Occupational Psychologist Jobs

Occupational psychologist jobs apply psychological knowledge, theory and practice to the world of work. Occupational psychologist jobs focus on how work conditions and tasks can affect people by developing or constraining them and influencing their wellbeing, and on how individuals and their characteristics determine what work is done, and how.

Occupational psychologist jobs also identify and resolve organisational issues with, for example, team culture, training and health and safety, applying expert knowledge of all levels of working (individual, team, organisational and global). They may work in a consultancy role, or in-house, with management, training officers, teams and individual staff.

Both individual and consultancy-based occupational psychologist jobs carry out a range of work according to the needs of their clients or employing organisation. The British Psychological Society (BPS) divides this work into eight key areas:-

• human-machine interaction
• design of environments and work - ergonomics and health and safety
• personnel selection and assessment, including test and exercise design
• performance appraisal and career development
• counselling and personal development
• training (identification of needs, training design and evaluation)
• employee relations and motivation
• organisational development and change

Occupational psychologist jobs typical activities include designing/applying methods to understand an organisation's or team's current culture and helping them develop a new culture or achieve specific performance objectives; advising on new technologies, such as e-learning, portfolio working and virtual team working; helping people to develop leadership, teamwork and communication skills, working with groups or individuals; advising on employee relations and schemes to motivate staff.

Occupational psychologist jobs would also be involved in developing, implementing or evaluating selection procedures, including psychometric tests, assessment centre exercises and structured interviews; developing and evaluating a training and appraisal programme and giving guidance and counselling to help staff plan their career or cope with redundancy.

Improving companies' health and safety performance by studying the causes of accidents and their prevention, designing and applying behavioural change interventions and assessing safety culture; advising companies of stress prevention and stress management initiatives and training staff in techniques will also be required.