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Occupational Psychologists

 

Nancy Doyle

Tell us about yourself?

I’m Dr Nancy Doyle, occupational psychologist. I founded and run Genius Within CIC, a non-profit which specialises in workplace inclusion for neurominorities – that includes ADHD, autism, dyslexia, dyspraxia, Tourette’s and more. I am also the co-director of the Centre for Neurodiversity Research at Work at Birkbeck College, University of London, where we research the effectiveness of interventions and ways to make organisations systemically inclusive. I created the documentary Employable Me for the BBC, which aired in five countries, featuring the Genius Within “positive assessment” process, in which we use assessment processes to draw out occupational talents. I am also a Forbes columnist, writing about neurodiversity inclusion in business....

How did you get into this career?

I’ve worked in disability inclusion since 1995; I started as a support worker for adults with physical and learning disabilities. I also worked for Access to Work and for the DWP employment programmes more broadly. I’ve always thought that disablement is much more about the limits of society’s flexibility than the extent of individual impairment – this is known as the Social Model. So many people are needlessly excluded from society because they struggle to read, sit still for long periods, concentrate in noisy spaces – yet these specific behaviours are not prerequisites for all work. By using Future of Work technology, Universal HR design and treating people with respect we can ensure that more people can contribute. I am passionate about this; it is my life’s work.

What qualifications are needed?

I have a BSc in Psychology and an MSc in Occupational Psychology. I completed the British Psychological Society’s Level 8 Chartership training in 2006. I also completed my PhD in 2018, after researching the effectiveness of coaching as a disability adjustment. To specialise in this area, you need to train in workplace psychology, coaching and/or HR, but you also need to understand the community you represent. Increasingly, neurodiversity inclusion is part of Diversity and Inclusion and there is a stakeholder network whose principles are “nothing about us without us.” I am diagnosed with ADHD and my company includes over 100 staff, 60% of whom identify as disabled. Representation matters, as much of the professional training is still pejorative, dismissive and outdated – think back to when homosexuality ceased to be considered a psychiatric disorder – this is how many neurodivergent/neurodiverse people feel now. This has to be balanced with some of the very real clinical and disabling features of conditions themselves. To work in neurodiversity, you need a depth of authentic experience with a breadth of professional training. 

What is a typical day for you?

As a CEO, a lot of my job is what you expect – finance, legal, risk/opportunities, HR and strategy. However, I also do a lot of writing, research and training, both internal and external. I like to keep my hand in and continue to see the odd client – both individuals and companies who need consulting advice. I think this helps me to ensure that our direction remains tethered to practical relevance.

What’s the best part of your job?

I actually love writing and this includes both for clients and media writing. I love the process where you can write a report for a client and frame their experience for them in the positive. We see so many people who have never had a positive assessment of their skills or potential; I love reframing something they took for granted, like a mechanical skill or having the gift of the gab and turning that into a viable career plan. It’s magical.  

Overall, I love the idea of continually challenging myself to apply the psychology of occupations and organisations to my own company. Can we make it work for ourselves, can we walk our own talk? If we’re advising employers to provide adjustments, how are we doing on that provision and can we genuinely bring dynamic, high performing teams together? I also find it very satisfying to look at how the company structure itself, being non-profit with an employee share scheme, can be designed to reflect the values of the Diversity and Inclusion work that we do. I like looking for congruence and I also love making budgets work. Sad, I know.

Most challenging part of job?

When we can’t fix it all at once! Taking things one step at a time and pacing for the long haul. When I started, no one had heard of neurodiversity and now everyone and his dog has an autism inclusion programme! Unfortunately, most of these are aimed at white, autistic, male technologists, yet neurodiversity is much broader than that. However, I don’t have a magic wand and I appreciate the paradigm shift between disability inclusion as a pity party versus affirmative action based on talent. The work continues and sometimes I need to decompress and put some distance between myself and the activism mindset. Maybe that’s why I like a long hard look at budgets every now and then?

Why would you encourage someone to choose this career?

Occupational psychology is a great field for people who want to make a difference at work. By increasing access to safe, healthy, fulfilling work we can transform people’s income, their social identity and their life chances.

Read Dr Nancy Doyle’s Forbes column, a useful repository of interesting stories, here


Jonathan Houdmont

Tell us about yourself?

I’m an Assistant Professor of Occupational Health Psychology and director of the MSc in Workplace Health and Wellbeing at the University of Nottingham. I introduced the course in 2007 to provide practitioners with a theoretical and evidence-based foundation for organisational activities on the protection and promotion of health and wellbeing. I also conduct research on work-related stress in high-stress occupations, with a particular focus on policing....

How did you get into this career?

Back in 1992 I took an A-Level in psychology and immediately fell in love with the subject. The same year my dad suffered a breakdown as a consequence of burnout from his demanding job as a director of an international insurance company, resulting in medical retirement while still in his 40s. Having watched my dad and his co-directors wear their stress-induced duodenal ulcers as a badge of honour I decided at that point to pursue a psychology degree with a view towards applying the discipline in the workplace to protect workers’ health. Three decades later – and now the age at which my dad’s career came to an end – I find myself amazed that I knew as a teenager what I wanted to do with my professional life and that it worked out! 

After a degree in psychology, I completed a Postgraduate Certificate in Further Education (PGCFE), followed by an MSc in Occupational Health Psychology (which I later developed into the MSc in Workplace Health and Wellbeing). As I came to the end of my MSc the course director secured a research grant from the Health and Safety Executive for a project to identify the ingredients and recipe for a ‘case’ of work-related stress. I was appointed as a researcher on the project, which formed the basis of my PhD. In 2007 I was appointed to a lectureship in Occupational Health Psychology at the University of Nottingham.  

What qualifications are needed?

To work as a university academic it’s usually necessary to have (or be close to completion of) a PhD, though in some cases a Masters degree will suffice. Academics who teach are often expected to undertake a Postgraduate Certificate in Higher Education (PGCHE).

What is a typical day for you?

I try to divide my week so that Monday-Wednesday are dedicated to supporting the MSc in Workplace Health and Wellbeing and supervising my PhD students, while Thursday and Friday are focused on research. Teaching days are usually spent planning and delivering teaching, marking, conducting tutorials, and supervising student research. On research days I generally close my email, put the phone on silent, and focus on writing bids, collecting data, conducting analyses, and preparing journal papers.

Best part of your job?

The most satisfying part of my teaching role is undoubtedly supporting MSc students through their research project. I love working with a student to craft a study that addresses a real-world occupational health issue and which has the potential to make a genuine difference to the health and wellbeing of workers. This year I’m supervising MSc projects on a wide range of topics from strategies to enhance midwives’ job satisfaction to factors that predict whether waste sector workers attend health surveillance appointments. On the research front I get a huge kick from writing a journal paper that makes a contribution to the knowledge base and will (hopefully) inform organisational practices. For instance, during lockdown I spent time analysing data from 20,000 workers to ascertain whether those experiencing symptoms of minor psychiatric disorder can be identified from their response to a single question concerning the degree to which their job is stressful. If a single-item measure of job stressfulness can reliably identify workers with minor psychiatric disorder this would give rise to its use to facilitate the early identification of at-risk workers. It turned out that the measure was very effective among workers in high stress roles (in this study, prison workers and police officers dealing with child abuse and domestic violence), and less so in less stressful roles such as office work. Once the paper is published I look forward to hitting the conference and event circuit to share the research findings and engage in discussions about their implications for the management of workplace health and wellbeing.

Most challenging part of job?

The most challenging part of my job is balancing teaching and research. You never know when you’re going to be lucky enough to secure a research grant, and once a research project begins, some juggling and extra hours are necessary to ensure that all duties continue to be fulfilled. It is also challenging to mentally switch off from emails, meetings, and phone calls in order to focus on the writing of academic papers. I find that, if it’s to be any good, academic writing takes a tremendous amount of concentration and immersion in the task; finding the quiet and space to get into that zone can be tricky

Why would you encourage someone to choose this career?

When I retire I’ll do so in the knowledge that in some small way I’ve made a contribution to the enhancement of workplace health and wellbeing, whether it’s through teaching practitioners operating at the coal face or changes that organisations have implemented in response to my research findings. That’s a pretty satisfying thought!

Any final thoughts?

One of the trickiest things for a new academic is to develop a research niche. When bidding for research funding, how do you compete against established researchers with years of experience or make yourself an attractive potential collaborator? The key is to ‘get out there’, attend as many academic conferences as possible and join committees. At the very start of my academic career I took on the role of conference coordinator for the European Academy of Occupational Health Psychology, which helped raise my profile and led to many fruitful collaborations. There may also be a good dollop of luck involved. In my case, many years ago the secretary of a local branch of the Police Federation who sought to commission a study concerning stress in custody officers simply Googled ‘stress research’, found my name, and gave me a call. That initial research project established my credentials as a police stress researcher, which has defined the subsequent decades of my research career. I sometimes wonder what direction my research career would have taken were it not for that phone call.