What are the three major fields of industrial psychology?

The current blogspot will be based on the question “what are the three major fields of industrial psychology?”. We will focus on the three major fields of industrial psychology and elaborate each area with the room available for industrial psychology to work towards the betterment of employee health, satisfaction and productivity. 

What are the three major fields of industrial psychology?

The three major fields of industrial psychology include the following :

  • Industrial
  • Organizational
  • Human Factor

Industrial Psychology

Industrial field is one of the major fields of industrial psychology. It focuses on the description of job requirements and assessing the people to hire them as per their abilities to meet those job requirements.  

Industrial psychology also tends to work for the development of various ways to train, assess and evaluate the hired individuals as per their soft skills and hard skills that are necessary to meet the job description.

Industrial psychologists also tend to take in consideration and work according to the legal policies that are developed for employee hiring and the labor laws to work in line with the fair hiring system and avoid any discrimination in hriring.

Conducting need based training sessions and inculcating new skills among the employees with an aim of improving the skills of the employees to better suit the news for advancement in organization.

Thus the main focus of industrial psychology is employee hiring and retention within an organization. The industrial psychologist ensures practices at all levels of organizations to maximize the number of hirings and minimize the numbers of people being fired within a need based recruitment as per the size of organization.

The job prospects of a industrial psychologist are as follows :

  • Personnel Analyst
  • Instructional Designer
  • Professor
  • Research Analyst

Organizational psychology

Organizational psychology is a major area of industrial psychology that is related to finding and concluding the effects of various factors on employee relations in a workplace setting and the effect of those factors on the business. 

The three major concerns of organizational psychology are employee satisfaction, motivation and commitment. Organizational psychology is concerned with finding out the factors that influence positively or negatively, the satisfaction of employees and their workplace motivation.  

Organizational psychology is also related to the study of  management, leadership and organizational culture. It is concerned with the various ways that the management and leadership decisions influence the individual behaviors.

Organizational psychology deeply studies the organization’s structures, the management and leadership styles in an organization, social norms, organization’s hierarchy and the role expectations that are believed to have an influence over the individual behaviors.

The two important areas of concern for the organizational psychologists are sexual harassment, workplace politics, workplace violence and favourisms. The organizational psychologists work towards a considerable decrease in workplace harassment of physical, verbal and sexual nature at all levels of organization.

Hence the organizational psychologists are concerned with the study of the two interactions that get developed between the employee and the workplace. It studies, analyzes and works towards improving the employee relations with the organizations and conversely the dynamics of relationships of organizations with their employees.

The potential jobs prospects for organizational psychologists are as follows :: 

  • HR Research Specialist
  • Professor
  • Project Consultant
  • Personnel Psychologist
  • Test Developer
  • Training Developer
  • Leadership Developer
  • Talent Developer

Human Factor psychology

Human factor psychology is the study of the ways through which the workers interact with the tools related to work and the development of workplace tools in order to maximize productivity. 

Human factor psychology is concerned with the workplace safety and health of employees with ergonomics being a broader concern.  Thus human factor psychology can be related to study of a minute factor of the height of the computer tables and workstations to meet the height requirements of employees as the employees need to spend several hours working on those computer tables and workplace stations. 

Human factor psychology also looks into the various ways that employees interact together and examines the interaction of human beings with complex displays, their perception of those displays and the way those displays are analyzed and interpreted by the humans.

Occupational work psychology and humanitarian work psychology are two further divisions of human factor psychology. These two fields are based on the research from biological, organizational, medical and psychological perspectives.

The job perspectives for human factor psychologists are as follows :

  • Academics
  • Ergonomist
  • Safety Scientist
  • Project Consultant
  • Inspector
  • Research Scientist
  • Marketer
  • Product Development

Conclusion

The current blogspot focused on the question “what are the three major fields of industrial psychology?”. We learned that industrial psychology, organizational psychology and human factor psychology are the important fields of industrial psychology. We also discussed the various specifications of each of the three major fields of industrial psychology.

Frequently asked questions : What are the three major fields of industrial psychology?

What are the key areas of an industrial psychologist?

The key areas of an industrial psychologist are as follows :

  • issues of recruitment
  • selection and placement
  •  training and development
  • performance measurement
  • workplace motivation and reward systems
  • quality of work life
  • structure of work and human factors
  • organizational development and consumer behavior

What is the focus of industrial psychology?

Increasing workplace productivity and related issues such as the physical and mental well-being of employees are the main focus of industrial psychology.

What are the principles of industrial psychology?

The principles of industrial psychology are as follows :

  • Motivation
  • performance appraisal
  • Training
  • Recruitment
  • Compensation
  • Stimulation
  • Socialization
  • Identity
  • Control
  • Communication
  • human behaviors and psychology of leadership

What is an industrial psychology major?

Industrial psychology major is a field specialization that majorly focuses on improving the workplace conditions regarding the behavior of employees and their productivity.  A master’s or doctoral degree in Industrial psychology can open doors to various careers in industrial psychology majors.

Citations

https://openstax.org/books/psychology-2e/pages/13-1-what-is-industrial-and-organizational-psychology#:~:text=The%20field%20of%20I%2DO%20psychology,ability%20to%20meet%20those%20requirements.

https://www.apa.org/ed/graduate/specialize/industrial

https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-industrial-organizational-psychology-2795302

http://theeffectivetips.blogspot.com/2017/04/psychological-principles-in-workplace.html

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