Why is psychology relevant for the workplace?

As an MSc student in Stirling, you have the opportunity to take Professor Alex Wood's "Psychology of Work" class in the first term. It explores the importance and role of psychology in the workplace and how practitioners apply psychological theories to issues in the workplace, with the aim of increasing organisational effectiveness and ensuring the satisfaction of people at work.  

One of the assignments I submitted this year tackles the broad sweeping question of "Why is psychology relevant for the workplace?" and it provides a detailed summary of five key areas within the British Psychological Society Curriculum for Occupational Psychology: employee engagement and relations; selection and assessment; training; learning and development; and the design of the work environment. I conclude with a discussion of the role personality plays within the work contexts.

The purpose of this post it twofold: to give MSc applicants an insight into this fascinating topic; and to give seasoned readers a resource that they can use in their research or in the design of course syllabus. 

Click here to download the paper in .pdf. 

To summarise:

1. Employee relations and engagement, defined as “managing fairly and getting the best out of people” (Gamble, 2006), has been seen through the lens of a master servant relationship, the mechanistic worker relationship and now the individual employee relationship.  
2. Selection and assessment focuses mainly on the need to have people in positions who either have the characteristics required for effective job performance or the capacities for learning and development.
3. In order to have organisational success, interactive and relative training programmes need to be developed, as do effective and validated career development and appraisal programmes for employees. 
4. Careful consideration also needs to be placed into the design of the work environment to ensure that it matches the capabilities of human performance and minimises the risks of work to health and well-being. 
5. Though any individual behaviour is not very predictable from personality, general behaviour is. It is determined by both the situation and the stable individual differences, and individuals’ can also be identified by the extent to which their personalities vary across situations.

Happiness and work in Ireland

One of the results that emerged from the well known Whitehall studies, considered landmark studies in social epidemiology which looked at British civil servants, is that where people come in an organization has an important effect on people's health. People at the bottom of the rung had poorer health. One explanation is that such people have less control of their circumstances and have more stress as a result.
The European Social Survey asks individuals how much control they have over how their daily work is organized (on a scale of 0 to 10). As an alternative to looking at health, one could also consider subjective well-being: in the data happiness is also ranked on a scale of 0 to 10.
The graph plots the mean of the happiness variable against how much control individuals say they have, using the data for Ireland. This is purely a bivariate comparison.
So there is a correlation with those at the top recording greater happiness but the gradient seems fairly gentle to me. More importantly, those at the bottom of the ladder seem happier than those immediately above them. So it may be that those at the bottom just don't worry and get on with things. A multivariate analysis would be needed to consider this more throughly.
If one looks at subjective general health with the same data, the relationship is rather more monotonic with those at the top having better health.

10.37am: Monday

New figures suggest that irish people are the most miserable in Europe. Apparently, we spend the equivalent of more than a working day -- nine hours and 28 minutes -- every week griping about something. And women are more likely to moan than men. A majority (59pc) of both sexes agreed on that.

Our objects of grief (in order) are the weather (see previous papers on weather and well-being here and here), traffic, feeling tired and our workloads. And we are at the peak of our grief at 10.37am each Monday. "That's when more of us are whining and moaning than at any other time of the week."

The survey was conducted by Uniroyal Tyres and involved asking 4,000 Europeans about the frequency of their gripes. More details are available in the Irish Independent here.

The role of work in psychological health and well-being

The primary theme of this article, which serves as the introductory contribution of a special section of the American Psychologist, is that work plays a central role in the development, expression, and maintenance of psychological health.

"Considerable research in vocational and industrial/organisational psychology has demonstrated that working can promote connection to the broader social and economic world, enhance well-being, and provide a means for individual satisfaction and accomplishment."

Three illustrative lines of inquiry in which research has affected the potential for informing public policy are presented: role of work in recovery from mental illness; occupational health psychology; and working, racism, and psychological health.

Blustein (2008)