Assignment on Personnel Psychology

PERSONNEL PSYCHOLOGY
Personnel psychology involves all aspects of working with human capital within an organization
including creation of organizational climate, leadership training, professional development,
assessments and testing in the workplace, etc. How do the following factors relate to the work of
an I.O. Psychologist, and how does the I.O. Psychologist address each of the issues in order to
positively facilitate growth and change within an organization? Cite at least one research
example for each factor.
a) Diversity
b) Bullying/harassment
c) Work/ Life balance
d) Talent management
e) Workplace culture/climate
f) Performance management
PERSONNEL PSYCHOLOGY/ I.O. PSYCHOLOGY
Introduction
Industrial and organizational (I/O) psychologists play an increasingly important role in all
types of organizations. They are well versed with every aspect of operations to identify potential
problems and find correct solution. Their job role ranges from inducing a minor workplace
changes to a broad structural shifts to increase the efficiency. They work by focusing on the
development of the principles of individual, group and organizational, and applying this to the
solution of problems at work (Kitayama, 2017). This paper will research the work of an I.O.
Psychologist at the workplace and look into factors that challenge their work profile (Rosenberg,
2017). An I.O. Psychologist address challenges and positively facilitate growth and change
within an organization for its success.
Work Role of I/O Psychologists

I.O. Psychologist work on designing, execution, and interpretation of human psychology.
They work by applying their findings to address human and organizational problems in the
context to improve the work condition (Gibson, Payne, Morgan, & Allen, 2018). The frame
work of I.O psychologist can be divided into development of training program for employees;
Recruit and select talent for organization; design and enhance work quality life for employees;
they evaluate the effectiveness; general coach to employees; developing criteria to evaluate
organizational performance; and to assess customer preferences, consumer satisfaction, and
market strategies (Oswald, Behrend, Putka, & Sinar, 2020).
The role of an I.O psychologist is to work for positive organizational climate, giving
leadership training, over all professional development, finally testing the model in the work place
A company is made up of a diversified crowd that may be difficult to handle. These diversified
crowds work together in teams that put the efficiency of the organization at stake. Work-life
balance, talent management, harassment, and work climate is a part of a normal workplace
(Chan, 2018). A workplace should have a balanced work environment for everyone. To study the
impact of the I.O psychologist on the working of the employees, employer and themselves we
shall review some peer-reviewed papers on influencing factors of the workplace.
Factor and Element to support the study
Office Diversity
The continuous immigration from one country to another specially in the ethnic
minorities group has led to an increase in varied work force specially, in U.S, UK and UAE
(Chrobot-Mason, Ruderman, & Nishii, 2014). In addition, according to the experts, the
demography of work place will see an increase in women employee and disabled employees

participants (Chrobot-Mason, Ruderman, & Nishii, 2014). Diversity is based on characteristic
likes are gender, race, ethnic background, and country. Other factors that influence diversity are
personality, education, organizational tenure, and socioeconomic background to name some
(Chan, 2018).
Landy and Conte (2016) proves that diverse groups bring a variety of talent together. A
diverse group has a broader base to approach critical problems; they can produce a vast variety
of solutions for the same problem. This helps in a quality decision making and a better critical
analysis of the any solution. Diversity is essential as it improves the cognitive and informational
standards of employees (Lyons, & Kuron, 2014). Many researches strongly support that people
of the same race, ethnicity, or demography increase interpersonal attraction and liking to work
together in a team. Whereas a diversified team does less social integration, employees are less
attracted to each other, they may be not very comfortable and satisfied with the group. These
cases are becoming very normal at the workplace creating a lower efficiency (Lyons, & Kuron,
2014). According to Singh and Gupta (2015), diversity has become a global agenda of the
professional system where workers are taking up assignments outside their own country.
Organizations are making new rules and laws to deal with diversity related disputes. An I/O
psychologist works in coordination with the management and tries to minimize the culture
differentiation between expatriate employees (Sabharwal, 2014). For Example, In a work place
cultural diversity may play an important role, but culture is ethnocentric; it means that everyone
will use their own culture as a standard for judging other cultures. So when it comes to judge
their co-worker they definitely measure the differences in their culture with the other one. This
can create a biased environment.

The task of the I.O Psychologist is to work in the hiring process along with manager and
HR. They try to understand the different hiring process and tries to fit the best for any
organization. They make a proper list of questionnaire that defines the job role, work culture and
diversity that are in the work place (Sabharwal, 2014). They have experience to hire candidates
based on diversity and specializes in selection of right candidates. This kind of hiring will
definitely minimize the conflict at work place and guides each of them to work towards the
growth of the organization. Ultimately they have to meet the diversity goal of the organization. It
is their work to develop an accessible workspace that has impact on the overall efficiency of the
environment. For this they are given access to resources, equipment and information, for making
the required change (Downey, van der Werff, Thomas, & Plaut, 2015). Thus, they are
considered an important part of hiring, development and training process.
Bullying / Harassment
Workplace mistreatment is an interpersonal situation involving two-party one initiates
counters normative negative actions or stopping normative positive actions toward another
member. Workplace mistreatment can be of several types like rudeness, incivility, aggression,
bullying to physical aggression (Hodgins, MacCurtain, & Mannix-McNamara, 2014).
Mistreatment is intentionally harming the target and violating the mutual respect at the
workplace. Workplace aggression can be nonphysical behavior or physical behavior that harms
employees' emotions. Bullying is a situation where the target gets abused and faces offensive
acts repeatedly (McDaniel, Ngala, & Leonard, 2015). The intensity of these types of
mistreatment may differ incivility being the lowest intensity, nonphysical aggression, bullying
comes in between incivility and physical aggression has the highest intensity.