What does the Distributed Work Habits test measure?

Four working habits that cost more when a team is distributed: Async Handover (writing that survives your absence), Self-Visibility (making your own state legible unasked), Escalation Speed (turning stuck into a resolved question fast), and Timezone Coordination (planning around other people’s clocks). Each habit is on offer in exactly twelve of the thirty pairs, so each is scored out of twelve.

Why are the questions pairs instead of an agree/disagree scale?

Because almost everyone agrees with a good habit when asked directly, which leaves nothing to read. In a pair, both statements describe something reasonable, so choosing one means giving up the other. That does not make the test impossible to fake — nothing self-report is — but it makes faking require a theory of which answer is rewarded, and the pairs are written so that theory is hard to form.

What are the last eight questions about?

They ask whether you have personally used eight specific ways of working. Five are real and three are invented names for practices that do not exist. Claiming the invented ones is a well-documented sign that a questionnaire is being answered generously. If two or three of the invented practices are claimed, the result carries a note suggesting the answers be read as provisional. That note never changes any of the four habit scores.

Is there a single overall score?

No, and deliberately so. Most of the pairs trade one habit against another, so the four numbers are not independent, and adding them would produce a total that mostly reflects how the pairs were built rather than the person answering. You get four bands and the count behind each one.

Not yet. There is no norming sample and no published criterion study, which is why nothing here is reported as a percentile and why the result never says someone is or is not suited to remote work. The items were written against four defined facets and the scoring is fully published, but validation is a separate piece of work that has not been done.

Can an employer use this to screen candidates?

As one input among several, in a conversation — yes. As a filter, no. A 38-question self-report has no business deciding whether someone gets a job, and this one, without a validation study behind it, has less business than most. The useful move is to read the two lowest bands and ask the candidate about them.

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Free Distributed Work Habits Test, 38 Questions

Take the free Distributed Work Habits test online. Thirty forced-choice pairs and eight familiarity questions read four working habits that cost more when the team is distributed: written handover, self-reported visibility, escalation speed, and timezone coordination.

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The basics

What is the Distributed Work Habits Assessment?

The Distributed Work Habits test is a 38-question JobCannon-built questionnaire about four habits that get expensive when a team is spread across time zones. Async Handover is whether your writing survives your absence. Self-Visibility is whether people can tell what you are doing without asking. Escalation Speed is how fast you turn being stuck into a question someone can answer. Timezone Coordination is whether you plan around other people’s clocks.

Keep reading

Thirty of the questions are pairs. You pick the statement more like you, and both statements describe something a competent professional does — there is no losing side to avoid. That format is deliberate: an agree/disagree scale on habits like these invites everyone to agree, so the pairs make you spend a choice instead. The last eight questions ask whether you have used specific ways of working; three of the eight name practices that do not exist, which is a standard way of noticing when a questionnaire is being answered generously rather than accurately.

What this test is not: it has no norming sample and no criterion study behind it, so it reports how often you chose each habit out of the twelve chances you had, never a percentile and never a single overall score. It is a starting point for a conversation about how someone works, not a filter to reject anyone with.

Closely related

What you get

What You'll Discover

Async Handover: whether your written work stands up while you are offline

Self-Visibility: whether your state is legible without anyone having to ask

Escalation Speed: how quickly being stuck becomes a question someone can answer

Timezone Coordination: whether you plan around other people’s working hours

A band per habit out of twelve chances — no total score, no percentile

Whether the familiarity block suggests the answers were generous rather than accurate

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