You Are Here:

Home > The Society > Achieving Our Aims and Objectives > Annual Reports and Accounts > Annual Review 2007 > Divisions > Division of Occupational Psychology (DOP)

Division of Occupational Psychology (DOP)

By David Towner (Chair, Division of Occupational Psychology)

The Division of Psychology AGM at the 2007 Annual Conference agreed the structure of actions for taking OP-First forward over the next three years and a set of objectives to provide us with continuing focus. With Scientific Rigour at the core of what we do as a profession, the four objectives that provide us with direction for the how we develop our profession are:

To ensure that we are aligning our activities and efforts to these objectives, one of the key steps that we took at the outset of this year was to introduce a new business planning process for the Committee and Sub-Committees. The business planning process was introduced and commenced in March 2007 and had each Sub-Committee align planned activities against each of the 4 objectives. This has provided us with increased rigour in the business planning process, greater visibility across the Committee of the plans and activities of each Sub-Committee and a way to ensure that we progress the OP-First agenda.

Visibility

In 2007 we conducted our second annual DOP Practitioner Awards. This year, in addition to the Practitioner Award itself, we also introduced a Life Time Achievement Award. The Awards ceremony was held on 18^th October and attended by over 100 people, a significant increase on the inaugural award ceremony that we held in 2006. The Practitioner Award was awarded to Emma Donaldson-Fielder and Jo Yarker and the Life Time Achievement award went to Professor Cary Cooper.

Since the implementation of the Practitioner Awards we have seen our membership making use of the recognition they have been given through the awards process by identifying this in their communication and marketing to the general public and potential customers. We believe that the Awards process not only enables us to identify and promote excellence in practice and research internally but continues to be one of the key platforms through which the DOP is able to maintain visibility.

Of equal importance, the new DOP web portal that was launched in 2006 provides occupational psychologists with a continuous means to ensure that we publicise, promote and educate the general public on the practice and research being undertaken by our profession. We monitor the hits received to the site on a monthly basis and we are pleased to see that navigation to the site is continuing to increase.

Internally we ensure that the membership has regular and current visibility through the continued publication of POW! which has now seen its fourth year. In 2007 we also decided that alongside POW! we would reinstate a bi-monthly internal publication that would provide the membership with communication from the Committee and on key issues of internal concern to the profession. Our first issue of News@DOP was published and sent out to the membership in July.

Influence

As most people would anticipate, a major focus for 2007 has been on finalise the discussions on Statutory Regulation and the British Psychological Society moving into the Health Professions Council arrangements that will formally take place from April 2008. Members of the Committee have continued to provide contribution from the occupational psychology perspective to discussions that are being led by the Society’s President’s office and draft working papers such as draft proficiency standards for occupational psychologists and routes to Chartership.

In addition to Statutory Regulations, we have also provide input to:

Employability

At our January conference in 2007 we ran a Careers Session that provided members with opportunity to learn about how more ‘seasoned’ members of the profession developed their work and careers. The intention was to help our colleagues learn from these experiences to help shape their own career paths. This was very successful session with over 60 people attending and we plan to run a similar session at the 2008 Conference within the DOP@Work stream.

The issue of employability is also one that strongly links to the theme that I set out at the 2007 Conference of gaining better understanding of issues facing organisations and people at work so as a focus for developing our profession, its practice and research. I believe that by focusing on issues of importance to organisations and by providing support to deal with these issues, safeguards our future employability. I am very pleased that we will have been able to secure as a keynote speaker, Hamish McRae a leading economist and commentator on global issues affecting not just the economy but organisations and work. It is my hope that his talk will provide us with external stimulus and thought on how we shape our profession into the future.

Competence

Our Learning a Living programme had another year of successful delivery and we have already concluded the programme design for 2008. In addition to this programme we also conducted a successful Professional Practice Workshop - "Building Confidence and Credibility as an Occupational Psychologist" that was held at the Society’s London Offices in April.

Committee notes

During this year we have been successful in building succession to the Committee and Executive roles and in particular I am very pleased that Tom Smith and David Carew joined the Committee at the outset of 2007 as co-opted members.

I also welcome Gene Johnson as Chair for 2008 who has already this year as Chair Elect brought valuable experience and direction to the Division. I wish Gene well for 2008 and look forward to working with him as Deputy Chair.