It is SIOP, not PSYOP
Before I traveled to the Society of Industrial/Organizational Psychology (SIOP) conference in Houston last month, I was speaking to a co-worker about my trip. He said to me, "Every time I hear the word SIOP I think of PSYOPs as in psychological operations performed by the military. Can you tell me again what does SIOP stand for?" Most of the time when people ask what I do or what my degree is in, I end up saying "business psychology" because brand awareness outside of the field of Industrial/Organizational psychology is usually very low.
I/O Psychology has a branding problem. According to a recent survey, only 15% of HR professionals and 32% of business professionals are familiar with the field of I/O psychology. However, 69% of survey participants were familiar with one or more firms where I/O psychologists typically work such as: AON Hewitt, Development Dimensions International, SHL Previsor, etc.
This is concerning because I/O psychologists are well-trained and can bring value to organizations. Besides teaching in psychology departments or business schools, I/O psychologists often work in HR departments doing a wide variety of tasks from designing engagement surveys to developing trainings. Often you can find I/O psychologists as the directors of human capital functions within many large organizations, such as directors of talent assessments, leadership development, or talent management. As a whole, they practice and research in a wide-variety of areas such as, job performance, assessments, personnel selection, training, work motivation, job attitudes, work-life balance, job analysis, team performance, occupational health and safety, diversity, compensation, etc.
Besides studying and researching almost any topic that touches upon people at work, I/O psychologists are highly trained in data analysis. At every doctorate program in I/O you will find among the basic statistics courses, more complex mathematical courses such as, Item Response Theory, structural equation modeling, and multi-level modeling. This is an obvious intersection for HR and I/O. According to recent HCI survey research, most respondents believed the HR does not have the skills to adequately, collect, analyze, and present meaningful insights with data. We all know Big Data and analytics are here to stay.