Reflections on SHL’s Presentations at the DOP Conference 2020
Fearless innovation drives SHL at the oldest and largest conference for organizational psychologists and associated HR professionals in the UK.
Science is part of our identity at SHL. As defined by our company value, Fearless Innovation, SHL encourages members of its scientific community to maintain a presence at events such as the DOP, with the opportunities for learning, networking and sharing of our thought leadership.
With the 2020 Division of Occupational Psychologists (DOP) Conference over for another year, we reflect on what was an enlightening meeting of the minds for the UK organizational psychology and human resources community.
The DOP Conference is one of the largest annual psychology conferences in the UK; It is the leading event for organizational psychologists to showcase their work. It is considered an influential event for the industry, with representation by local and global organizations, including the biggest players in the talent measurement space, as well as smaller groups of psychologists, academics and HR professionals.
The 2020 conference, held in Shakespeare’s birthplace, Stratford-upon-Avon, was the largest meeting so far, with 464 attendees. Additionally, it had the biggest representation of student attendees in the DOP’s history, showcasing the strong pipeline of new talent coming through in our field!
This year the theme was The Practice of Science: Occupational Psychologists at Work and our team presented a number of papers under several sub-themes. Below are four of the topics SHL presented at the conference:
Creating Fairer and More Accessible Assessment Content
The symposium, convened by Alex Livesey, highlighted SHL’s drive to be an industry leader in the area of creating fair and accessible psychometric assessments that promote diversity and inclusion. In the first paper, Gerianne de Klerk explored how mobile-first assessment design can propel access to a broader, more geographically and socio-economically diverse applicant pool. In the second paper, Noma Khabo reflected on the current experience of neurodiverse participants in recruitment and discussed the considerations that go into designing and utilizing appropriate assessment content. In the final paper, Samantha Lonigro and Ellie Mullins investigated the process of creating culturally unbiased content, using our recent development of a bank of Situational Judgement Test items as an example, and thus developing assessments which are truly global in nature.
Mobile-first assessment design can propel access to a broader, more geographically and socio-economically diverse applicant pool.
Best of Both Worlds: Enhancing Candidate Experience While Maintaining Psychometric Rigor
In this paper, Gerianne de Klerk show-cased how mobile-first designs of assessment content can result in psychometrically sound, and predictive measures of cognitive ability and personality whilst at the same time substantially improving the candidate experience.
Ready, Steady, Lead: In an Evolving and Complex Market How Do You Prepare Your Leaders for Success
This paper was a collaboration with Just Group sharing how the work SHL does translates into action for change. SHL’s Nairita Paul and Just Group’s Simon Halls presented work applying the Enterprise Leadership Model into a development program. The session’s emphasis was on how the project helped shape a development culture at Just Group and Simon’s experience of being an SHL client. The session was received particularly well as it offered a unique perspective of an end to end project journey from both ‘the consultant’ and ‘the client’.
Occupational Psychology: Impact of International Working
The International Working Group of the DOP organized a panel discussion on the impact of international working in organizational psychology. The panel included five speakers who had the experience of living and working in multiple countries and included SHL’s Gerianne de Klerk who has worked in the field of organizational psychology across Europe and in South Africa. In a global company like SHL, gaining experience across markets aids in utilizing a global perspective.
Audience Reception of Work Presented
There was a lot of excitement and positivity around what SHL is doing, as demonstrated by the rich exchange with the audience. The interest shown by many academic attendees reinforced that SHL is at the forefront of thought leadership when considering inclusion, diversity, fairness, and accessibility in talent measurement. Questions and feedback received demonstrated SHL’s strong scientific focus of our assessment products and the psychometric rigor that our clients have come to expect of us.
Attending the conference not only allowed us to promote our own work, but also to network and find out what our non-SHL peers are doing. Aside from some papers looking at improving neurodiversity in talent measurement – something SHL is actively involved in – trends included emotional intelligence, learning agility, the impact of digital and virtual technology on assessment and development, resilience and improving performance management.
With an emphasis on themes such as fair technology, improving employee wellbeing, and driving inclusion and diversity, we came away believing that investing resources and energy into developing these areas is critical for our industry.
In the era of global talent, it is our responsibility as industry leaders to continue sharing our professional experience and research at high caliber events like the DOP.
This is our contribution to the art of developing better organizations. This is what makes us unique, this is SHL’s science.
