What Do Practitioners Want? Practitioner Survey Results Revealed!

Emily Solberg, SHL, & Ben Porr, Harver

Acknowledgements: We would like to acknowledge Betsy Bayha, Tracy Krueger, and Rob Silzer for their assistance with reviewing this article.

How satisfied are SIOP practitioners with the resources, networking events, and other offerings from SIOP intended to support their professional work? Results of the SIOP Professional Practice Committee (PPC) Survey show a lack of awareness about some current resources and more work to be done to provide practical resources and developmental opportunities to practitioners. Key survey findings are that

• Practitioners’ satisfaction with SIOP has consistently improved since 2008, but we still have plenty of room for further improvement.

• SIOP needs to better publicize key resources such as mini-webinars, SHRM White Papers, and so on.

• Social media channels can be further developed and better utilized (e.g., segmenting by interest areas, consistent focus, better connect practitioners).

• SIOP should continue providing practical information (e.g., salary survey) and accessible developmental resources (e.g., mini-webinars, professional development opportunities).

Background

The PPC administered a satisfaction survey to SIOP members in early 2019 to gauge the support for current and future practitioner resources as well as general satisfaction with the organization. In recent years, SIOP and the PPC have undertaken many activities including newsletters, webinars, meetings, and other projects to address practitioner needs. Our goal was to understand practitioners’ views on current initiatives and what they would like to see developed in the future. The survey asked questions related to

• Professional resources used: What resources were most used by practitioners, which were most valuable, and how aware were practitioners of each resource?
• Professional resources desired: What are the top 10 preferred initiatives from 33 possible future initiatives for practitioners?
• Overall satisfaction with SIOP: How satisfied are practitioners with SIOP?

Method

Four focus groups comprising a total of 23 practitioners were conducted in the fall of 2018 prior to survey development to obtain qualitative information regarding current satisfaction with SIOP resources and to discuss ideas for future initiatives and resources. Based on their feedback, a survey development team, led by Emily Solberg and including Ben Porr and Caitlin Cavanaugh, worked on the development of items around several practice-related topics that had been identified.

Respondents were asked to answer two questions related to 30 existing practitioner resources:

1. How valuable is this resource for practitioners? (Response options were not useful (1), somewhat (2), very (3), extremely (4), and unsure.) Note that a link to each resource was included in the survey that respondents could use to learn more about the resource to help make their ratings if desired.

2. Have you used this resource in the past? (Response options were “yes,” “no,” and “I was not aware of this resource.”)

Results

     Value of existing practitioner resources.

Value: As demonstrated in Table 1, it is clear that our practitioners value staying on top of their knowledge/expertise (e.g., books, conference, white papers, workshops), networking with others (e.g., conference, workshops), finding job opportunities (e.g., I-O Job Network), and understanding salary benchmarks (e.g., salary survey). The low value placed on social media channels (e.g., Youtube, Linkedin, Twitter, Facebook) provides the PPC (and other SIOP committees) an opportunity to improve effectiveness in our online channels.

Frequency of use: Our most frequently used resources (e.g., TIP, Salary Survey, I-O Job Network, IOP journal) offer practical information and best practices in the field. The least frequently used resources (e.g., speed benchmarking, Early Career Practitioner Consortium) are valued by those who use them (e.g., SIOP consistently receives positive feedback on these offerings from attendees) but may benefit from increased marketing efforts targeted towards these offerings as many have been introduced in the past several years.

Level of awareness: One survey option was “I was not aware of this resource.” The percentage of people who selected this response was used to identify which resources may be lacking the proper advertisement. The most well-known resources were preconference workshops, LEC, I-O Job Network, TIP, and the membership directory. The resources with the lowest level of awareness (<50% of respondents were aware) were the SIOP YouTube channel, mini-webinars, podcasts, conversation series, and the Professional Practice website.

Full results are noted in Table 1. Green highlighted cells are resources that were rated as being most valuable (ratings over 2.75 on a 4-point scale), most frequently used (used by over 60% of respondents), and most well known (known by over 80% of respondents). Red highlighted cells were rated as being least valuable (ratings below 2.5), least frequently used (ratings below 25%), and least well-known (ratings below 60%). Yellow highlighted cells were all those that fell between the high- and low-rated groups.

Table 1
Existing-Resources Results

Finally, it can be helpful to look across responses for trends that may indicate where future efforts should be focused to improve awareness. For example, resources that practitioners rated as being quite useful, but also having low levels of awareness included

• SIOP-SHRM white paper series (https://www.siop.org/Research-Publications/SIOP-SHRM-White-Papers): Provides practitioner-oriented reviews of evidence-based HR practices. These papers, written by leading researchers and practitioners in the field of I-O psychology and HR, make the science of evidence-based HR practices accessible to SHRM members.

• Practitioner Mini-webinars (https://www.siop.org/Business-Resources/Webinars): Short webinars on practical topics of interest to practitioners in the I-O field.

• Professional Practice website (https://www.siop.org/Sign-In?returnurl=%2fCareers%2fProfessional-Practice-Resources): Contains information and resources relevant to I-O practitioners.

• Practitioner speed benchmarking: An event that takes place during the SIOP conference allowing mid- to late-career I-O practitioners to meet and talk about their experiences and best practices on a variety of topics.

Value of future resources.

Looking to the future, the survey included a list of 33 potential future resources and initiatives, and respondents were asked to vote for up to 10 of them. Two resources were voted on by more than 50% of respondents:

• Relevant-research update

• Advanced professional development

More than one-third of respondents chose three additional resources:

• Creating additional free online training resources

• Increasing the amount of practitioner content at the conference

• Offering regional workshops

The list in Table 2 below (ordered from highest to lowest in terms of percent of votes) can be used to help target SIOP’s future efforts related to practitioners.

Table 2
New-Resource Voting

Practitioner satisfaction with SIOP.

In terms of satisfaction with SIOP, survey respondents were asked how satisfied they were with SIOP in a number of different areas using a 5-point scale from very satisfied to very dissatisfied.

Areas where satisfaction was highest were

• SIOP’s efforts to provide opportunities for professional networking

• Making SIOP the “first-choice” organization for I-O practitioners

• SIOP efforts in advancing and promoting I-O practice

Areas where satisfaction was lowest (slightly below neither satisfied nor dissatisfied) were

• SIOP’s support for practitioners who want to get licensed

• Representation of practitioners on the SIOP Executive Board

Full results are provided in the Figure 1 below.

Figure 1. SIOP satisfaction ratings.

Figure 2 shows satisfaction results comparing the 2019 survey results with prior practitioner surveys conducted in 2014 and 2008. There has been a steady increase in satisfaction with professional-networking opportunities, likely due to targeted efforts to improve opportunities for networking (e.g., introduction of speed benchmarking and the practitioner-networking reception at the SIOP conference). There were also fairly large increases in the 2019 survey in terms of efforts in advancing and promoting I-O practice, and support for advancing one’s I-O career compared with the prior two surveys, likely also due to numerous targeted efforts in these areas that resulted from the previous survey outputs (e.g., Early Career Practitioner Consortium, Career Survey).

Despite general increases in satisfaction, the items related to practitioners having influence on SIOP and practitioners’ opportunities for rewards/recognition tended to be some of the lower rated items, as was SIOP’s support for practitioners who want to get licensed. However, it should be noted that results from the Future Resources area of the 2019 survey indicated that in general practitioners were more interested in allocating future resources toward initiatives that helped them to stay up-to-date in the field (e.g., relevant research update) and to continue to develop their knowledge and skills, and that there were relatively fewer votes related to offering more opportunities for awards and recognition or providing licensure sponsorship.

Figure 2. SIOP satisfaction ratings over time.

Conclusions and Recommendations

The results from this survey can help to evaluate the effectiveness of existing resources and initiatives targeted towards practitioners as well as prioritize initiatives on which to allocate future resources. Based on the results, we identified a few key recommendations:

• Publicizing existing resources: SIOP can make improvements in communications and marketing. There are many valuable resources (e.g., white papers, webinars, research access, speed benchmarking) that SIOP practitioners may not know are available to them. It is important for SIOP to work to raise the awareness of the existence of these resources, perhaps by making the connections for people in multiple media formats and channels, because the current channels may not be effective.

• Improving use of social media: These results demonstrate the lack of our effectiveness using social media to connect and communicate with our fellow practitioners. During our panel at this year’s SIOP, a key topic was how well the conference discussion board was used, which demonstrates the success we can have with social media. A key takeaway from this survey is to collaborate with the SIOP committees to determine our strategy to engage our members through social media.

• Updating existing resources: The resource reported as being most valuable as well as being very widely used was the SIOP Salary Survey. The most recent survey was conducted in 2016. An updated survey should be prioritized (and is currently being planned) given the widespread use and perceived value of this resource. Similarly, the SIOP published book series and SIOP-SHRM white papers were also widely used and perceived as valuable, so resource allocation and efforts should continue to focus on these resources to ensure they continue to meet practitioner needs.

• Future initiatives related to professional development: Based on the results of the voting on future resources, SIOP practitioners seem to be most interested in having readily available professional-development resources, such as summaries of recent published research, additional online webinars and hands-on resources available through the website (e.g., free training resources on new and relevant topics, hands-on website tools). There were also high numbers of respondents indicating they wanted more in-depth, advanced professional development workshops and training (e.g., regional workshops, in-depth coursework on practitioner areas). These results can help target future efforts by SIOP to help further meet the needs of practitioners.

Next Steps

Two areas of focus emerged from the survey. First, we are briefing other SIOP committees to identify areas where we can partner to improve on the value we provide practitioners and to align our interpretation of results with feedback received from other committees. We see these results as one data point, but our committees are constantly talking with members to understand needs and are gathering feedback on potential improvements. Second, we are assessing the planned initiatives for the upcoming year to use these results as a guide on priorities. It is clear from these results that we should continue focusing on producing high-quality resources for our members to stay current on both research and application while also providing platforms to share this information and network with others.