The most recent update of the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology’s (SIOP) Guidelines for Education and Training in Industrial-Organizational Psychology was approved by the SIOP Executive Board in 2016 and approved as American Psychological Association (APA) policy in August 2017, culminating a review and revision that the SIOP Education and Training Committee began in 2015 (Payne, Morgan, & Bryan, 2015a, 2015b). Given the continued growth of industrial-organizational (I-O) psychology as a career field and APA Division 14 membership, as well as APA’s mission to improve the qualifications of psychologists by establishing high standards of education and achievement, maintaining the Guidelines is as important as ever. The purpose of this article is to share the news of the approval of the new Guidelines and the availability of a curriculum mapping tool for evaluating the alignment of a program of study with the SIOP Guidelines.

The scientist–practitioner gap in the field of industrial-organizational psychology refers to the poor connection between evidence generated by academia and the perceived practicality and use of that evidence by practitioners in industry (Aguinis, et al., 2017; Levy, 2017). This gap is the result of many complex issues, two of which are: (a) practitioners moving away from established evidence-based practices rooted in the scientific literature, and (b) academics conducting research that is perceived to have little to no practical relevance to the applied world. I-O psychology is recognized as an applied discipline, and a sizable gap between practitioners and scientists limits the effectiveness of both (O’Neil, 2008).

The focus on gender equality in the workplace—particularly around gender and pay—continues to

 be a topic of interest in popular press (e.g., Veira, 2017) and research (e.g., Leslie, Manchester, & Dahm, 2017). The field of I-O psychology is not exempt from this troubling issue. The SIOP 2016 Income and Employment Report found that although the gender pay gap continues to close, with the income ratio improving from 87.9% in 2012 to 89.7% in 2015, there is still a gender-based difference in pay (Poteet, Parker, Herman, DuVernet, & Conley, 2017). SIOP’s own Institutional Research Committee, which is now responsible for the SIOP Income and Employment Survey, has continued to explore the data from the 2016 survey to better understand the relationship between gender and pay within the I-O community.

Discussions of the influence of generational differences—the notion that there are demonstrable dissimilarities between members of different groupings of successive birth cohorts that manifest as differences in work outcomes—are ubiquitous in both the popular business and management literature and across various topics of research in the I-O/OB/HR realm. For example, recent surveys of the “Top 10 Workforce Trends” published by SIOP since 2015 all recognize that, in some capacity, generations and the differences (that are assumed to exist) between them have some bearing on the type of work that we do as I-O psychologists (e.g., SIOP, 2016). The SIOP website has likewise featured news releases and blog postings on the topic of generational differences (e.g., SIOP, 2010; 2012). Additionally, since 2013, the APA’s “Work and Well-Being Survey” reports the results of a number of generational group comparisons for several work outcomes (e.g., work stress, job satisfaction, involvement), ostensibly as a means of demonstrating the effect that generational membership has on such outcomes (e.g., APA, 2017). Finally, in 2015, a focal article on generational differences featured in Industrial and Organizational Psychology: Perspectives on Science and Practice invited commentary on ideas surrounding generational differences at work (Costanza & Finkelstein, 2015).

There are increasing numbers of opportunities to do meaningful and exciting I-O psychology related work at the United Nations. Although I-O psychology professionals are not yet employed in large numbers at the UN, the UN is starting to recognize the value of I-O expertise and its application to the work of the UN and its affiliated organizations. The SIOP United Nations Committee would like to see more I-O psychologists in positions at the UN to provide expertise to the UN and to increase the influence of our profession.