Landing on the wrong planet: Practical guidance for bridging the gap between I-O psychology and key stakeholders

Abstract

rocket scientist Wernher von Braun has been quoted saying that his V2 rocket worked perfectly except for one small detail : : : it landed on the wrong planet (Goodreads, 2019). In many cases, sexual harassment and discrimination prevention training is industrial and organizational (I-O) psychology's V2 rocket, designed to perform perfectly but consistently missing the mark with its target audience. In other words, a good portion of the training programs designed by I-O psychologists to prevent sexual harassment and discrimination has ignored the organizational stakeholders most likely to affect meaningful change (i.e., board members, C-suite executives, front-line managers, employees). Although the focal article by Hayes et al. (2020) brings forth many insights and provocative research questions regarding how applied psychologists can best design and implement sexual harassment and racial discrimination prevention training, we believe there is one critical oversight. Throughout their article, Hayes et al. (2020) present their recommendations to other I-O practitioners and applied psychologists on designing and implementing effective antiharassment and antidiscrimination training without providing discussion or recommendations on how to obtain support and commitment from key organizational stakeholders. Although I-O researchers and applied psychologists are a critical part of the effort to increase antiharassment and antidiscrimination training effectiveness, we believe that the I-O psychology community as a whole needs to also directly communicate with organizational stakeholders. Those stakeholders can shape the culture and strategy of the organization to be more receptive to these trainings and move the needle from compliance to inclusion. In this commentary, we discuss why this change is needed and provide actionable recommendations on how I-O psychologists can best communicate and garner buy-in with the key stakeholders to maximize the impact of trainings. The importance of directly communicating with organizational stakeholders According to social learning theory (Bandura & Walters, 1977), people learn by observing the behavior of people whom they believe to be credible and knowledgeable. It is essential for top leadership, rather than HR, to model the desired behaviors they would like to see from their employees by championing the training themselves in order to set the training climate (Smith-Jentsch et al., 2001). It is demonstrated throughout the literature how imperative it is to garner commitment and support from leadership prior to implementing the training. For example, a positive training climate and support from leadership, such as front-line managers, can serve as a powerful qualifying condition for employees' motivation to learn from the training (Colquitt et al., 2000), their training transfer (Blume, Ford, Baldwin, & Huang, 2010), and for the training

EJWOP Special Issue: Enhancing the Social Impact of Research in Work and Organizational Psychology – Beyond Academia

“…Symon (2006) advocates having more practitioner reviewers of academic papers. Hodgkinson et al (2001) suggest that researchers could be trained more in socio-political as well as methodological skills (see Jalil et al, 2020 for what these skills might be). These authors also state that methodological rigour could be redefined somewhat to reflect the needs of user communities.…”