Our discipline is deeply rooted at the intersection of psychology and business. Plainly, without business,¹  industrial-organizational (I-O) psychology as we know it would not exist. In a small irony, for those of us who received our education in a department or school of psychology, little instruction or knowledge related to business may have been imparted. Thus, unless we learned it on our own or were fortunate enough to have former business experience, many of us left graduate school lacking in basic business acumen. A lack of business acumen can have a major influence on many facets of our professional life, and it can impact our credibility and success as practitioners when we are required to speak the language of our clients and understand their businesses.

For this issue of the International Practice Forum, we reached out to our colleagues in Australia to give us some insight on what the industrial-organizational psychology landscape looks like. In Australia, it is more commonly referred to as organizational psychology. Past Chair Peter Zarris and current Chair Tim Bednall of the Australian Psychological Society College of Organisational Psychologists provide us with an overview of the strategic aims of the college, ongoing progress, and potential opportunities.

On January 29, 2016 (seventh anniversary of President Obama’s signing of the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act), The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) announced the long-anticipated proposed regulations for pay data collection. Private-sector employers with 100 or more employees will complete an expanded EEO-1 annual workforce demographics report that will now include 12 pay categories. The EEO-1 has been around since 1966; the current rules for which employers are required to file the report are not changing. Pay data would be based on W-2 earnings; employers would also report total hours by pay band. EEOC is soliciting comments on how to handle hours for salaried employees whose hours are not generally tracked. The first pay report would be due in September 2017; employers would report a year of pay data looking back from any pay period between July 1 and September 30 of the reporting year. The rule includes federal contractors and supersedes the Department of Labor proposed regulation announced in 2014; the two agencies are together on the EEOC plan. There is speculation that federal contractors with 50-99 employees who currently file EEO-1 might be included later. Comments were being taken until April 1.

In February, SIOP President-Elect Jim Outtz joined Lewis-Burke for a series of meetings with representatives from Capitol Hill and nongovernmental organizations to highlight the impacts and applications of I-O evidence-based research on policing reform, to urge stakeholders to apply I-O research to related policies and programs, and to position and promote SIOP as a collaborator and resource for these organizations going forward. 

Over the past 3 years, we’ve highlighted technology and social media trends in this column that were having a large impact in the workplace. Those key trends included big data, adaptive training, virtual reality, gamification, simulations, and social media, as well as virtual communication and teamwork. Every so often, we find it’s important to step back and reflect in order to learn and prepare for the future of the field. This issue will cover the trends we’ve seen since the inception of The Modern App that we believe are here to stay.  We also provide suggestions for how you can learn more about these topics!