June 23, 2011
| Category: Psychological Science

Industrial Psychology

The branch of psychology dealing with the scientific study of human behavior in the workplace and/or application of psychological knowledge in production is called industrial psychology. This area desperately needs to expand the knowledge base about how people behave at work and the reasons for their behavior, and to apply our knowledge of human behavior in order to better meet the needs of employees and employers. Industrial psychology is the union of the two domains of knowledge in psychology. The first of these is the study of individual differences. Psychologists who have achieved some progress in understanding the human abilities applied this knowledge in production and focused on the study of correspondence between the demands of work and individual skills and abilities. The second component of the industrial psychology domain of knowledge has arisen within the Social-Psychology tradition of field theory, the best exponent of which was Kurt Lewin, and is related to the attitude and behavior of people in environmental social services presented in this case, the interpersonal relationships in the production team.

• Professional selection and placement

One of the most important areas of industrial psychology is the selection of people to perform various job roles in the organization and the appointment of staff recruited in this way in order to correspond to their positions. According to Lee Cronbach and Glaser Goldin selection occurs when the number of applicants is bigger than the vacant posts, so among other solutions it is necessary to decide which of the candidates should not be hired; arrangement or selection occurs in cases when the number of people is equal to the number of posts on which they are going to assign.

• Testing personnel

After evaluating the characteristics of work it is necessary to assess the quality individuals to appoint to the positions of those who are best suited for this. Industrial psychologist must choose to assess work-related individual characteristics such methods, which are: a) suitable for the characteristics evaluated, and b) have acceptable psychometric properties of reliability and validity. As the best means of achieving these two goals are often standardized tests of skills, abilities, aptitudes, and / or interests, industrial psychologist must possess extensive knowledge of the available standardized tests and how the tests are developed and evaluated.
Industrial psychologist has a professional, ethical, legal responsibility to develop the assessment procedures, which, ideally should be reliable, valid, and not give grounds for discrimination of any groups.

• Design criteria

Once the staff began to work it is necessary to develop ways to assess the effectiveness (or productivity) of their labor. This task encompasses the classical problem of the criterion, to which, industrial psychology has paid much attention. In order to develop criterion, you must first identify those employment actions that are relevant to the effective implementation of work / role, and then find ways of valid and reliable assessment of the identified parameters. Criteria are often founded on the rankings (rank estimates) of the workers received from those who have the opportunity to observe their behavior. Ratings obtained in this way constitute what is called a system of evaluation (performance appraisal).

• Validation

In the last stage of the selection process and placement it is necessary to evaluate how individual characteristics used for the selection of staff are linked to the performance (productivity) of labor of these workers. This complex process is called validation process, or exploration of validity.

• Evaluation of activity

Judgments about the effectiveness of employee performance are often founded on subjective assessments obtained from other persons. These estimates serve many functions. Evaluation can be used as criteria for validation of physical fitness systems. Their solid-liquid interface is used for making decisions about salary increase, promotion and participation in training programs in counseling employees on matters relating to performance of the post or long-term professional goals. In big organizations where the personal acquaintance of all employees with one another is impossible, such systems are needed to make informed decisions.
From industrial psychologist it is required the creation of such a system of development of these rating scales and procedures for their use, which would allow to get as far as possible the objective and an accurate assessment of staff. The process of solving this problem it is usually faced with the challenges of constructing scales and developed policy evaluation.
Industrial psychologists have spent a lot of effort to develop valid rating scales in an effort to minimize the common errors that occur with this method of estimation. In this area there is a substantial progress. Probably the most important achievement is the analysis of critical cases: specific descriptions of important professional activities of employees who hold certain positions, drawn from their words.

• Training

If employees or potential employees do not have the knowledge, skills or abilities needed to perform their work, sometimes instead of the selection strategy it is chosen the strategy of staff training in order to acquire these qualities. Industrial psychologists are involved in all four basic stages of the training program. At the first stage there is made a needs analysis, that is, considered the current and expected in the near future requirements for staff organization, and then being tested if the actual labor force the current and future requirements match. Here we consider not only working at this time staff, but also the estimated loss of staff (care workers for retirement, other forms of employee turnover to-heaven is expected during the period under review). After completing the needs analysis plans industrial psychologist training programs to meet those needs. This is the second phase in which the industrial psychologist uses current knowledge about learning and information on teaching methods to best ensure the acquisition of necessary knowledge and skills. The third stage of the learning process – this is the actual training. Industrial psychologists frequently participate in training sessions. Finally, it is necessary to evaluate the effectiveness of training. Industrial psychologists should try whenever is possible to include in the training procedures for assessing their effectiveness.

• Labor Motivation

Ernest J. McCormick and Daniel R. Ilgen noted that the industrial psychologist has to do with motivation at three different levels. First, he must have deep knowledge of person’s motivation at all.
The second, is more closely associated with the work to which an industrial psychologist applies at least 4 basic procedures for managing motivation: a system stimulation goal setting, participation in decision-making and design work. In order to develop a system of stimulation it is necessary to associate the value of having the reward of those behaviors, which the employer wants to encourage. To make effective use of incentives it is necessary to know exactly what employees value and the likelihood of behavioral change in setting (in process) highly regarded staff incentives. It should also be taken into account the relative market value of the incentives.

Setting goals involves the establishment of standards of performance and feedback with regard to these standards.

Participation in decision-making is based on the assumption that people want to have more influence on what is happening in their work. Industrial psychologists have often attempted to make participation in decision making an integral part of training managers and executives, systems evaluation and other processes taking place in a production environment. The success of these procedures is variable in nature and depends largely on what the main goal is – increasing productivity and employee satisfaction.

Finally, at the workplace, industrial psychologists attempt to influence the motivation of staff through the design activities. In this case, the goal is to design work on that. To perform its staff came to believe: they can best meet their needs, if their behavior is consistent with the objectives of organization. The final stage development management systems motivated staff is the adaptation of common strategies to increase the motivation to the peculiarities of the particular organization

• Job Satisfaction

Industrial psychologists have spent a lot of effort to assess the attitudes of labor. In particular there is a considerable interest forward assessment staff satisfaction. Most of the early researches in this area encouraged a simple assumption: the more people are satisfied with their work, the more productive they are working. Industrial psychology attempts to prove the truth of this assumption proved to be unsuccessful, and in later works as the final cut, she stresses the value of employee satisfaction. In addition, information about employee satisfaction has a great diagnostic potential for organization.

There have been developed two types of scales of job satisfaction: specialized scales created for a particular organization and standardized scales, tested and validated in different organizations. The latter have the advantage that proved their reliability and validity, in addition, for them there are normative data that can be compared with the reaction to any particular group of workers. The most popular two standardized scales are: The descriptive index of the labor (Job Descriptive Index) and the Minnesota Satisfaction Questionnaire (Minnesota Satisfaction Questionnaire).

Means of measuring job satisfaction appears to be most useful if they are part of regularly scheduled at regular intervals interviews with the same organization to explore their views and attitudes to working conditions. If the polls are systematically repeated, they can serve as an excellent means of providing regular feedback to staff to identify trends in the changes in their attitudes and to inform superiors about what they feel and think their subordinates.

• Design work activity

In particular, the work must be designed in a way that will comply with both the ability of people occupying certain positions, as well as their motivation. Therefore, industrial psychologists tend to choose one of the two basic approaches to design work. The first approach is the motivation.
The second approach focuses on individual abilities and can be reduced to the design of work tasks in different occupations so that they conform as closely as possible the ability of people engaged in these activities. This area is called engineering of human factors or ergonomics. The applied discipline called “human factors” experienced a strong influence of researches on people’s abilities to process information and opportunities for technical devices that allow interaction between people and computers, and solid-liquid interface and technical achievements in robotics.

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