I-O Visibility Committee: Year in Review and Coming Attractions

Stephanie Klein, PhD, and Nikki Blacksmith, PhD

The time has come to transition the Visibility Committee Chair role. As part of this transition, the chairs (Stephanie Klein, departing, and Nikki Blacksmith, incoming) would like to share some of Visibility’s accomplishments with you. This past year has been amazing, and the coming year should be even better.

In this article we showcase just a subset of our committee members’ incredible efforts, preview coming attractions, and provide insight into the 6 (soon to be 7) Visibility subcommittees, where the real work takes place. As you read, please consider whether how Visibility’s efforts may align with your own passions, and consider volunteering. Once you complete the SIOP volunteer signup form, you may also wish to contact Nikki to share specific interests or relevant skills.

Before we continue, we want to share our appreciation of our partners in SIOP’s Administrative Office. Everyone there is wonderful, whether we work with them regularly or just bug them periodically. Support, insights, guidance, assistance, knowledge—whatever we need, the AO team provides. Thank you!!

And now, Stephanie’s Visibility Committee Highlight Reel

Branding Subcommittee:

• Completing preparations for a webcast regarding how I-O psychologists solve organizational challenges
• Designed a brief survey of similar organizations to learn best practices in marketing SIOP

HR/Business Subcommittee:  

• Six Hot Topics White Papers completed
• Creating short video for business leaders from Big Data White Paper
• Recruited authors of “Lost in Translation” TIP series into Visibility; supported publication of remaining installments plus a SIOP Select session during annual conference
• Facilitated Top Minds, Bottom Lines, a preconference event for business leaders and senior HR professionals

Media Subcommittee:

• Surveyed SIOP membership in order to publish Top Ten Workplace Trends
• Refined process for working with AO to publicize Visibility and other committees’ initiatives, especially via social media
• Began exploring how Visibility and the AO might develop and sustain relationships with media representatives (e.g., Washington Post, NY Times Business editor)

Metrics Subcommittee:

• Completed SIOP Brand Awareness Survey, 5-year follow-up to the 2013 survey
• Catalogued recurring Visibility events that need metrics tracked, as preliminary stage of tracking across SIOP committees
• Identified objectives for use of medial intelligence platform Meltwater

Advocacy/Prosocial Subcommittee:

• Spotlighted prosocial efforts of SIOP members
• Kicked off military veteran bridge-building activities, with goals for 2019 SIOP Conference and Humanitarian Award

Students/Academia Subcommittee:

• Collaborated with APA on a series of blog posts, targeting undergraduate students and educators, about the field of I-O.
• Launched the SIOP Conversation Series, hosting conversations with leading names in I-O
• Initiated efforts to collect metrics on who is viewing/listening to blog posts, webinars, podcasts, and materials created by our subcommittee in order to improve attendance, traffic to the materials, and advertising for future initiatives

Visibility Committee as a whole:  

• Set up dashboard to track use of #SIOP18 and drafted plan for additional tracking
• Provided support for I-O Shaken and Stirred event that took place during the annual conference

Closing note from Stephanie: Chairing the Visibility Committee and supporting the subcommittee chairs and members in their work has truly been a privilege. Their ability to find—or create—opportunities to make I-O more visible is awesome.

A lot was accomplished this past year—and there is more to come! Here are Nikki’s Visibility Committee Coming Attractions.

Thank you, Stephanie! Wow, you have really set the bar for excellence!

Before I jump into the Visibility’s vision and goals for this year, I’d like to provide a review SIOP’s four strategic goals:

1. Become the premier and trusted authority on work-related human behavior
2. Increase the awareness and use of I-O psychology
3. Meet the needs of those engaged in the science and practice of I-O psychology throughout their careers
4. Model and reinforce the effective integration of science and practice

In order for SIOP to reach these goals, it must become a well-known organization. Thus, in efforts to help SIOP accomplish these goals, the Visibility Committee was designed with the purpose of increasing the visibility of SIOP, SIOP members, and I-O psychology as a whole to business leaders and decision makers, HR professionals, public policy officials, and the general public.

Our vision is that SIOP will soon become a trusted, household brand name and that I-O psychology becomes recognized as vital tool and practice in all organizations. In order to realize this vision, the committee will be working hard this year. Below I have outlined some of the key goals from each subcommittee.

Branding

The branding subcommittee led by Cochairs Chester Hanvey and Alyssa Gradus, will spend the year reinforcing the branding guidelines and outwardly pushing the visual SIOP brand. This will include designing materials such as infographics, videos, and more that will be used to enhance the initiative of other subcommittees. Their goal is to ensure that when individuals see the icon below they will recognize it immediately as I-O psychology and associate it with SIOP.

HR/Business

Allison Ellis, chair of the HR/business subcommittee, and her team will be dedicating their efforts to educate HR and business executives about I-O psychology and the value it can bring to their organizations. The subcommittee will continue working on white papers and will shortly reveal a new video they are creating!

NEW! Events

The new events subcommittee, chaired by Victoria Mattingly, is a spinoff of the HR/business subcommittee in an effort to provide a more concerted effort to create a bigger and better version of the Top Minds Bottom Lines (TMBL) events. TMBL is designed to educate HR and business executives—who do not have a background in I-O—about the value in applying I-O psychology to their work. We will be marketing the event to top leaders in the DC area so if you know of an executive that is in a place to make decisions and can benefit from this event, please let us know!    

Media

As chair of the media subcommittee, Amanda Woller will work with her team to enhance the visibility of SIOP and I-O through all traditional and nontraditional media channels. This year the subcommittee will be developing processes and systems to build and maintain relationships with key reporters, journalists, and writers. They will also be increasing their efforts to expand the Smarter Workplace Awareness Month.

Metrics

Brendan Neuman, chair of the metrics committee, will lead his team in designing and implementing a system of metrics to assess efficacy of SIOP initiatives and the extent to which SIOP is gaining visibility. This includes tracking website traffic, mentions in the news and social media, along with the number of impressions and influence of our messages. This will help us understand what types of communication are most effective!

Advocacy/Prosocial

With Marisa Bossen as chair, the prosocial committee will be focusing on enhancing the visibility of SIOP members’ use of I-O knowledge and skills for prosocial work and research. This year her team will focus will be on veteran bridge-building between military and civilian sectors. They will also collaborate with other advocacy and public policy committees, as well as APA 19, to create synergy, and with the awards committee to nominate candidates for the Humanitarian Award.

Students/Academia

The students/academia subcommittee will be working to increase the visibility amongst students and academics. The subcommittee will collaborate with other SIOP committees to make efforts to ensure I-O psychology is covered in introduction to psychology textbooks. They will continue working with APA to publish their blog.

The Visibility Committee had an amazing year and has achieved numerous accomplishments under Stephanie’s outstanding leadership. On behalf of the visibility committee (which has over 40 members!), I’d like to thank Stephanie for her guidance and support. Also, a few of the subcommittee chairs and SIOP’s executive director have shared personal messages to express his/her gratitude.

Throughout my last few years serving on the Visibility Committee, I have had the pleasure of getting to know and work with Stephanie. She was a great resource and advocate as I worked though accomplishing my committee responsibilities, as well as an excellent liaison between the Viz Committee and the SIOP AO. She is passionate about promoting I-O psychology and SIOP to those within and outside of our field, and she relentlessly worked toward advancing this goal as Committee Chair. Although I am excited to work with Nikki, as Stephanie has well equipped and empowered her successor to do a great job taking over, Stephanie will surely be missed. I have no doubt she is going to continue doing great things in SIOP moving forward. – Victoria Mattingly

Stephanie, you have been a great leader and mentor to the visibility committee members. Thank you for encouraging me to execute crazy ideas, even when it means a thousand pens. – Amanda Woller

Stephanie, thank you so much for all of your leadership, enthusiasm for our committee's work, and support for trying out new and creative initiatives! I have absolutely loved working with you these past few years. You've truly helped to make I-O more visible to students, business leaders, and society more broadly. We are so lucky to have you! – Tori Crain

Stephanie understood and operated with the big picture in mind.  She was very strategic and an excellent leader to a large and diverse committee. – Jeff Hughes

Stefanie, you are an exemplary leader! Working with you has been a pleasure and I hope we can find ways to work together in the future. Thank you so much! – Nikki Blacksmith

We hope that we can continue the momentum Stephanie created; we have set ambitious goals to build upon the initiatives of the past years’ and are ready to work hard. Please consider being a part of our efforts.

Below are some ways we could use your help.

• Let us know when you have been mentioned in the media
• Help us promote the Top Minds Bottom Lines events to executive leaders
• Send us ideas about how to increase visibility
• Share your prosocial work with us
• Tell us about I-O visibility-related events that we can help publicize

Contact the Visibility committee at visibility@siop.org to share accomplishments or send ideas!