What does a business psychologist do?

laptop-computer-brain

A business psychologist works in a range of different areas, helping businesses to succeed by improving the conditions and morale of a workplace. Business psychology analyses the dynamics of a company and the way their workforce is ran, and suggests improvements to help promote employee engagement and work productivity.

The practice of business psychology goes by many different names, including occupational psychology, industrial psychology and work psychology. Business psychologists view the company as their patient, and help them to understand what parts of their system are holding them back and where improvements can be made.

One of the main aims of a business psychologist is to improve the working environment of the business, which helps in the following areas:

  • Helps to improve the on-boarding process.
  • Improves the business’s management structure.
  • Increases employee engagement and thereby employee performance.
  • Improves work productivity throughout.

When considering a business psychologist, it’s vital to understand exactly what they do, and how they can help to improve upon the above features in a company’s structure, much like you would with any other type of psychologist (more information).

What Are The Benefits of Hiring a Business Psychologist?

A business psychologist can be of great help in identifying issues and areas needing improvement within a company. They not only identify issues within how the business is run, but can also help to integrate improvements for these issues, and feedback on how effective these suggested improvements have been.

A business psychologist can help a company to significantly improve upon their employee engagement, productivity and performance, as well as helping businesses to refine their recruitment process, and conflict resolution. Studies have shown that companies who enlisted the help of a business psychologist saw significant improvements in all of these areas; helping businesses to improve upon their overall productivity as well as time and cost efficiency.

What Does Being a Business Psychologist Entail?

Business psychologists work in many different ways within the field of business psychology. Their job often involves providing objective, professional insights into the issues of a company; including staff retention and employee engagement. This job also entails practitioners to identify and target the issues within a company,  using various different tools to understand the ways in which the business functions, and the chinks in this chain.

Once analysis has taken place and the issue has been identified, business psychologists can then offer effective solutions for the company to integrate into these parts of their business structure. Part of a business psychologist’s job can also involve helping the company to integrate these successfully, and afterwards can provide an evaluation of how these solutions have helped to improve the business.

What Aspects of a Business do Business Psychologists Work On?

Business psychology covers a broad range of different areas within a business. The Association for Business Psychology details the following as the main areas of business psychology:

  • Coaching
  • Culture
  • Employee engagement
  • Health and well-being at work
  • Leadership development
  • Learning and development
  • Organisational development
  • Performance management and appraisal
  • Psychometric testing
  • Safe and user-friendly work environments
  • Selection and assessment
  • Talent management

Whilst these are the main, established domains detailed by the Association for business psychology, the practice of business psychology can usually work within any people-related issues in the workplace. The issues that a business psychologist will help with will be entirely dependent upon the practitioner and what they offer as their services. Business psychologists help to analyse, target, and suggests improvements in many different areas surrounding a company’s workplace, and the employees it is comprised of.

Where to Find The Best Business Psychologists

There are many different business psychologists operating in the UK. As these practitioners work within a range of different areas of business psychology, it’s important to understand the types of services a business will need before enlisting the help of such a professional. As with hiring any service for a business, thorough and extensive research should be done on all potential practitioners before enlisting their help. This includes reading reviews from their other clients, exploring the types of services they offer and what they charge for these services.

Some business psychologists will also include a list of the clients they have worked with. Choosing a practitioner that has a good clientele portfolio can help to ensure professional behaviour and success in their services. It’s always best to compare many different practitioners and not settle for the first one discovered. Comparing multiple different business psychologists can help to ensure a business finds the best fit for them at the most reasonable cost.