Introduction
The success of any business is determined by how the employees are working. Motivated employees always work their level best in order to get more satisfied with their jobs. Demotivated employees on the other hand are less productive and their work is always characterized by many mishaps. Industrial/organizational psychology, commonly referred as I/O psychology, is the scientific study of the behavior of human beings in the workplace or organizations (Spector, 2000). I/O psychology is a specialty whose main focus is coming up with principles concerning individual, group or organizational behavior and using the knowledge gained afterwards in coming up with solutions to the problems that arise in the workplace.
The major interest of I/O psychology is to describe, guide and predict the behavior of people in the context of work. An I/O psychologist does not treat the mentally ill in the workplace as many would think, there work though entails answering certain organizational issues such as how to select the best type of training for a certain role, how to choose the best employees or how to determine the causes of turnover and how it can be increased or decreased. I/O psychology has two distinct side, we have the industrial side and the organizational side (Spector, 2000). The industrial side focuses on areas pertaining training, placement and selection while the organizational side deals with issues such as how to increase the level of job satisfaction and ways of motivating employees.
The Role of I/O Psychology in Selecting and Training Employees
When it comes to hiring practices by organizations and companies, one can think of the process in alignment with the above metaphor. An organization might choose to perform an unstructured interview when hiring new employees, such interviews entail a lot of people and consume a lot of time. More so, they are not fast and may have high margins of error and inconsistency among other things. The lack of appropriate tools and processes for hiring offers the hirer a very poor idea on the things that makes an employee a better employee. Finally, this leads the organization hiring to select the wrong person for the available post.
However, when a company uses newer and more sophisticated tools for selection such as tests and assessments that can accurately measure job relevant competencies- they obtain results that are more reliable, unbiased and can be defended legally. If this is done alongside a structured behavioral based interview, then the whole selection and training process will surely provide an organization with the best employees (Huffman, 2013).
I/O psychology enables organizations to improve their selection and training systems and processes through the use of new assessments in the determination of what is important in the completion of a certain job. The major role played by I/O psychology is to ensure that human resource managers are putting their resources and time into the right people and that they are targeting the right things among potential employees. The use of I/O psychology is very helpful to organizations in their selection, training and placing the right employees to the roles that they fit in best (Schmitt et al, 2013).
Real World Application of I/O Psychology
Business organizations face very stiff competition in the modern world. Innovation of new products is on the rise but that is not what puts many big organizations at the top. Humana resource managers have come to the realization that the way one relates with their employees is what determines if there will be success or not. Many modern business organizations are employing the services of I/O psychologist in order to select the employees that fit the job descriptions that they have. I/O psychologists also offer organizations with ways to motivate and train employees in order for them to do their level best.
Starbucks is one of the companies that have been successful with the help of I/O psychologists. Since Starbucks is in retail business, their employees are in constant contact with the customers. For such a company, it is very crucial how the employees relate with the customers. They have to ensure that the employees they select are best suited for the job and that they motivate their employees to relate well with their customers (Huffman, 2013). This is the reason why such a company must use the services of an I/O psychologist to help them remain at the top.
Core I/O psychology principles are also applied in the selection, training and promotion of military personnel by the US military. This is because it is very crucial to select the right people for such a delicate job that entails the life of human beings. If a mistake is done in such selections, it would endanger the life of the US citizens. Therefore, I/O psychologists are a must for such an organization as the military in order to increase the productivity of individual workers and to also retain them. This specialty is also applied by other organizations such as the FBI, NASA, and other multinational corporations like Amazon and Google.
Methods to Measure the Success Level Of Training Programs
For organizations to know that the resources used in training their employees have not been out to waste, they need to employ different way to measure the effectiveness of their training programmes. The following are the main methods that are commonly used in measuring the level of success of training programmes; forecasting and measuring costs and benefits, making return on investment (ROI) work for you and the calculation of the return on investment.
Organizations employ training so as to improve the performance of their employees and save on unnecessary costs. Through forecasting and measuring costs and benefits, they can be able to ascertain whether the training was beneficial or not. After training, the following are the benefits that an organization can realize. First, it can make savings on labour, this is because after training employees lesser effort would be needed to achieve the current level of output, also there would be a saving on time as less time would be spent in the correction of mistakes. Secondly, productivity would increase with the introduction of new efficient methodologies of doing things. Also, the skill level of employees would increase taking them less time to accomplish tasks. Thirdly, other savings on cost would be achieved like the breakdown of machinery would be less since employees are equipped with the needed skill set to operate machines and there would be low staff turnover.
If the costs outweigh the benefits after training, then the method used in training is ruled as ineffective. On the other hand, if the benefits outweigh the costs, then ii is ruled that the training programme was successful.
When it comes to the calculation of the return on investment, one is able to know the amount of return (in percentage form) that has been made over a particular period of time after investing in a training programme (Spector, 2000). If one assumes that the benefits will increase over time after the training, then the time specified is precarious to the figure obtained after calculating ROI. The formula for calculating ROI is;
Percentage Return on Investment = [Benefits divided by Costs] × 100
The payback period is also very important in knowing the amount of time it would take for the benefits of a training programme to be realized. Return on investment is by far the best method to measure the success of any training programme.
Legal and Ethical Concerns That May Arise While Implementing Training Programmes
Training programmes should be safe for all employees. Some training programmes may be depressing for employees to pursue them while others require young brains to be grasped. It is unethical to involve old employees in trainings that are very involving. On legal matters, there are some training programmes that are a must for all employees. These include safety trainings at the workplace like how to act in case of a fire.
Some training programmes tend to overstep the privacy of employees. These are among the ethical issues that arise while implementing some training programmes. As long as the training programmes are structured well and are supervised by qualified personnel, there can never be any ethical or legal issues that may arise (Spector, 2000).
References
Huffman, A. H., & Klein, S. R. (2013). Green organizations: Driving change with I-O psychology. New York: Routledge.
In Schmitt, N., In Highhouse, S., & In Weiner, I. B. (2013). Industrial and organizational psychology. Hoboken, N.J: John Wiley & Sons.
Spector, P. E. (2000). Industrial and organizational psychology: Research and practice. New York: Wiley.
