Personnel Psychology

I/O psychologists and human resource management (HRM) professionals involved in personnel psychology practice and do research in such areas as employee-selection techniques, job analysis, employment tests, evaluation of employee performance, absenteeism, and job evaluation. Professionals working in these areas choose existing tests or create new tests to select and promote employees. These tests are then constantly evaluated to ensure their fairness and validity.

Personnel psychologists also analyze jobs to obtain a complete picture of what each employee does, often assigning monetary values to each position. After obtaining job descriptions, personnel psychologists construct performance-appraisal instruments to evaluate employee.

To do all of these things, personnel psychologists rely heavily on research and statistical analysis.

Organizational Psychology

Psychologists involved in organizational psychology practice and do research in leadership, job satisfaction, employee motivation, organizational communication, conflict management, and group processes. Organizational psychologists often conduct surveys of employee attitudes to determine employees' beliefs about an organization's strengths and weaknesses. An organizational psychologist, usually serving as a consultant, will then make recommendations on ways problem areas can be improved. For example, the level of job satisfaction might be increased by allowing employees to participate in making certain company decisions, and poor communication might be improved by implementing an employee suggestion system.

Training and Development

Psychologists interested in training and development examine various methods to develop the talents of both new and current employees. People within this subfield usually work in a training department of an organization and are involved in such activities as identifying the training needs of an organization, developing training systems, and evaluating their success. Practitioners also operate as consultants and provide workshops on many topics.

Human Factors: Ergonomics

Psychologists involved in human factors concentrate on workplace design, human machine interaction, ergonomics and physical fatigue and stress. Sample activities in this subfield include designing the optimal way to draw a map, designing the most comfortable chair and investigating the optimal work schedule.