Occupational Psychology

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Occupational Psychology

• Danielle Tucker

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What does and Occupational Psychologist Do?

• Consultancy
• Consultancy firm contracted out to organisations
  that need help with specific projects
• E.g. change management, recruitment drive,
  specific problems
• Can be short or long term projects

• Organisation Specific
• Larger organisations (often public sector)
• Works with HR managers with everyday
  psychological issues
• Recruitment, selection, training, motivation,
  advices managers, pay schemes, personal issues.

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Areas Covered

• Design of environments and work
• Personnel selection assessment
• Performance appraisal career development
• Counselling and personnel development

• Training
• Employee relations and motivation
• Organisational development and change
• Human machine interaction

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Chartership

• Why get chartered?
• Official accreditation
• Standards across industry
• BPS chartership same level as clinical
• Stage 1
• MSc in occupational psychology (accredited
  course)
• 8 areas project/dissertation
• Stage 2
• 5\8 areas - Logbook
• Stage 3
• 1 or more specific areas - Logbook

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Chartership continued

• Supervision
• Need to find a supervisor for stages 2 3
• Few times
• Assess logbook
• Cost
• Tuition fees for MSc
• Chartership registration with BPS
• BPS member

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Facts and Figures

• Pay
• During training 20-30,000
• Once Chartered - 30,000 (can go up to
  100,000)

• Hours
• Normally 9-5 Monday-Friday
• Sometimes extra for specific projects (travel)

• People you work with
• Other Occupational Psychologist
• Managers
• Employees

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Week in the Life of an Occ Psych

• Monday
• AM emails, timesheets, admin and bookings
• PM travel to client site
• Tuesday
• stayed at client site all day, various meetings,
  reviewing materials, assessing needs of client
• Wednesday
• AM - office, meetings with team, writing report
  from Tuesday
• PM project meeting with client, project
  preparation
• Thursday
• client site (745) interviews with employees to
  assess task needs
• Friday
• AM - 730 office, admin, interview preparation
  for pm
• PM - interviews with client
• 3-4pm - review with mgr

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Pros and Cons

• Pros
• One of the better paid areas of Psychology
• Variety of work
• Travel
• Opportunities for flexi-time, part-time etc (some
  firms)
• Specialise in area of interest, firms specialise
  or personal specialise
• Be self employed

• Cons
• Dealing with managers
• A lot of time spent in Recruitment, Selection and
  Training
• High pressure/stressful
• Long hours
• Targets and deadlines
• Report writing

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Other Options with Occupational Psychology

• Recruitment consultant
• Researcher/Lecturer
• Not as well paid
• More freedom in research
• Human Resource Management
• A lot of footwork (recruitment, selection,
  payrole etc
• Easier to get into

• Occupational Health/rehabilitation
• Often work with health and safety
• Individual employees circumstances
• Manager
• Customer based organisations (e.g. retail)
• Using people skills
• Can be high stress for less money