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Industrial organizational psychologist

Natsune Otsuki

English 205

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Fast-Paced Changing Work Environment

Along with development of technologies and transition to millennial generation at

work place, now is also the time for many businesses and managers to define work

environment and creativity. An existent concept of co-working space tells that a

perception that people make to traditional work environment has been changing by new

generation. This is especially true within technology industries where principle of the

business is to value innovation and creativity. The business principle directly guides us to

the different image between past and present work environment. Technology associated

businesses created a lot of innovations to the world. Co-working is one of the “innovation”

that was created by people in technology industry. Co-working is a great example to see

concept changing between Generation Y from Generation X1 for relationship of labor and

human. Co-working is a work environment where different companies, independent

contractors, small startups, people who travel quit often that he or she tend to work in

relative isolation or non-profit organization share a space, often an office, to conduct their

daily business operations. The concept is especially remarked by those whom like to

network and expect add values in their own business from working with other

organizations. Co-working is invented by Brad Neuberg in 2005. A guy who works at drop

1 Generation X indicates people who were born prior period to generation Y. People who were born early 1960s to the early 1980s

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box 2 as a product and engineer consultant in San Francisco where is called the soul of

tech startup. Co-working place is especially very suitable for Millennials3. As a matter of

fact, Millennials are described to be team workers in the article “Characteristics of

Millennials in the Workplace” that is written by Terri Klass 4, and Judy Lindenberger 5

Millennials are team-oriented, banding together to socialize in groups. In school, this generation was taught lessons using a cooperative learning style. Therefore, they feel comfortable working on teams and want to make friends with the people at work. They believe that a team can accomplish more and create a better end result. They also grew up in a multi-cultural world which enables them to work well on a team with diverse co-workers. (Klass, Lindenberger,2011)

Normally, co-working

attracts professionals who prefer

to work at home atmosphere

environment. The left picture is

taken at Zonaspace 6, where the

largest co-working place in Saint

Petersburg, Russia is, indicates home atmosphere of co-working space. Currently, there

are 20 plus co-working spaces in Seattle. All of which not only provide offices but also

2 Dropbox is a middle sized technology company that started from San Francisco that provides free storage for documents, images and videos for people to save and share them. Today the company has more than 300 million people across every continent use Dropbox 3 Millennials or Generation Y indicates people who were born between 1980 to 2000.Typically it is the first generation that grew up surrounded by lots of technologies. 4 Terri Klass owns her own individual consultancy as a leadership skills training consultant in New York city.5 Judy Lindenberger is also an owner of her own Human resource consultant company at The Lindenberger Group after owning a master degree in human resource management from Drexel University .6 Zonaspace is the largest co-working place in Saint Petersburg, Russia

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often host events or allow member companies to host their own events ranging from

networking events to skill improvement workshops.

Some events are named very un-professionally, like

Fuckup night7 from Parisoma8 in San Francisco, and yet

that shapes the atmosphere of co-working spaces and

people who use it.

Red Frog: an Event Production Company

Work environment is changing innovatively from straight traditional way. One

good example will be an event production company called Red Frog in Chicago. Red frog

has very unique work

environment, in other

world, interior design for

the office. The office has

many playful furniture

including a tree inside. In addition to it, the company mission is strictly designed to value

life experience and people. This is true for its employees too, thus employees are treated

7“ Fuckup Nights is a global movement born in Mexico in 2012 to share publicly business failure stories. Hundreds of people attend each event to hear three to four entrepreneurs share their failures.”8 Parisoma “is an Open Incubator that hosts and supports 60+ early-stage startups through classes, events and partnerships.”

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accordingly and get various benefits including unique perks such as unlimited vacation and

one work from home day per week.

Many co-working spaces also tend to have various perk offerings. As examples,

WeWork9 offers free lunch and beers for member companies. Works progress Seattle

10offers unlimitedly refillable coffee and tea in addition to access to a shared kitchen.

Startup Hall 11has foosball and pool table in their lounge area, also allows member

companies to bring their dogs to the office. Allowing pets at work, in fact, is one of the

very common perks for many innovative companies and offices.

Office Dog

9We Work shared office and co-working space. They provide the space, community, and services for member companies at the offices.10 Work progress Seattle is another co-working space for independent contractors, small business owners who like to work around other people.11 Startup hall is a co-working space that is provided by University of Washington. Startup hall bond technology community and add entrepreneurial community to Seattle entrepreneur ecosystem.

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In fact, A New

York based technology

startup company called

“Vine”, provides a

social media platform

service where it allows

people to create, share

and watch short

looping videos, has “office dog” position opening on their official website. It says that

“Vine is seeking a dog to join our growing team of humans.” They indeed list

responsibilities and qualifications for the job namely, “welcomes employees as they arrive,

keep employees from working too hard, provides kisses whenever called upon, smell ok,

and train other dogs around the area, cute, relatively quiet, can’t reach my lunch, snuggles

, returns stolen items to owner after playing” and so forth. After pushing the “apply now”

button for the office dog position, it leads applicants to the next page with a picture of

dogs unlike other actual job pages where it leads applicants to type their information.

Although the office dog job is obviously a funny joke, the fact that Vine puts it on their

official website and writes job qualification jokingly and yet, somehow seriously as if it was

an actual job implies how acceptable it is becoming for companies to be little bit more

flexible and playful in terms of professionalism. The article “Characteristics of Millennials”

from business know-how website, and “Mentoring Millennials explains” from Harvard

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business review explain potential reasoning for preference of millennials for such working

attitude.

When it comes to work life balance, Generation Y is not willing to give up their lifestyle for a career. (Klass,Lindenberger,2011)

Millennials view work as a key part of life, not a separate activity that needs to be “balanced” by it. For that reason, they place a strong emphasis on finding work that’s personally fulfilling. They want work to afford them the opportunity to make new friends, learn new skills, and connect to a larger purpose. That sense of purpose is a key factor in their job satisfaction; according to our research, they’re the most socially conscious generation since the 1960s. (Meister, Willyerd, 2010)

While displaying flexible and good life-work balance is one very effective way to

manage millennials at workplace, perks itself cannot build a fully engaging work

environment nor a good company culture that leads to maximize business performance.

Perk isn’t Everything

WeWork South lake union, co-working place in Seattle, pointed that all perks

impact employees when perks compliment employees for deeply understanding

companies’ core philosophies.

Think of it this way: features alone do not make a good product. It’s the core functionality of a good product that provides a solution to a problem and enables you to do something better than before. And when you add features that complement the core functionality, you scale the product’s effectiveness. Likewise, your perks need the core of a shared philosophy that brings your people together and builds your company’s culture. Perks should then compliment your core philosophy and empower your team to scale the company culture. ( Longanecker,2013)

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Finding a core philosophy and scaling a company culture is so important,

perhaps it is the most impactful factor of business management especially for

companies who are still in an early stage. George Sarhanis who meets many startups

to find beneficial business to invest for a company that he belongs to called Digital

Ventures group12 says that company culture is most significant aspects of all

companies at any time. However, what is “company culture” that we are talking

about?

Company Culture

Barry Phegan, the author of company culture. com, explains company culture like

following.

Your Corporation’s Culture is Its Personality. It is the company’s shared beliefs, values and practices — the unique way your organization sees the world and acts. It is what employees do and what their actions mean to them. (Phegan, n.d.)

Wikipedia describes company culture like following

Organizational culture represents the collective values, beliefs and principles of organizational members and is a product of such factors as history, product, market, technology, and strategy, type of employees, management style, and national culture. Culture includes the organization's vision, values, norms, systems, symbols, language, assumptions, beliefs, and habits. Ravasi and Schultz (2006) wrote that organizational culture is a set of shared assumptions that guide what happens in organizations by defining appropriate behavior for various situations. It is also the pattern of such collective behaviors and assumptions that are taught to new

12 BCG Digital Ventures is an Innovation, Product Development, and Commercialization firm. They re-imagine how people experience products and services, to disrupt and make markets, and create new sources of competitive advantage.

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organizational members as a way of perceiving and, even, thinking and feeling. Thus, organizational culture affects the way people and groups interact with each other, with clients, and with stakeholders. In addition, organizational culture may affect how much employees identify with an organization. (Wikipedia,n.d.)

A Good Company Culture

Good company

culture means good for

both business and

people. The pyramid

indicates Maslow's

hierarchy of needs

13.This psychological

theory applies to people of psychological needs at work place. When a company meets all

the criteria for the needs, it can also demonstrate atmosphere of engagement, high moral,

high productivity, and most importantly high financial performance.

Cash Benefit of Good Corporative Culture

Having a good company culture indeed brings financial advantages. According to

Company culture. com, Cash value of well-structured culture company is different from

non-well-structured culture company.

13 Maslow's hierarchy of needs is a psychological theory that is adapted by Abraham Maslow in 1943.

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A culture that deeply engages people is understandably much more productive. A 10% increase in productivity is minimal. Unit productivity often doubles in 2 years. (Phegan, n.d.)

One well regarded study indicate that companies with well-developed cultures typically increase revenues 3x, have stock prices 9x higher, and generate net incomes over 700% higher than average companies. (Phegan,n.d.)

This graph “employees experience and financial performance”(2012) which is

made from survey data that were collected at Scripps Health 14 shows that the higher the

positive experience of employees were the higher the financial performance it got over

the 8 years from 2002-2010 .

That being said, establishing positive work experience for employees actually helps

companies to succeed.

14 Scripps Health is a not-for-profit, community-based healthcare system with five acute-care hospitals on four campuses and 22 clinic locations in San Diego, California. At Scripps there are over 13,000 employees and more than 2,600 affiliated physicians.

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Industrial-organizational (I-O) psychologists are capable to contribute building a culture by

conducting high quality human resource management jobs that take roles of making a right

organizational mindset for a company including recruiting and training and keeping well-being of

employees. An I-O psychologist researches and identifies how behaviors and attitudes can be

improved through hiring practices, training programs, and feedback systems.

I-O Psychologist

Officially, the term Industrial psychology is explained,

Industrial-organizational (I-O) psychology is the scientific study of the workplace. Rigor and methods of psychology are applied to issues of critical relevance to business, including talent management, coaching, assessment, selection, training, organizational development, performance, and work-life balance.”- (SIOP, n.d.)

Generally, I-O psychologist job responsibilities include 1) recruitment, selection and

placement, 2)training and development,3) performance measurement: Evaluating

economic situation and constantly rethinking company’s effectivness.4)Motivation and

Reward Systems 5) Organizational Development 6)Quality of Work Life: reducing work

stress and making sure of employees having well life-work balance.7)Consumer Behavior:

recognizing consumer behavior and customer satisfaction to develop marketing strategy.

This information is written by Society for industrial organizational psychology in American

Psychological Association and an organizational affiliate of the Association for

Psychological Science. The role and job titles of I-O psychologists can be very varied. I-O

psychologists can be consultants at private companies or government agencies in human

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resource management matter as well as researchers at private, government or

educational institutions.

Digital Trends in HRM

In today’s technology world, some of the I-O psychologist jobs are able to take

many advantages of technologies. In fact, there are also startup products that provide

services that gear specifically toward solving problems in the area of human resource

management. As an example, Office vibe is a startup company that provides survey tool

for employers to supervise satisfaction of employees at work.

The picture left is from

Office vibe website. The

company’s mission is to

provide tools for

companies to establish

amazing work environment. This company helps human resource department by letting

them to have resource to figure out how to create work environment that is appreciating

and rewarding for employees. Having a work place like that keeps employees productive

and helps attracting the best talented candidates. This kind of startup digital products

encourages data driven human resource managing.

As another digital trend, there are also technological tools such as skype and

online discussion board. Technological advantages create virtual workplaces. These online

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communication tools actually change the job shape of I-O psychologists by allowing

people to work with other people without physical attendance. I-O psychologists have to

observe things like how virtual workspace change social relationship, effect in level of

communication when using virtual tools to communicate each other and impact of

commonly using virtual work tools in performance in company culture and

communication. I-O psychologists are in charge of multiple responsibilities including

observing communication effectiveness of an organization.

I-O Psychology Job

As an example of content and responsibility of I-O psychologist job, Amazon is

currently looking for a talent assessment intern who has background in I-O psychology.

Responsibilities for the job include interacting with senior-level project partners as well as

multiple business teams, and contributing additional research for the project. Conducting

many surveys for multiple purposes and analyzing them. Developing assessment for

content of organizational subjects and complex datasets and reporting the result to

stakeholders with well communication. In addition to it, Amazon also requires applicants

to conduct tasks in product managing area. Overall job content, however, focuses data

assessment and research. For this particular intern position, basic qualification is to be

enrolled in a doctoral graduate degree program or having completed Master’s degree

program in l-O psychology or related field. I-O psychology job normally offer high pay jobs

as the jobs usually require at least master degree for entry level jobs and internships.

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Salary

According to the website called salary.com, national annual salary rate for a

position for I-O psychologist in the states is starting from somewhere around $81,015

(only 10 percent fell into this category) to more than $ 166957.8 (top 10 percent). The

median total pay for I-O psychologist national wide is $117.255 in which also appeared to

be the most common typical salary for I-O psychologist position. Organizational

psychologist job in the state of Washington has median salary of $125,334. Salaries are

explained relatively high. Becoming an I-O psychologist also requires big educational

investment.

How to Become I-O Psychologist

People typically have to have either a Phd or PsyD degree in industrial psychology

in order to be recognized as an I-O psychologist. There are two path options that people

can choose from. One way is to complete a bachelor's degree program with a major and

continuing a Master of Arts (M.A.) or Master of Science (M.S.) program in I-O psychology.

Often time working in a private sector requires applicants to have at least a Master

degree. After Master Degree, going to PhD or PsyD degree adds more value in knowledge.

Other common way is to go directly to PhD or PsyD degree after a bachelor degree.

Finally, having license is also required for people to name themselves as psycholog-“ist”.

Graduating from a doctoral program, experiencing a supervised internship as well as

passing the Examination for Professional Practice in psychology as known as EPPP is

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required to be licensed. Having license may help to get higher salary, however, it is not

necessary for all jobs. People have to think about how father they want to go depending

on their desired careers.

Similar Jobs

Similar jobs with I-O psychologist will be Counseling Psychologist, Organizational

Development Consultant, Organizational Development Director, Organizational

Development Manager, Organizational Development Specialist, Organizational

Development Specialist, Sr., Compliance Director (Banking), EEO Trainer and top

Organizational Development Executive. The one that makes money the most is top

Organizational Development Executives who are reported to make typically $181,082 as

median and $260,698 as for top 10 percent annually. Top Organizational Development

Executives usually responsible for constantly gaining a company’s human capital by

contribute to the company’s organizational development function, also increasing

employees’ engagement. This position usually requires candidate holding a B.A degree as

well as more than 15 years of experience in the same or similar field.

Conclusion; Why I-O Psychologist

I became interested in I-O psychology when I thought about definition of success in

the life. I recognized that somehow I associated negative images with labor such as tiring

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and stressful although I would have to spend significant amount of time working. I found

that I-O psychology study is helpful to contribute solving the problem for myself as well as

for other people with the same struggle as me. This need became great motivation for me

to study I-O psychology matter subjects and learn about things like work-life balance and

Co-working space. Co-working space allows people to experience home casual work

environment and simulates place that enables employees to feel managing work-life

balance better than traditional work environment by giving employees little bit more

freedom. This not only keep people happy and healthy, but also improves employees’

sense of living life with purpose. Part of I-O psychology job role is to gain understanding

psychology of different types of work environment and measure aspects of each

environments and observe successful trait of each. Experiencing work in environment like

co-working place actually bumps up engaging level to personal level and it, in fact, almost

can make people to feel working on project of life. That I found is the beauty of 21st

century, work environment of millennials, is that work is no longer should be thought as

thing to do for living, but thing to live a life.

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