Royal Navy 'Sea-Swap' Project Wins Top Occupational Psychology Prize

Main Category: Psychology / Psychiatry
Article Date: 13 Nov 2008 - 8:00 PDT

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A project to find alternative ship manning solutions that can meet naval operational requirements and employees' expectations of length of time away from home has scooped top prize in the annual Occupational Psychology Practitioner of the Year awards.

The project, carried out by Naval Personnel HR Research Manager Rachel Tate, was judged to have been instrumental in shaping the direction of investigations into manning options; the approach will now be shared with other allied navies, placing the Royal Navy at the leading edge of future manning solutions. Rachel Tate was among eight short-listed candidates in the annual competition, held by the British Psychological Society's Division of Occupational Psychology at the Hellenic Centre, London, on 12th November.

Sea-Swap, which also won the category prize for Organisational Change, involved crews swapping their 'home' ship for another ship in the trial, so it was important to assess the impact on psychological factors. According to the competition judges; 'The work helped open up an otherwise closed and tightly knit community, providing significant insight into the factors which underpin team ethos, identity, ownership and loyalty'.

Winner Rachel Tate said: "I am really encouraged by this award, which recognises the tangible benefits that our profession can deliver."

Awards were presented to recognise excellence across three other categories: Development, Assessment, and Health & Wellbeing.

'Hays Advance: Global Leadership Development', submitted by Stuart Duff of Pearn Kandola, won the Development category. The project involved the Hays leadership development team working in partnership with Stuart Duff and Pearn Kandola psychologists to create Hays Advance, an innovative and challenging longitudinal process for leadership development. The Advance programme evaluates and develops leaders across the globe, focusing on their individual specific challenges and provides them with the skills to deliver their business plan.

'Redesigning the Graduate Assessment Process For The NHS', a project carried out by Stephen Lucks at Pearn Kandola, took the Assessment award. This involved the NHS Institute for Innovation and Improvement working with Stephen Lucks and his colleagues to modernise the graduate assessment process, increase validity, improve the diversity of the graduate pool and improve overall efficiency. The redesign made innovative use of on-line screening, involving verbal and numerical testing, a situational judgement test and a bespoke motivational test validated against the current graduate pool in the NHS.

The award in the Health & Wellbeing category went to Ronny Lardner, Director of the Keil Centre, for 'Unlocking Safety Culture Excellence - Our Behaviour Is The Key'. This project involved three international companies - Wood Group, GlaxoSmithKline and Woodside Energy - starting on linked projects to strengthen their existing safety culture, thereby reducing the risk of industrial accidents. These unique projects developed and deployed a simple, user-friendly method to recognise that good safety performance depends on safe thinking style and behaviour at all levels of the organisation. The method integrated existing external knowledge with company-specific examples.

A special Lifetime Achievement Award, set up to recognise long-term contribution to Occupational Psychology Practice, went to Professor Chris Brotherton, whose long and distinguished career culminated in a decade to 2007 as Professor of Applied Psychology at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh. Professor Brotherton was also Head of Faculty for Psychology and Management at the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development and has overseen the delivery of psychology courses to over 500 companies. Until his retirement last year, he was Visiting Professor of Psychology at Tianjin University of Commerce in China.

Keynote speaker at the awards event was Chris Yates, Group OD Director at HSBC Bank.

The 2008 Practitioner Of The Year Awards were sponsored by SHL (http://www.shlgroup.com), demonstrating the company's commitment to supporting excellence in the practice of Occupational Psychology.

1.Synopses of the winning projects and digital photography of the winners, can be accessed at http://www.pow-bps.com/dop-pow/practitioner-award$.cfm. 2. The Division of Occupational Psychology is part of the British Psychological Society. The Division has over 3000 members, approximately half of whom are Chartered Occupational Psychologists. Members apply the science of occupational psychology to help organisations maximise the performance and well-being of their people. You can find out more at http://www.pow-bps.com.

British Psychological Society

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