How to Use Psychological Tests in HR

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We’re taking things back to basics today and asking the important questions:

  • What are psychological tests?
  • How can psychological tests help in selection and recruitment?
  • How can psychological tests help in people development?

We work with psychological tests, psychology and HR every single day. Which means we’re fully aware of how effective psychological testing can be in the workplace and how wide the range of applications is.

But if you’re an HR professional who hasn’t yet dipped their toe into the (sometimes daunting) world of psychological testing, we’re here to help. Keep reading to learn why you need to add psychological testing to your HR toolkit, stat!

What is psychological testing?

Psychological testing, aka psychometrics, is the systematic use of tests to quantify psychophysical behaviour, abilities, problems and to make predictions about psychological performance…

… or so says the Encyclopedia Britannica.

In layman’s terms, psychological testing or psychometrics is a type of testing that gives us scientifically rigorous and reliable insights into someone’s abilities, personality and psychological functioning.

In the business world, psychometrics are used to give employers an indication of the psychological inner workings of their employees – not in a creepy stalker way, but in a way that helps them to identify talent, create more effective working environments for their staff, and build high-performing teams that communicate effectively with each other.

At KinchLyons, our psychological testing focuses largely on aptitude, personality and emotional intelligence – all of which we use with clients to either help identify the right person for the right role or to inform coaching practices that help individuals to develop self-awareness and other workplace skills.

… but are psychological tests reliable?

Now, we can’t talk about psychological testing and psychometrics without mentioning the elephant in the room: the glaring fact that some people don’t believe in their accuracy or utility…

We don’t want to get into a full-blown academic debate here, but we do want to reassure you that every psychometric test we use here at KinchLyons is rigorously tested for reliability and validity. 

While there are certainly some psychological tests out there that rest on rocky foundations and might not stand up to real scrutiny, there are plenty that will. The key is to identify psychological tests that have been subjected to peer review – and succeeded.

In the UK, the British Psychological Society (BPS) is the top governing body when it comes to reliable, valid and rigorously tested psychological tests. BPS-verified tests are submitted to a barrage of testing and are peer-reviewed by a board of experienced psychologists, meaning that any test that has officially been verified by the BPS is reliable, valid and can be trusted in its intended area of practice.

There are similar bodies across the world that verify the huge number of psychological tests that are created and used every year – and every psychometric that we use at KinchLyons has been verified by at least one of these professional bodies.

By using psychological tests that are verified and reliable and valid, and by completing the relevant certification for administering and interpreting test results, you can rest assured that the psychometrics you’re using are fit for purpose.

Using psychological testing for selection & recruitment

One of the main roles fulfilled by an HR department is finding the right person for the role. Whether it’s an internal hire or an external recruitment campaign, finding a candidate who meets the experiential requirements of a role and fits in well with the team and has the potential to be a positive asset to the business can be tough – and that’s where psychological testing can help.

The benefits of using psychological testing for recruitment

The cost of a bad hire for a business is in the region of €60k (£50k). That’s a huge amount of money, even for a big corporate giant.

So how does using psychological testing help to mitigate the risk of making that costly mistake?

First up, we all know how easy it is to bend the truth on CVs and to present an inaccurate impression of ourselves in an interview situation. It’s human nature to put our best foot forward and keep those slightly less favourable qualities under wraps.

But, as a recruiter, it’s your responsibility to know how a candidate will actually perform in the role you’re hiring for – not just how the candidate thinks they’ll perform. And that’s where psychometric testing comes in handy.

By introducing psychological testing into the recruitment process, you’re achieving two things that will help you to prevent making that €60k mistake:

  1. You’re placing less reliance on interviews and CVs. Not only does that mean you’ve got more data to base your hiring decision on, but it also means that you’re reducing the risk of bias getting in the way of making an objective decision. Interviews (particularly if they’re ‘casual’ unstructured interviews) are notoriously difficult to make objective, because they’re two or more personalities connecting in a relatively short period of time. First impressions really do count, and personal opinions and ‘connection’ play a big role in how a candidate is perceived in an interview situation, regardless of their ability to do the role in question.
  2. If you’re using personality-based psychometrics, you’re getting an insight into who the candidate is and how they’re likely to fit into the team, not just what they can do. Skill and competence is only one part of the equation, particularly in team or high pressure environments – personality and the ability to manage emotions, assess risk and communicate effectively with teammates is arguably more important (and less teachable) than the skill itself. By using psychological testing, you’re able to gain a deeper insight into the real person behind the CV.

Given the choice between hiring the wrong person and costing the business €60k or using psychometric testing and making a hire based on more than just a 20-minute interview, we know which one we’d choose!

The DOs and DON’Ts of using psychological testing for recruitment

Using psychometrics for recruitment and selection processes isn’t foolproof. It doesn’t guarantee finding the perfect candidate for the role every single time, but it does reduce the risk of making the wrong decision – if psychological testing is used properly.

There’s a lot that goes into proper use of psychometrics, including test-specific qualifications, but here are some basic DOs and DON’Ts if you’re a complete beginner in the field of psychological testing.

The DOs of using psychometrics for recruitment

  • Use psychometric tests as a part of the recruitment process.
  • Be clear and upfront with candidates about the purpose of the psychological testing and what the results will be used for, paying particular attention to following data protection and privacy regulations in your country or industry.
  • Use structured, unbiased interviews alongside psychological testing to get a 360-degree view of a candidate’s potential for a role.
  • Before administering a psychological test, make sure that you understand what the results signify for the role in question. Map the scales or areas measured by the test to the competencies and requirements of the role, so that you know exactly how performance in that particular test is relevant to that particular role. If possible, consulting an external body at this stage will help to make the use of the assessment as objective as possible.
  • Make sure that the tool you choose to use is designed and approved for use in selection purposes. Not every psychological test is recommended for selection use, so make sure you aren’t basing recruitment decisions on tests that aren’t designed to be used for recruitment.

The DON’Ts of using psychometrics for recruitment

  • Don’t base a recruitment decision solely on the results of a psychological test. Testing must be used as part of a well-rounded selection process that’s as free from bias as possible.
  • Don’t use psychometric testing without the proper training or qualifications, otherwise you risk misinterpretation and unfair bias.
  • Don’t use psychological tests that aren’t valid, reliable or robust. Instead, identify tools that are well-validated and have proven real-life applications. If in doubt, check the guidelines of the governing body in your country and look through the publisher’s Technical Manual for evidence of reliability and validity.
  • Don’t forget that past performance is still a really good indicator of future performance. It’s important to still take into account on-the-job experience, not just psychological test results.

Using psychological testing for development and coaching

Another fundamental role of HR professionals is the professional development and training of existing team members. Whether that’s skill-specific training to improve performance in a particular role or more general coaching to improve overall work performance, it’s important for HR professionals to identify the right sort of programme for each individual.

And that’s where psychological testing can help again!

The benefits of using psychological testing for development

The benefits of using psychological testing in a development context fall into two core areas: identifying the most beneficial areas to focus on for individual development and informing coaching practices during development programmes.

Particularly when considering continual professional development for high-potential team members, psychological testing can help to identify people who might otherwise be overlooked. We all know that businesses can be structurally biased against women and those from minority backgrounds – but psychological testing helps us to look past the who and identify the core personality and psychological traits that offer potential for high performance in roles.

By identifying existing team members for development programmes that will make the most of their unique strengths, psychological testing can help to reduce the cost of hiring externally for management roles, and can help to reduce staff turnover (another costly thing!) by engaging team members in development programmes that help them with personal and professional development.

Using psychological testing in coaching helps to make the coaching process more effective. Whether the goal is to improve team dynamics or to improve the performance of an individual team member, knowing the personality traits of the people you’re coaching means that you can tailor practices to that individual – as well as focusing on areas of weakness or blind spots that might be hindering their professional development.

The DOs and DON’Ts of using psychological testing in development and coaching

Just like when using psychological tests for recruitment or selection, psychometrics aren’t foolproof in a development context either. While the risks of making ‘bad’ decisions in development are lower than in a recruitment context, there are still right and wrong ways of using psychological testing in coaching and development practice.

 The DOs of using psychometrics for development

  • Do take into account job performance as well as psychological test results. Actual performance remains a better predictor of future performance than any single psychological test is.
  • Do use psychological testing to inform decisions and development programmes, but using a wide range of coaching techniques and practices is still most effective.
  • Do use psychometrics to identify blindspots in your team and use that information to inform future organisational changes as well as individual and team coaching.

The DON’Ts of using psychometrics for development

  • Don’t base internal decisions (like access to training programmes or promotions) solely on the results of psychological tests.
  • Don’t use tests that aren’t reliable or valid, or tests that are designed to be used in a recruitment context only.
  • Don’t introduce psychological testing to a team without any explanation. Testing can often be met with scepticism and reluctance, so introducing testing with a strategy in place to explain the purpose of the tests and how the results will be used is important, particularly if psychological testing has never been used before.

How to get started with psychological testing in HR

If you’re now convinced that psychometrics can enrich your HR work (which they definitely can!), what should you do now?

The first thing to do is to find the right training and qualifications for you. A great place to start is with Test User Ability and Test User Personality (TUA and TUP) qualification. The Test User programmes are designed to give you a foundation in administering and using psychological testing in the workplace, covering both aptitude testing and personality testing. Some specific psychometric tools require a user to be TUA or TUP (or both) trained before using the tool, but even if your chosen tool doesn’t mandate TUA or TUP training it’s still advisable to gain certification, as many tool-specific qualifications will assume a basic knowledge of psychological testing that the TUA/TUP programmes will give you.

The internationally-recognised Test User training covers many of the basics that will leave you feeling confident in introducing psychological testing to your HR practice:

  • The fundamentals of ability, aptitude and personality
  • How to administer assessments in an unbiased way that meets all relevant regulations
  • Identifying the right psychological tests to use at different stages of the employee lifecycle

Once you’ve attained your TUA and TUP qualifications, you’ll be able to access a range of psychometric tools – but there are many tools that also require specific qualification in order to begin using them.

Test User qualification will give you a solid understanding of psychological testing and that will allow you to make a more informed decision about which psychometric tests are most relevant for your HR needs. 

Depending on whether you’ll be using psychological testing for recruitment or development purposes, you’ll be able to choose from a huge range of psychometric tests (taking care to choose ones that are reliable and well-validated!) and undertake training specifically for that tool. The psychometric test training will help you to understand the foundational principles of the tool and what it measures, as well as giving you guidance on how to interpret the results of that specific test.

You can find out more about Test User training here and explore all the other tools we provide training in over here – and, as always, if you have any questions, we’re here to help!

A Beginner’s Guide to the Psychology of Risk

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A beginner’s guide to the psychology of risk

What is risk? How does your brain handle risk? How does your risk disposition affect your decision making?

These are all BIG questions. Because the psychology of risk is a pretty huge topic!

But that’s what we’re here to help with. We’ve worked with the psychology of risk for more years than we care to remember, so we’re distilling everything we know about risk, psychology and decision making into what will hopefully be a concise summary of the psychology of risk and how you can get started with understanding and utilising it.

So let’s give it a go!

What is the psychology of risk?

Very simply, the psychology of risk is the study and understanding of how our mental processes (our psychology) handles responses to ‘risky’ situations or decisions we’re faced with.

Easy, right?

But the more challenging thing is to define what ‘risk’ really means from a psychological perspective.

Often when we hear the word risk we conjure up images of roulette wheels and blackjack tables and lottery tickets – which are a form of risk, of course. But that’s not the only form of risk we face in our everyday lives.

The American Psychological Association dictionary defines risk as:

“1. The probability or likelihood that a negative event will occur, such as the risk that a disease or disorder will develop.

  1. The probability of experiencing loss or harm that is associated with an action or behaviour.”

Basically, a risk is when something negative might happen as a result of an action or behaviour.

Which means that our casino-based understanding of risk is far too narrow. Instead, we need to think of risk as something that happens in a huge range of situations.

Whether it’s crossing the road (where there’s a clear physical risk) or not speaking up in a meeting (where there’s a less immediate reputational risk) or buying something from a social media ad (where there’s a financial risk) – we face risk every day in hundreds of different contexts.

The psychology of risk therefore is a much more extensive topic than you might initially think. It’s about decision making, risk perception and risk tolerance – and how our unique personalities and our shared personality traits combine to give us our own personal risk disposition.

Breaking down the psychology of risk lingo

When we’re measuring and discussing the psychology of risk, here at KinchLyons we use the language of the Risk Type Compass. So before we get any further into why risk matters and how we can support teams and businesses to manage risk psychology in the workplace, it’s worth introducing the Risk Type Compass and its psychometric measures.

Emotion and Cognition

The Risk Type Compass is designed to assess candidates on two fundamental axes of human nature: emotion and cognition. We all fall somewhere on both of these dimensions, and the Risk Type Compass positions these axes as two bi-polar scales, interacting at their centre point. Every one of us falls somewhere on the emotion scale and somewhere on the cognition scale, and the thought is that it’s the intersection of those two positions that ultimately determines our approach to risk.

In the Risk Type Compass, the two scales are as follows:

 

  • Emotion: ranging from Intense in the top left to Composed in the bottom right
  • Cognition: ranging from Carefree in the bottom left to Prudent in the top right

 

If, for example, you score in the mid-range on both scales, meaning you’re neither intense nor composed and neither carefree nor prudent, your result would land you right in the middle of those two intersecting bi-polar scales.

The Risk Type taxonomy

With those two bi-polar scales underpinning the Risk Type Compass assessment, it’s then possible to construct a 360-degree spectrum of risk – the Compass part of the name.

With the two main scales plus two more bi-polar sub scales, Wary-Adventurous and Excitable-Deliberate, the Compass begins to take form – and between those scales, the Risk Types reveal themselves.

 

Wary Risk Type

Scale position: extreme-mid towards Intense on the emotion scale; extreme-mid towards Prudent on the cognition scale

Characteristics: sensitive to risks around them, keen to eliminate uncertainty at ever opportunity, eager to establish control over potential risks.

Intense Risk Type

Scale position: extreme-mid towards Intense on the emotion scale; middling on the cognition scale

Characteristics: highly alert to risk, apprehensive about taking risks, feel very strongly disappointed if things go wrong.

Prudent Risk Type

Scale position: middling on the emotion scale; extreme-mid towards Prudent on the cognition scale

Characteristics: concerned with eliminating risk through clarity, strategic and methodical in their approach to eliminating ambiguity

Excitable Risk Type

Scale position: extreme-mid towards Intense on the emotion scale; extreme-mid towards Carefree on the cognition scale

Characteristics: enthusiastic about exciting things, but with a sensitive risk antennae, committed once a decision has been made

Axial Risk Type

Scale position: middling on the emotion scale; middling on the cognition scale

Characteristics: balanced, proportionate responses to risk, often acts as a mediator in group situations

Deliberate Risk Type

Scale position: extreme-mid towards Composed on the emotion scale; extreme-mid towards Prudent on the cognition scale

Characteristics: calm, calculated and not easily shaken, tend to do things by the book, planned and well-prepared

Carefree Risk Type

Scale position: middling on the emotion scale; extreme-mid towards Carefree on the cognition scale

Characteristics: prioritise opportunity over risk, make on-the-fly decisions easily, good at handling change or urgency

Composed Risk Type

Scale position: extreme-mid towards Composed on the emotion scale; middling on the cognition scale

Characteristics: rarely feel anxiety, dispassionate in decision making, deal well with stress and change

Adventurous Risk Type

Scale position: extreme-mid towards Composed on the emotion scale; extreme-mid towards Carefree on the cognition scale

Characteristics: fearless, confident, unafraid of risk, frustrated by resistance and keen to take action

Type or Trait?

If you’ve read as many psychology papers as we have, you’ll be well-versed in the type versus trait debate. But if not, you’re about to be.

The general gist is that there are two schools of thought when it comes to personality:

  1. Those who subscribe to type theories believe that there are measures that can place an individual into a particular pre-defined category. You either are that type, or you aren’t.
  2. Those who subscribe to trait theories disagree and believe that we all fall somewhere along a spectrum and every one of us is somewhere along a continuum.

The Risk Type Compass, despite using the word ‘Type’ in its name, largely subscribes to the second theory: that we all fall on some sort of spectrum when it comes to personality. The creators of the Risk Type Compass, Psychological Consultancy Ltd, use trait methodologies in their work (which includes being closely involved in the development of the Hogan Assessment Systems suite of personality tests), so it’s unsurprising that the Risk Type Compass has been largely developed with trait theory in mind.

So why the name, Risk Type Compass?

Simply put, it’s because the 360-degree continuum that the Risk Type Compass measures risk tolerance and risk attitudes on is split into eight Risk Types for ease of interpretation and communication.

Risk Attitudes

Aside from placing you into a Risk Type category, the Risk Type Compass also assesses how your Risk Tolerance differs in various areas of your life.

Risk Tolerance is how likely we are to take a risk and the Risk Type Compass assesses that likelihood across five Risk Attitudes:

  • Financial: confidence in making financial decisions and investment choices
  • Reputational: tolerance about behaviours that may offend others’ sense of propriety
  • Social: comfort when opening conversations, being in the limelight and addressing groups
  • Recreational: readiness to pursue challenging and potentially dangerous activities
  • Health & Safety: attention to matters that may impact on health or wellbeing

Although your Risk Type may suggest that you’re generally averse to taking risks, it might be that your aversion is focused on, for example, financial risks – but that you’re much more comfortable taking recreational and social risks.

It’s important to remember that a Risk Type is merely a categorisation of your risk psychology – it’s a ‘type’ for communication and interpretation purposes, but the traits that determine your Risk Type are a continuous 360-degree spectrum, which is reflected in the variety of Risk Attitudes within a single Risk Type.

Why does the psychology of risk matter in the workplace?

Now that we’re clear that the psychology of risk impacts every area of our lives, it’s no surprise that it plays a big role in our workplaces too.

In the workplace, there are two things to consider when we’re thinking about the psychology of risk. First, how does our Risk Type affect our individual interactions within the workplace? And secondly, how does the combination of Risk Types across teams, departments and entire organisations affect the organisational risk landscape?

Risk Type and individuals in the workplace

As we’ve seen, Risk Type and decision making are intricately linked – and in the workplace we face hundreds of decisions every single day. From how much we push the edges of our 60-minute lunch breaks to whether we ask for that pay increase or not, the range of decisions we face is huge.

And Risk Type has an increasingly important application in workplaces where health and safety are a concern. In industrial workplaces or where hazardous materials are handled, the Risk Type Compass has been used to identify individuals who may be less likely to conform to rigid rules and procedures. That doesn’t mean that those individuals aren’t suitable for that role, but it does allow management and leadership to create procedures and environments that account for those individuals.

Assessing Risk Type on an individual level isn’t about identifying suitable people for roles; it’s about adding another layer of insight into individual personalities that can help an organisation harness their potential and mitigate any negative consequences that might be associated with a particular Risk Type.

Risk Type & Occupation

While Risk Type doesn’t have a direct application in indivdual selection processes, there is some interesting evidence that suggests that particular Risk Types are drawn to particular professions.

The human population as a whole is evenly distributed around the Risk Type Compass – which makes it surprising to see some industries and job roles have a notable skew in a specific direction.

One example of such a skew is in Administration Professionals, where 25% of surveyed individuals (n=240) were Wary Risk Type, while only 3.75% were Composed, suggesting that administrative professionals tended to skew significantly towards the Measured end of the cognition spectrum and towards the Emotional end of the emotion spectrum. The Wary Risk Type is characterised by self-discipline, hyper-awareness of risk and a high level of organisation – which aligns well with the demands of an administrative position.

 

 

In almost-direct contrast, recruiters were found to skew heavily towards the Carefree Risk Type. In a survey of 805 recruiters, 28.4% of the sample were Carefree Risk Types and 22% were Adventurous Risk Types, both of which land towards the Carefree end of the cognition scale and towards the Composed end of the emotion scale. What we know about Carefree and Adventurous Risk Types is that they thrive in environments where risk and opportunity are rife, and aren’t likely to shy away from competition. They tend to be outgoing and relish the adrenaline and excitement of trying new things – and given that the recruitment industry is incredibly competitive and needs a level of confidence, it’s no surprise that the Wary, Prudent and Intense Risk Types aren’t attracted to the profession.

 

 

One of the most extreme examples of occupational Risk Type skew is found in the Auditor profession. Of 198 surveyed Auditors, 36.4% fell into the Deliberate Risk Type, 17.7% into Composed Risk Type and 13.1% into Prudent Risk Type – meaning a huge 69% of the Auditor population fell into just three of the nine Risk Types. Just 2% of Auditors were Carefree, 4% were Excitable and 3% were Intense. The results show that Auditors are much more likely to score on the calm end of the emotion scale, towards Composed, and are also likely to score on the Prudent end of the cognition scale. Auditors in the Deliberate, Composed and Prudent Risk Types are characterised by methodical thinking, investigative behaviours and calm, composed emotions – all of which clearly support an effective career as an Auditor where thoroughness and composure are highly valued.

 

[H4] Risk Type & decision making

One of the most useful applications of risk psychology in the workplace is increasing individual awareness of risk. Just like every other area of psychology, being aware of how your brain works and what your natural tendencies are towards risk and decision making is incredibly valuable.

For individuals in coaching situations, understanding their Risk Type often helps them to start making more informed decisions – rather than just going with their gut reaction. If a leader understands that they’re likely to be impulsive and attracted to risk, they’re able to build processes that will help to mitigate their impulses or surround themselves with people who bring a different perspective to the decision making process. 

Similarly, if an individual knows that their Risk Type is likely to make them resistant to taking risks, understanding that fact will help them to start recognising where their Risk Type is holding them back or making decisions that might not be the best for the organisation.

Risk Type and teams in the workplace

Another interesting application of risk psychology in the workplace is within teams or departments, where interactions between individuals with differing Risk Types can lead to conflict or imbalance.

Assessing the Risk Type of each team member, the Risk Type Compass Team Report allows teams to begin increasing their understanding of the differing viewpoints in their teams. Risk Types view the world and their decision making processes very differently, so the first step in any team development project is to educate the team on their individual Risk Types and those of their colleagues.

Particularly for teams struggling with interpersonal friction, an intervention using risk psychology can be illuminating. There’s no perfect mix of Risk Types for a team, but knowing where the centre of gravity lies can facilitate better understanding and more effective communication.

In a team where individuals are distributed evenly across the Risk Type Compass, with one or two team members in each Risk Type, decision making processes should theoretically be fairly balanced. But the challenge for an evenly distributed team is often communication and understanding between Risk Types. The more Adventurous, Carefree and Composed Risk Types might get frustrated by the Intense, Wary and Prudent Risk Types, who they see as holding up decision making and spending too much time focusing on the potential negative consequences.

By acknowledging that their perceptions of risk differ, these conflicting Risk Types can learn to communicate better with each other and make more balanced decisions, without interpersonal conflict.

For teams where there is a definite skew in one direction, awareness of Risk Type becomes even more important and effective. If a team is highly skewed towards the Wary side of the Compass, decision making is likely to be a long and laboured process, while teams skewed towards the Adventurous side of the Compass are likely to be more gung-ho and impulsive.

Neither skew is better or worse than the other, but the important thing to remember is that awareness of this risk psychology skew can help to strengthen the group dynamics, mitigate potentially bad decision making, and increase resilience too.

Ultimately, understanding risk psychology at the team level is a highly effective way of improving communication and reducing interpersonal conflict, because team members become more aware their personal strengths and blindspots and become more tolerant of the blindspots of their colleagues too.

How to start harnessing risk psychology in the workplace

Hopefully by now you’re fully convinced that understanding risk psychology both at an individual and team level can be hugely beneficial for organisations – but how do you start using Risk Type to facilitate organisational progress?

The answer is simple: get qualified in the Risk Type Compass!

The Risk Type Compass is a comprehensive risk psychology tool backed by over a decade of research into risk psychology, decision making and organisational change. It’s an incredibly reliable tool and can be applied to any industry, any organisation and any people-based concern – and is particularly useful for managing organisational change, risk culture and team development, as we’ve seen.

At KinchLyons, our Risk Type Compass certification workshops are available online on-demand so if you’re keen to add risk psychology to your people development arsenal you’re in the right place!

Head over to our Risk Type Compass page to see how risk psychology can make a difference to your organisation! And if you enjoy a good technical manual and fancy diving deep into the data behind the Risk Type Compass, take a look at the Risk Type Compass Technical Manual.

What is Business Psychology?

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We talk about business psychology day in, day out. We’re a business psychology firm, so it’s hardly surprising that it bleeds into everything we do.

But, we realise that for many people, business psychology might be another one of those jargon phrases that are bandied about without really knowing what it is, how it works or who it can help.

So we’re here to rectify that. We’re going back to basics to share with you what business psychology is, where it came from, and how it can help every business under the sun to be better, more productive and more impactful.

What is business psychology?

Business psychology goes by a number of different terms, all of which mean roughly the same thing. We won’t go into the ins-and-outs of the nuances here, but for the purposes of this piece we’ll be using ‘business psychology’ to refer to the same concept as these terms:

  • Organisational psychology
  • Occupational psychology 
  • Industrial psychology
  • Industrial-Organisational psychology (I-O psychology)
  • Work psychology

We’ll be using ‘business psychology’ hereon in, simply because it feels to us like the most accessible and understandable term to use.

So, what exactly is business psychology?

Unfortunately, there’s not a quick, one-stop definition! But we’ve gathered a few from across the industry that feel aligned with what we believe business psychology is – and that are as easy to understand as possible!

Business psychology is:

“The application of the science of psychology to work. [Business] psychologists develop, apply and evaluate a range of tools and interventions across many different areas of the workplace” – British Psychological Society’s Division of Occupational Psychology

“The study and practice of improving working life. It combines an understanding of the science of human behaviour with experience of the world of work to attain effective and sustainable performance for both individuals and organisations” – The Association for Business Psychology

“[the combination of] the science of human psychology with practical business application in order to improve the work environment for employees, improve productivity in businesses, and organise groups of people in companies” – University of the People

Basically, business psychology is the application of psychology to business environments, with the aim of improving wellbeing, elevating performance and enabling a more engaged and motivated workforce.

Simple, right?!

A (brief-ish) history of business psychology

Psychology as a scientific discipline is far from new. In fact, we’re just the latest in a long line of psychologists and scientists exploring the human psyche and trying to understand what makes people tick.

While we can’t possibly cover every development in the area of business psychology here, we’ll do our best to give a short-and-sweet summary of the world’s journey from ‘what on Earth is business psychology?’ to ‘business psychology is powerful!’.

The early days of business

Business psychology started to develop from the mid-1880s onwards and followed parallel paths in the US, UK, Australia, Germany and the Netherlands.

But what prompted the start of business psychology?

Two words: Industrial Revolution.

If it’s been a while since your school history lessons, the Industrial Revolution happened across the western world in the early 1800s. Suddenly, manufacturing and business were BOOMING, with factories and corporations and businesses with big ambitions popping up everywhere you looked.

And with that revolution came economic progress, but also uncertainty and a whole heap of new problems for people to deal with.

Suddenly, thousands of people were working in roles that hadn’t previously existed. Hierarchies were being created within organisations and along with those hierarchies, leadership roles.

As Helio Carpintero notes, “The history of organisational psychology is deeply rooted in the process of growth, increasing complexity and richness of both economic and industrial structures in our modern world.”

From the Industrial Revolution onwards, business psychology started to be taken seriously. Instead of seeing industrial conflicts, workplace accidents, and organisational inefficiencies as ‘organisational’ or ‘social’ issues, governing bodies and business owners began to accept the view of psychologists – that the individual worker and their human psychology were at the core of industrial issues.

Business psychology’s teenage years

But business psychology didn’t stop there.

During World War One and World War Two, business psychology was taken even more seriously. 

In both the UK and the US, psychometric testing was introduced to recruit military personnel and identify the most effective role for them in the war efforts. IQ was developing in the educational psychology world, and psychologists like Charles Myers (National Institute of Industrial Psychology, and later a founding member of the British Psychological Society) were studying worker fatigue and wellbeing in munitions factories.

The wars gave business psychologists the opportunity for mass testing and huge data gathering to research, test and develop their theories – which were then published in a wide array of scientific journals that were launched throughout the 1920s and 1930s.

Like with many areas of society during the world wars, individual and group relationships in workplaces began to be taken seriously – partly driven by the need for camaraderie and collective action to defeat the enemy abroad. While there remained the usual management-worker tensions during this time, the focus shifted tangibly towards empowering the individual worker to work to their full potential and encouraging leaders to manage people individually, taking their personality traits into consideration.

The twentieth century

As with any scientific discipline, methods of testing and the application of business psychology were refined during the twentieth century, with a focus on reliability and validation of psychometric testing – and a focus on developing practices that fuelled global economic growth.

The 1980s in particular saw huge discontent in the workforce, with workers strikes happening regularly and a demand for better working conditions. While business psychology had started to shift momentum away from seeing worker discontent as a class issue and towards it being a psychological issue that could be tackled with a scientific approach, the unrest of the 1980s pushed business psychologists to consider the impact of group psychology in the workplace.

Business psychology began to incorporate group behaviour, individual differences, and leadership effectiveness – all of which continue to be a focus for business psychologists today. Increasingly, business psychologists began to consider the impact of the individual and the impact of the organisation – and how the two interact in the workplace to create behaviours, cultures and psychological contracts that can be studied by business psychologists to improve the workplace for everyone involved.

… And now?

Today, business psychology is a firm, well-respected discipline. There’s an immense amount of scientific and academic research to back up business psychology and its applied discipline – and it’s become a go-to source of trusted advice for businesses across the world, of all shapes and sizes.

Most recently, we’re seeing a big shift towards focusing on wellbeing, effective and empathetic leadership, as well as psychologists rising to the challenge of handling hybrid and remote workforces.

Paralleling a shift in society’s perception of mental health issues, positive psychology has emerged as a way of prioritising worker wellbeing by focusing on creating environments and systems that allow people to flourish and utilise their strengths and personality traits for positive impact.

At KinchLyons, we focus on using positive psychology practices, backed up by decades of scientific proof, to develop human capital as the ultimate business advantage. We’re firm believers that people are business’ greatest assets – and business psychology allows us to help businesses to help their people thrive.

What exactly does a business psychologist do?

Ah, another can of worms that doesn’t have a simple or single answer!

Business psychology is a huge discipline, with an even more huge array of practices under its banner. From leadership development to ability testing to coaching to acquisition – there is a lot that business psychology gets involved in.

Again, we stand no chance of being able to do every single field of business psychology justice here, but we’ll do our best to cover the main areas so that you get a good idea of what we business psychologists spend our days doing!

Leadership Development

Often what happens in businesses is that the best workers get promoted into leadership positions. But that often results in people finding themselves in leadership positions that they’ve never been trained for.

As business psychologists, our priority is to develop and identify leaders who have the ability to effectively manage their teams and workforces. Our focus isn’t the tangible management skills that are taught in MBAs or leadership programmes, but instead the use of psychological practices to motivate and empower team members, negotiate workplace conflicts and ultimately create a positive working environment for all.

Leadership development includes:

  • 1:1 leadership coaching using psychometrics
  • Team development (especially C-suite teams)
  • Leadership hiring
  • High performance talent identification/development
  • 360-degree performance assessments 
  • Executive coaching

Talent Acquisition & Hiring

Finding the right person for the right job is one of the most important things in the world of business – as proven by years of business psychology research! While it’s rarely an exact science, one of the things we do as business psychologists is to help business owners or human resources departments identify the right people when filling roles.

When identifying the best fit for a role, the first step is usually to identify the traits and skills needed for a role – and map those onto psychometric competencies wherever possible. On top of that, interview skills training, identifying existing internal talent and designing engaging onboarding programs are all things that business psychologists can help with.

In recent years, there has been a big focus on interview skills in the business psychology field. With an increasing focus on diversity and inclusion across the business world, it’s important that interviewers are able to be objective, unbiased and fair in their interviews. Consulting with HR departments to design competency-based interview questions that reduce the impact of unconscious bias has become a focus for business psychologists recently.

Talent acquisition and hiring work for business psychologists includes:

  • Competency mapping for psychometric testing
  • Talent identification in internal teams
  • Interview skills training
  • Engagement and onboarding consulting

Team Management & Executive Coaching

Interpersonal relationships within teams and organisations can make or break a business’ chance of success. As Benjamin Schneider said, “The people make the place” – so managing teams and individuals within a business is a vital part of any business psychologist’s role.

At the team level, business psychologists can help to facilitate team relationships through team building exercises and simulations, 360-degree assessment sessions or through individual coaching with a whole team. Whether it’s a team whose performance is lacking, or a team who has experienced organisational change, a business psychologist will discuss with key stakeholders before designing a bespoke, science-based intervention.

At the individual level, business psychologists can support organisations with performance management (using psychometrics and constructing objective, feedback-gathering performance review sessions), individual coaching (whether focused on career development or professional development within the workplace), and supporting individuals through organisational change.

Business psychologists can support organisations with:

  • Team development workshops
  • 1:1 coaching using psychometrics
  • Performance management
  • Employee engagement initiatives
  • Team building simulations
  • Decision making training and simulations
  • 360-degree performance appraisals

Organisational wellbeing

The importance of wellbeing and positivity in the workplace has been slowly coming to the fore for a few years now – but with the unavoidable rise of remote and hybrid working thanks to the pandemic, even more organisations are beginning to realise the power of supporting employee wellbeing at every stage of their working lives.

Workplace wellbeing initiatives are increasingly becoming the norm in businesses – but for business psychologists the important thing is that these initiatives are evidence-based and actually effective. Rather than assuming a pool table in the break room will make staff happier or adding ‘Pizza Thursday’ to the culture, business psychologists work with organisations to assess current employee engagement levels, use psychometrics and structured interviews to figure out what makes people tick, and then develop wellbeing initiatives that are far more likely to be effective in increasing employee satisfaction.

Workplace wellbeing includes:

  • Employee engagement assessment and programmes
  • Positive psychology practices
  • Group coaching and team development
  • Leadership styles assessment and coaching

How does business psychology help organisations?

Essentially, wherever there are people and wherever those people are performing some kind of work task, business psychology can help. As we’ve seen, business psychology can support organisations through periods of organisational change, team development, individual development, leadership coaching – and pretty much anything that a particular business is struggling with when it comes to people.

But does business psychology actually have an impact on a business’ bottom line?

In short, yes. Keep reading to learn about the ROI of business psychology for your business.

The cost of a bad hire

If you’ve ever hired someone who seemed great on paper, made a great impression at interview, but then didn’t quite live up to expectations when it came to job performance, you’ll know first-hand how important it is to find the right person for the job.

Hiring an ineffective candidate is not only stressful, it’s also incredibly costly. According to BMS Performance, bad hires often cost UK companies more than £50,000, through job advertising fees, hiring fees, wasted time and team inefficiencies. For small businesses in particular, a £50,000 loss can have a huge impact on the business and its people.

Outside of the financial burden of ineffective hiring, businesses often see other negative effects of ‘bad hires’, including:

  • Negative impact on company culture, particularly if turnover is high
  • Employee engagement falling, as a result of increased workload and uncertainty
  • Productivity levels falling, as other team members resent needing to pick up the slack

With a business psychologist on board, however, it’s much more likely that a business will hire the right fit for the role off the bat. By using competency-based interviews, reducing unconscious bias, and using psychometric assessments to judge culture-fit as well as job competence, business psychologists help businesses to avoid the financial and non-financial costs of hiring the wrong person.

The cost of ineffective leadership

You’ve heard the saying, “People quit bosses, not jobs”, right? There’s an element of truth in that!

When working day-in, day-out with the same team, interpersonal relationships are incredibly important. Even if a person is 100% satisfied with the content of their job role, a bad boss can be the nail in the coffin for them. In fact, a poll conducted by Gallup found that 50% of employees have left a job explicitly because of a manager.

Not only can business psychologists help businesses to identify high potential candidates for leadership roles, but they can also support leaders themselves through 1:1 coaching. 

Particularly when emotional intelligence tools are used during these coaching processes, there is a demonstrable financial and non-financial ROI for leadership coaching. By supporting leaders and managers to develop their emotional intelligence and arm them with emotionally-aware management tools, business psychologists can help to reduce the number of employees who leave jobs because of poor management, which saves the company money, reduces employee turnover (which supports the development of a positive workplace culture), and improves employee wellbeing too.

The cost of low employee engagement (particularly in remote or hybrid workplaces)

Employee engagement has been a focus for business psychologists for many years now – but it’s still sometimes met with scepticism in the business world. When HR budgets are stretched and investment is funnelled into other areas of the business, employee engagement might feel slightly too intangible for businesses to worry about.

But really, investing in employee engagement has one of the highest ROIs in the business psychology world. It’s clear that businesses with high turnovers are likely to be less successful, due to disrupted workflows, a high upfront cost for onboarding new hires, and an impact on workplace culture. Besides working with leaders to improve management styles, assessing and improving employee engagement is one of the most effective ways of reducing staff turnover – in fact, a Gallup survey concluded that companies with highly engaged employees have a turnover rate that is between 25% and 59% lower than their competitors.

More recently, the shift towards remote and hybrid working has brought the importance of employee engagement into the forefront of many businesses’ minds. With employees working from home and physically distanced from managers and colleagues, informally assessing employee engagement becomes more challenging – and the risks of employees losing touch with the business and its values increases dramatically. Engaged employees, whether they’re remote or in the office, are more likely to be productive, efficient members of the organisation – which clearly improves the bottom line.

How to start harnessing the power of business psychology

If you’ve stuck with us this far, you should now understand what business psychology is, where it came from, what it does for businesses, and how powerful it can be for organisations of all shapes and sizes.

So you might be thinking, “How can I get the power of business psychology working for my business?” – and that’s where we come in!

KinchLyons is here to help businesses of all sizes, shapes and industries make the most of their human capital. Our focus is on using scientifically robust and proven methodologies and psychometrics to help individuals, teams and businesses create organisations that allow people to thrive. You can read more about us and our people over here.

Through accreditation workshops or our Talent Services, our friendly team of coaches and consultants can help your business solve its people woes and help you to fully harness the potential of every individual in your business.

Fancy a chat? Drop us a line! 

Dirty Salad Club: Reflections On 1,391 Minutes Of Community, Collaboration & Conversation

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Whew. We made it to the end of the year. The past 21 months (has it really been that long?!) have been tough on so many of us – but one thing that has kept us going throughout has been the insights, the conversations and the community we’ve built up around the Dirty Salad Club.

So, given that it’s the end of the year and the perfect time for a little bit of reflection, we thought we’d take the opportunity to review our favourite sessions, celebrate all our wonderful speakers, and get ourselves ready for another year of Dirty Salad Club in 2022!

What is the Dirty Salad Club?

If you’re new around here and haven’t heard of the Dirty Salad Club, you might be a little confused… Dirty Salad Club? Do we gather together and eat unwashed lettuce?

No, thankfully that’s not what Dirty Salad Club is about!

Back in March 2020, when the pandemic first started and we were all thrown into those “unprecedented” times, we started Dirty Salad Club as a way of building connections with our peers. Dirty Salad Club started as a series of webinars where we gather together over Zoom and share industry insights with each other. We wanted it to be a safe space, where we could be among our peers: coaches, psychologists, L&D professionals, HR professionals – anyone working with people in the business world.

But why ‘Dirty Salad Club’?

(There’s some logic behind our madness, we promise!)

Dirty – because the Club is a place where we can be open and honest and vulnerable.

Salad – because the Club is good for you! It’s a portion of good, hearty veg, for your brain.

Club – well, because we’re a club! We’re a community, a group, a gathering – whatever you want to call it, we’re it.

And it’s turned into so much more than we could’ve hoped for! In an industry where collaboration and learning from each other hasn’t been the “traditional” way of doing things, Dirty Salad Club has become a safe, supportive space where we can test things out, make mistakes, and take our learnings into our client work and beyond.

Dirty Salad Club: In Numbers

The Dirty Salad Club started in March 2020 and we’re thrilled that it’s gone from strength to strength ever since – in large part thanks to the community we’ve built and the speakers who’ve given their time and insights so generously to the Club.

In 2021, we’ve enjoyed:

  • 12 sessions, covering everything from organisational change to trust to technostress;
  • Insights from 12 engaging hosts; and
  • 543 minutes (over 9 hours!) of psychology-based goodness!

In fact, since its inaugural gathering in March 2020, we’ve enjoyed over 23 hours of Dirty Salad Club – and we’ve loved every minute!

2021’s Psychology Insights

2021, just like 2020, brought challenges and ups-and-downs and a huge heap of uncertainty. In the world of business psychology, the realisation that virtual working is here to stay and the immense challenges that brings with it dominated a lot of the industry’s focus – and many of our Dirty Salad Club sessions drew on that same theme.

In our final (festive!) session of the year, we gathered the KinchLyons team together to share with the Club our personal highlights of the year’s sessions – which was no mean feat, let us tell you! With such a huge variety of insights to choose from, we struggled to pick out our favourites, but each of us identified one session that gave us inspiration or techniques that we’re still carrying with us today.

Alan’s favourite: Conscious Communication In The Virtual Workplace, with Neil Curran

Alan kicked off the session with his favourite Dirty Salad Club session so far: Conscious Communication In The Virtual Workplace with Neil Curran of Lower The Tone.

Neil’s session covered a huge amount of super valuable information, all focusing on how we can be (and encourage our clients to be) more conscious of the way we show up virtually. You can watch the full session here:

When we were thrust into virtual communication (via Zoom, email, Slack, whatever your technology of choice!) last year, we all dealt with it the best we could. But even self-confessed communication experts struggled. Communicating via remote systems is challenging and unlike anything that we, as humans, are used to.

Without the in-person relationships, contextual information and body language to rely on, virtual communications nudged many of us to default to unconscious communication – where we aren’t consciously aware of our communications, our emotions, or how we’re coming across to others.

For Alan, this session highlighted the importance of emotional intelligence even more. Coaching leaders and high potentials to be aware of and manage their emotions in the workplace is one thing – but Alan is keen to encourage us all to consider the impact of EI in the virtual world, too. By bringing our awareness to our emotions and how we manage them, we are better able to show up consciously in the virtual world – and better able to communicate our true intentions to our virtual audiences.

Alan’s Key Takeaways:

  1. Virtual communication needs a rethink. If the last year-and-a-bit have shown us anything, it’s that we can’t copy-and-paste communication strategies from real life into virtual life.
  2. In the middle of joy and fear, there is improvisation. And it’s that improvisation that can be a direct route to psychological safety.
  3. Conscious communication, in real life and in virtual life, can transform our experiences and those of our audience. By being intentional about the way we show up and being positive with our communications, we can more effectively communicate even in the virtual world.

With virtual communications going nowhere any time soon, we still have a lot of re-learning to do when it comes to conscious communication – but Neil’s insight is a great place to start!

Billy’s favourite: Let’s Talk Time: exploring and managing our own relationships with time, with Jennifer Dowling

Billy’s highlight of this year’s Dirty Salad Club is Jennifer Dowling’s session on time, back in January of this year. Jennifer, who is Director of Train Remote, is a specialist in remote and flexible working, so her insights into time, decision making and how we can work at the organisational and individual level to increase productivity were hugely valuable. 

As we all experience first-hand, time management can be an immense challenge for many of us. And while the pandemic and the increase in WFH has caused an even bigger challenge for many, some have thrived under these remote conditions. So what psychological factors go into our relationship with time and how effective we are at managing it?

Something that is often overlooked in the world of time management and productivity ‘hacks’ is the impact of the organisation on an individual’s relationship with time. Within an organisation, as Jennifer explained, there are both time structures (written rules or procedures relating to time, like start times, finish times, budget cycles, etc.) and time norms (unwritten cultural practices, like whether meetings start on time or not, or whether it’s the norm to email colleagues outside of working hours).

These structures and norms either hinder or support an individual in having effective time management skills, depending on their individual relationship with time.

On an individual level, our approach to time management depends on three factors, says Jennifer:

  1. Are you temporally aware? Being temporally aware and seeing time as a finite resource makes you more likely to be conscious of how you’re using your time
  2. Are you a segmenter or an integrator? Segmenters keep things separate, carving out blocks of time for a single task. Integrators are more flexible with blending tasks throughout time, meaning work blends with life more often.
  3. Do you have temporal efficacy? What level of control do you believe you have over your time?

Considering these factors in conjunction with the organisational factors helps us, as coaches, to really understand how to help coachees to manage their time better – on terms that work for them.

 Billy’s Key Takeaways:

  1. Organisational time structures and time norms either hinder or assist individuals in having effective time management skills.
  2. Time management is not a one-size-fits-all thing: there’s not a single methodology that will work for everybody in every organisation.
  3. At its core, time management is a decision-making process, which means it can be conscious or subconscious. Bringing awareness to the subconscious decisions we make about our time is key in developing sustainable time management skills.

Time management, particularly for leaders, is always on the coaching agenda – so huge thanks to Jennifer for sharing her insight!

Tanya’s favourite: Creating A Compelling Vision For Your Future, Justine McGrath

Tanya’s stand-out Dirty Salad Club session was Justine McGrath’s session on creating a compelling vision for your future. For Tanya, this came at a really great time, as many of her clients were finding things a bit more challenging than usual, a bit more of a slog than usual, and struggling to see a future that wasn’t dominated by the dreaded C-word… But Justine, of ProACTive Coaching, helped to create a way forward.

When we’re preoccupied with the present (such as when there’s a global pandemic infiltrating every part of our lives…), our sense of time becomes distorted. We focus heavily on the present situation, what we can and can’t do right now, and, if we are somehow able to project into the future, we do so with the negative skew that the present situation is giving us.

Something that we, as psychologists and coaches, do a lot is to talk about the impact of self-talk – but what Tanya found novel about Justine’s session is the idea that our self-talk and our identity narrative can be consciously divided into past, present and future.

By encouraging that distinction in ourselves and our coachees, we can start to reduce the emphasis we’re placing on the present – and allow ourselves to start thinking about the future. The present is transitive, and by simply changing the language we use in our self-talk in the present moment, we can encourage our subconscious minds to start believing that the future can be different – and it’s something that Tanya has been incorporating into her coaching practise ever since!

Tanya’s Key Takeaways:

  1. By simply adding the word ‘now’ into our self-talk (e.g. ‘that’s just the way I am now’), we can make a huge difference to our ability to visualise the future in a more positive light.
  2. What we tend to think of as the habits of ‘successful’ people, won’t necessarily work for us. When we’re visualising our futures, we need to consider habits that will help us reach our goals, not try to enforce other people’s strategies into our lives.
  3. It’s important to measure the gains, not the gaps; think in terms of progress, not perfection; see the glass as half full, not half empty. For us and our coachees, focusing on how far we’ve come, not how far we have left to go, will help us reach our goals.

Justine’s session left all of us, especially Tanya, feeling far more positive about our (albeit uncertain) future – which is no mean feat in today’s world!

Susan’s favourite: Refresh Your Listening Skills, with Eibhlin Johnston

Finally, Susan shared with us that her favourite Dirty Salad Club was Eibhlin Johnston’s session on listening. Coaches talk a lot about the power of active listening and the importance of developing listening skills – but for Susan, Eibhlin, who is Managing Director of The Resiliency Hub, led us through a session that brought that power home on a personal level.

Despite being coaches and people professionals, Eibhlin’s session highlighted that few of us are actually conscious of the type of listening we engage in and how well we actually listen to what’s being said to us. Particularly in a remote working world, we’re often aware of how many distractions there are around us: your audience’s eyes flit to the edge of the screen when a notification pops up, there’s surreptitious phone scrolling just out of the camera’s view, and many of us are trying to multitask during video meetings.

But, as humans, our desire to be really, truly heard is primal. It starts from the moment we’re born, when it’s vitally important for our cries to be heard by our caregivers. And it’s still with us in adulthood, too. Not being listened to actively often results in feelings of hurt, frustration and an increased sense of vulnerability.

Eibhlin explained to us that there are four types of listening we, as listeners, can be using – and how important it is for us to try to achieve the fourth type wherever possible:

  1. Distracted Listening: where external distractions (notifications, people around us, etc.) and internal distractions (thinking about what to have for lunch, daydreaming, etc.) dominate and very little information is taken in.
  2. Evaluating Listening: where we’re listening to the information being conveyed for the purposes of judging or evaluating the content. If it’s unconscious evaluating listening, our judgments and appraisals are often negative in nature.
  3. Paying Attention: where we’re making a conscious effort to concentrate and to understand the information we’re receiving.
  4. Deep Listening: where we’re stepping outside of our own minds to be fully present with the speaker.

The goal is to reach Deep Listening, where we’re able to put aside our judgements, our distractions and our own thoughts and fully immerse ourselves in the speaker’s language. It’s a rare thing to experience as a speaker, but, as coaches, something we should all be striving to give to our coachees!

Susan’s Key Takeaways:

  1. Being deeply listened to feels incredibly strange at first, because it’s unusual in today’s connected, digital world.
  2. BUT, once you’re able to lean into that vulnerability and trust that the listener is deeply connecting with you, it feels wonderful – and it’s something we should be aiming to provide for our coachees.
  3. Coachees need the space to embrace our deep listening. As coaches, we need to get comfortable with the gaps of silence that encourage coachees to speak on a deeper level – and resist the urge to interject.

Eibhlin’s session was incredibly helpful and something we’ll continue to bring into our coaching practises moving forwards!

2022, and beyond!

We can’t express our gratitude to every speaker, every attendee and every kind word that has made Dirty Salad Club the positive community it has become – and we can’t wait to get started with a fresh year of sessions in 2022!

As our Club member Fintan said, Dirty Salad Club is a place where we can try things, be open about our failures, and support each other in making the world of psychology a better place – so if you have a topic that you’re dying to share with the world, we’d love to have you as a speaker in 2022!

Whether you’ve spoken in the Club before, joined us for the odd session here or there, or never heard of it before, we’re welcome speakers from all walks of life to share your knowledge, insights and thoughts with us in a safe space. If you’d like to speak next year, drop us an email on info@kinchlyons.ie

And, if you just want to join us for the ride…

Join the Dirty Salad Club LinkedIn Group and follow us on Eventbrite to join our next event!