Member Spotlight: Lewis Garrad

Name
Lewis Garrad

Position/Employer
Partner, Mercer

How long have you been a SIOP member?
15 years

What roles have you had within SIOP?
I am currently a Work Trend Champion.

Interest Area(s)
Employee engagement and employee surveys, rewards and incentives, innovation and culture, talent ... you get it.

What sparked your interest in I-O psychology?
People spend most of their waking adult life at work—seemed like a pretty important area to have a big impact on people all around the world. I also love data—so working with data about people at work was very attractive to me.

What role do you see I-O psychology playing in the future of work?
If the foundations of I-O psychology are data about people at work—then we are really in a time when we have more opportunities than ever to learn about what people want and need from work, as well as how we can help them find the work that best suits their unique capabilities. However, we should make sure that we balance out our need to find scalable and generalizable theories with studying how context and technologies change relationships between people and work. For example, what it means to be a high performer today might look quite different to what it did 20 years ago. We should therefore constantly update our tools to make sure they still make sense as work evolves.

Which of the Top 10 Work Trends for 2022 do you most strongly relate to, and how can I-O psychology practitioners, educators, and students impact this trend?
For me, the main theme that stands out in the work trends this year is about health and wellbeing. Work has a significant influence on our wellbeing. Good work can make us healthier, toxic work (as in bad jobs) makes us sick. Work provides us the resources to be economically secure so we can spend time on relationships that matter in addition to the ones we have at work. So much of the last 12-24 months has disrupted our work/life pattern—it's a great time for reinvention.

What advice would you give to students or those early in their careers?
Become very data savvy. There is no doubt in my mind that I-Os who are good with data—and especially good at translating data into insights—provide significant value add to modern organizations. When you are early in your career, I feel like you have more opportunities to do this (as you're not managing people or selling, or whatever).

Please share one non-I-O-related bit of information about yourself
I completed the full distance Ironman triathlon in Malaysia.

Is there anything you would like to add?
Check me out in the Harvard Business Review, writing with other awesome I-O psychs.

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