Professional Work and Actual Work: The Case of Industrial Psychologists in South Africa

Abstract

In this study we sought to answer the question: What work activities do industrial psychologists perform on a daily basis? Our results, based on the responses of a sample of 129 registered industrial psychologists, showed that they spent most of their time performing general human resource work. We also found that industrial psychologists identified strongly with their profession and less strongly with voluntary associations like SIOPSA. We found no significant relationship between psychological acts performed by industrial psychologists and their identification with the profession. More men than women indicated that they performed psychological assessment activities in their daily work. Moreover, women tended to perform the more routine psychological assessment activities (e.g., test administration) and men the more high-level assessment activities (e.g., interpretation of test results). The results are explained in terms of social identity theory (Tajfel & Turner, 1979) and specifically the social creativity strategies used by a group whose high status is under threat.

A review of a decade’s scholarly publications (2004–2013) in the <i>South African Journal of Industrial Psychology</i>

“…Typical research themes include job analysis and criterion development; psychological assessment, employee selection and placement; employee performance, reward and remuneration; employee training and development; attracting and retaining scarce and critical talent and adherence to employment-related legislation in hiring, promotion, placement, development and retention . Although Schreuder and Coetzee (2010) Psychometrics or psychological assessment in the I-O psychology context is closely related to all of the aforementioned domains in the sense that psychological assessment is relevant to employee, group and organisational development from the point of view of employee selection (Arnold & Randal, 2010;Benjamin & Louw-Potgieter, 2008;Van Zyl et al, 2010). Theron (2007) regards measures and methodologies of psychometric assessment as the tools of the trade for I-O psychologists where the only limit of its use is the extent of the practitioner's creativity and competence.…”

Towards happiness: Experiences of work-role fit, meaningfulness and work engagement of industrial/organisational psychologists in South Africa

“…Registered I/O psychologists spend 88% of their time interacting with various social systems within an organisational context (Benjamin & Louw-Potgieter, 2008;Meyers, 2007). It is presumed that I/O psychologists would experience their work as a calling, though there is no literature available to reference how these individuals view the meaning of their work.…”

“…Finally, a self-developed Perceived Actual Time (PAT) questionnaire was used to determine the actual amount of time the participants spent on and the desired time the participants wanted to spend on six broad categories of work (see Benjamin & Louw-Potgieter, 2008). Benjamin and Louw-Potgieter (2008) state that I/O psychologists are actively engaging in, (1) psychological assessment, (2) therapy and counselling, (3) human resource management, (4) human resource administration, (5) training and development and (6) interventions and consultation.…”

“…There are three reasons for this. Firstly, I/O psychologists are trapped between their roles as traditional human resource (HR) practitioners and psychologists (Barnard & Fourie, 2007;Benjamin & Louw-Potgieter, 2008). I/O psychologists might spend less time on desired activities (e.g.…”

Registered Counsellors and Professional Work in South African Psychology

“…The studies of Benjamin and Louw-Potgieter(2008), Elkonin andSandison (2006), andGardner (2006) provided useful starting points. The full questionnaire is available from the second author.…”