Employees with agreeable personalities are more appreciated in the workplace since the pandemic, a study says

• A study from the University of London academics looked into the Big Five personality traits at work.
• "Two cooperative people will outperform two competitive people every time," a co-author told CNBC.
• And managers appear to have taken more notice of this since the pandemic.

Employees who show high agreeableness are more appreciated in the workplace since the pandemic, according to a study reported by CNBC.

Academics from the University of London studied over 3,500 people working on group tasks over a ten-year period.

Their paper, titled "Kill chaos with kindness," looked at the Big Five personality traits: neuroticism, extraversion, openness, conscientiousness, and agreeableness. 

All the participants answered 242 questions to determine how much of each of these traits they have.

The first four traits have produced consistent results in terms of how they affect team performance, but agreeableness had previously "demonstrated a non-significant and highly variable relationship with team performance," the study says.

But by using a computer model to predict the outcomes of personality traits, the researchers found "agreeableness may be important to facilitate teamwork and organizational performance in this new world."

Randall Peterson, a co-author of the study and professor of organizational behavior at the London School of Business, told CNBC that past research suggested agreeableness was "mostly irrelevant" to completing tasks.

Although that could be because emphasis on individual accolades meant that more affable people previously went under the radar.

"The basic truth is if you have one competitive person and one cooperative person, the competitive person will always win," Peterson told CNBC. "However, two cooperative people will outperform two competitive people every time." 

And managers appear to have taken more notice of this, as Peterson said "people are endorsing cooperation and agreeableness much more than they did pre-pandemic." 

"The pandemic really showed people the value in being this kind of even-tempered, cooperative type rather than the star who wants to put themselves in front of everybody," he told the outlet.

"The world we live in is increasingly reminding us that the star system is not going to work for us anymore."