard design data, not awkward exceptions.