The British Psychological Society Division of Occupational Psychology

📢 Calling all Scottish DOP members! We’d love your input to help shape the future of the DOP community in Scotland. We’re inviting members to complete a short survey to gather insights on the areas you’d like to see developed and prioritised in the years ahead. Your feedback will help us strengthen our community, support practice development, and ensure meaningful representation for members across the region. We’re building on the excellent work already happening across the community and previous DOP Scotland initiatives — and with our profession continuing to grow, there’s a real opportunity to shape what comes next. 📅 Survey closes: 1 July at 4pm 🔗 Complete the survey here: https://lnkd.in/eASaTkFd Thank you in advance for helping shape the future of DOP Scotland.

📢 Call for Papers | OPO Special Issue: Culture & Wellbeing in Organisations The Division of Occupational Psychology invites submissions for a special issue of Occupational Psychology Outlook (OPO), guest edited by Dr Noreen Tehrani. 🌍 Why this matters Organisational culture plays a critical role in shaping wellbeing, ethics, and performance at work. This special issue will explore how cultures can both protect and harm psychological health — and what that means in practice. We’re particularly keen to hear from those working at the intersection of research and real-world application. 🧠 Topics include: 🔹 Burnout, trauma, moral injury, embitterment 🔹 Leadership, culture, and responsibility 🔹 Work design, organisational systems & risk 🔹 Learning and psychologically informed organisations 🔹 Assessment, ethics, and inclusion 🔹 Plus emerging themes such as informal coping cultures, ethical strain, and high-risk roles ✍️ We welcome: • Research summaries • Practice reflections • Commentary & debate pieces 📅 Key dates: • Expression of Interest: 1 October 2026 • Full submission: 1 February 2027 📩 Submit your EOI: oposubmissions@bps.org.uk 💡 This is an opportunity to shape how we understand culture, wellbeing, and ethics in organisations — and to contribute to the future of occupational psychology. #OccupationalPsychology #WorkplaceWellbeing #OrganisationalCulture #OPO #CallForPapers #DOP #EvidenceBasedPractice

🌍 Thanks to everyone who joined our DOP Lunch & Learn on building global leadership. Here are some key takeaways: 🔹 Context is everything: Global leaders operate across cultures, systems, and norms — from hierarchy to gender and communication styles. 🔹 Remote ≠ simple: Leading globally without in-person contact increases misunderstanding and reduces informal learning. 🔹 Frameworks help — but don’t replace thinking: Models (e.g. Hofstede, GLOBE) are useful prompts, not rules. Over-reliance can lead to stereotyping. 🔹 Translation is a leadership skill: It’s not just language — it’s helping different groups understand each other across contexts. 🔹 Mindset matters most: Curiosity, self-awareness, and cultural humility are more valuable than trying to “learn the rules”. 🔹 Trust is built through curiosity: Listening well and asking thoughtful questions goes a long way in global settings. 🔹 Experience drives learning: Exposure to different environments remains one of the most powerful development tools. 🔹 Assessment needs rethinking: Traditional processes can disadvantage global talent (e.g. language, format, time zones, cultural norms). 🔹 Inclusion should be designed in: Focus on fairness, accessibility, and attributes like learning agility — not just “traditional” measures. 👇 Learn, connect and share at our next free event here: https://lnkd.in/e4k2_eBC #OccupationalPsychology #Leadership #GlobalLeadership #WorkplaceInclusion #Assessment #DOP #BPS

📚 New Book Launch: Rethinking Leadership for Psychologists Is the modern workplace becoming too complex for traditional leadership models? On Tuesday, 17 March (12:30pm – 1:30pm), the British Psychological Society is hosting the online launch of a vital new resource: Rethinking Leadership for Clinical, Counselling and Health Psychologists: Managing Complexity and Change for Thriving Workplaces. Edited by Dr. Amra Rao, this volume shares systemic psychological insights to address the evolving challenges of workplace culture. 🖥️ Event Details When: Tuesday, 17 March | 12:30pm – 1:30pm (GMT) Where: Online Cost: Free to register This is a key addition to the BPS Professional Practice and Development book series, with chapter contributions from DOP members including Dr. Ashley Weinberg and Ian MacRae. Learn more and register for the launch here: https://lnkd.in/e4CufZVQ

Missed this? The latest episode of the Work Psych Pod is now live. 🎙️ From the host of the Work Psych Pod: In the latest episode, Dr Bobbie Goves (BPS Division of Occupational Psychology) and Dr Rob Feltham (Association for Business Psychology) explore professional identity, evidence-based practice, and the realities of working in occupational/business psychology. #OccupationalPsychology #BusinessPsychology #EvidenceBasedPractice #FutureOfWork #WorkPsychPod

📢 Event of Potential Interest to Members: When Vulnerability Meets Power Members working in organisational culture, employee wellbeing, safeguarding, and ethical practice may be interested in the upcoming When Vulnerability Meets Power (WVMP) Conference, taking place on 4 March 2026.* As Occupational Psychologists, we recognise that organisational health is closely tied to how power, leadership, and vulnerability are understood and managed. This event explores those intersections through a lens that aligns strongly with OP practice, including systemic safety, trauma-informed approaches, and organisational justice. The conference includes contributions from Noreen Tehrani, whose work on resilience, psychological screening, and safeguarding will be familiar to many members. Themes likely to be of interest include: 🔹 Navigating power and vulnerability within complex organisational systems 🔹 Applying occupational psychology principles to safeguarding and justice 🔹 Moving beyond compliance towards cultures of genuine care The event is available in person (London) or online. 🔗 More information and the full agenda: https://lnkd.in/gCti_Pi5 *Shared for member awareness rather than endorsement. #OccupationalPsychology #Safeguarding #WorkplaceCulture #EthicalPractice #WellbeingAtWork

Our recent Division of Occupational Psychology Lunch & Learn: Stress at Work, hosted by Dr Bobbie Anne Groves, DOccPsy, CPsychol, and Jenny Bettany, together, attracted over 300 registrants for a thoughtful, practice-focused discussion. Stress at work is measurable, preventable, and modifiable, but meaningful change requires shared responsibility across individuals, teams, leaders, and organisations. Thank you to everyone who contributed to such a rich discussion. We look forward to continuing the conversation through future DOP events. #OccupationalPsychology #StressAtWork #EvidenceBasedPractice #WorkplaceWellbeing #PsychologicalSafety #BPS #DOP

Is anger at work always a problem, or can it be useful? Last week's Insight to Action discussion explored how workplace anger is often a signal, not the issue itself. Huge thanks to Bahram Mamoodi Kahriz for sharing research that challenged some common assumptions. Key takeaways: 🔹 Anger often reflects blocked goals, unfairness, or lack of voice 🔹 Most organisations default to suppression, which looks calm but doesn’t resolve the issue 🔹 The alternative isn’t venting, but acknowledgement with boundaries 🔹 When people feel heard, trust, commitment, and re-engagement improve 🔹 Suppressing anger may quiet reactions, but it can block learning and repair Practical implications: ✅ Create safe, legitimate channels for raising concerns, and close the feedback loop ✅ Separate emotion from behaviour ✅ Give time and space before problem-solving ✅ Equip managers to handle emotion with confidence ✅ Treat anger as data about what isn’t working Bottom line: When anger is silenced, organisations miss vital information. When handled well, it can reveal issues of fairness, trust, and culture, and help fix them. Coming up next: • Lunch & Learn: Workplace Stress | 24 Feb 2026 • Lunch & Learn: Assessment in a post-AI world | 24 Mar 2026 #WorkplaceWellbeing #OrganisationalPsychology #Leadership #PsychologicalSafety #EvidenceBasedPractice

🔍 Insight to Action: Calibration in Assessment — Key Takeaways Our discussion today focused on a simple question with big implications: what makes calibration fair, consistent, and genuinely useful? 🔑 Key learning points: 💠Calibration starts with design: Good calibration is shaped upfront: clear competencies, behavioural indicators, scoring rules, and assessor training. The session is where judgement is tested, not invented. 💠Structure reduces bias (but doesn’t remove judgement): Standardisation helps minimise individual assessor bias, yet calibration still needs thoughtful discussion to interpret evidence consistently and proportionately.  💠Don’t confuse “consistent” with “cookie cutter”: Especially in leadership assessment, there’s a balance to strike: staying defensible and comparable, whilst leaving room for different strengths and routes to effective performance. 💠Bias can sit in the tools as well as the people: Fairness isn’t only about assessor awareness. Language, item wording, cultural specificity, and reading load can systematically disadvantage some groups, particularly in global assessments. 💠Agree how evidence will be weighted: Calibration is stronger when teams are explicit about what counts as robust evidence: consistency across exercises, the meaning of one-off behaviour (positive or negative), and how contradictions are handled. 💠Pragmatics matter: fatigue and politics affect quality: Reliability drops when assessors are overloaded, and outcomes can be shaped by organisational realities. Clear roles, skilled facilitation, and the ability to hold boundaries protect the process. 💠AI is coming, but governance is lagging: AI may help with summarising and checking evidence, but it doesn’t replace professional judgement—and it introduces new questions about validity, fairness, and candidate misuse. ⭐ Overall takeaway: Calibration works best when it’s treated as a disciplined process: designed well, discussed well, and protected from the pressures that quietly distort judgement. Coming up next: • Insight to Action: Anger at Work - Problem or resource? | 6 February 2026 | 13:00 - 14:00 • Lunch & Learn: Workplace Stress | 24 February 2026 | 11:30–12:30 Plus a link to the DOP Assessment Centre Guidelines:  https://lnkd.in/esFFMB4p

🔔 There’s still time to register! Join us for our next Lunch & Learn: 🧠 Post-Assessment Calibration 🗓️ 20 January 2026 | ⏰ 11:30am–12:30pm 💻 Online | Free (registration required) Calibration conversations are a routine part of assessment and talent processes — but how do we ensure they strengthen consistency without diluting validity? This informal, practice-oriented session will bring together occupational psychologists to explore: The evidence behind calibration Common risks and challenges What robust, transparent calibration looks like in practice We welcome diverse perspectives and encourage participants to bring their experiences, questions, and challenges. 🎙️ Hosted by Dr Bobbie Anne Groves, DOccPsy, CPsychol and Jenny Bettany 🔗 Register here: https://lnkd.in/ed3gMTaw #OccupationalPsychology #Assessment #EvidenceBasedPractice #LunchAndLearn #TalentAssessment #BPS