The Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology (SIOP) is pleased to announce its seventh annual Top 10 Workplace Trends list. Based on member surveys, these are the issues that will have the most impact on the workplace in 2020. 

For the first time, there is a tie between two of the topics; at #9 on the list – “Virtual working spaces” and ”Meaning and purposeful work.” Newly trending topics include workforce health and well-being, and meaning and purposeful work. The entries in SIOP’s Top 10 list are broad, complex issues posing difficult challenges to the business world and modern society, so it’s no surprise that many other trends have appeared on previous lists. 

Industrial-organizational psychologists study workplace issues of critical relevance to business, including talent management, coaching, assessment, selection, training, organizational development, performance, and work–life balance. I-O psychologists can help all kinds of organizations, including for-profit, nonprofit and government, grappling with these issues find solutions that are right for their organizations and their staff.

To create this list, SIOP asked its members for their predictions based on their expertise as well as interactions with clients and colleagues. After the responses were compiled, members selected the top 10 issues organizations are likely to face in 2020. Nearly 1,000 members responded, and here’s what they had to say:

Diversity matters. Diverse viewpoints and diverse backgrounds are important to successfully solving complex challenges. According to the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, “The quality, vigor, and innovation of the U.S. science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and medicine (STEMM) enterprise depend on increasing the diversity of individuals, research teams, and leadership in STEMM fields.”

But the report, “The Science of Effective Mentorship in STEMM,” issued at the end of a 22-month study says, “Talent is equally distributed across all sociocultural groups; access and opportunity are not. This is particularly true in science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and medicine (STEMM) professions¹ that are expected to grow as a percent of the total workforce in the coming decades. The underrepresentation of marginalized groups in STEMM contexts is pervasive.”

Three SIOP members, Christiane Spitzmueller, professor of Industrial Organizational Psychology at the University of Houston, Tammy Allen, distinguished university professor of Psychology at University of South Florida, and Lillian T. Eby, professor of Industrial-Organizational Psychology at the University of Georgia made significant research and theoretical contributions to the report. Dr. Allen and Dr. Spitzmueller served on the Committee on Effective Mentoring in STEMM. Dr. Eby presented at one of the committee workshops. Find a prepress version of the report online here.

The report argues that effective mentoring is a “significant component of the complex solutions required” to comprehensively address the underrepresentation of major segments of the population in STEMM fields.

The SIOP White Paper series organizes and summarizes important and timely topics in I-O psychology. The newest white paper, “Culture and Overseas Work: Expectations, Preparations, Coping; Return,” focuses on the well-being of expatriates.

The term sojourners is broad and includes all kinds of overseas experiences, including work, study, migration, diplomacy, proselytizing, and tourism. Expatriates, the main focus of this paper, often categorized as corporate or self-initiated, the former group sent overseas by an employer, perhaps for several years, whereas the latter moves overseas to seek employment.

In today’s climate, organizations need leaders who can turn on a dime. Identifying, and investing in, those potential leaders early in career or tenure to the organization is important.

Although learning agility--the ability to learn from experiences and then apply that knowledge to new conditions and environments--is starting to be seen as an important construct trait when it comes to identifying organizational leadership, there hasn’t been a lot of work done on how that trait impacts learning and performance over time. Erin Laxson, PhD, a managing consultant with Hogan Assessments, found that curious. After all, organizations were starting to invest in employees who demonstrated behaviors associated with learning agility, but how did that predict future career success for individuals, and in turn how those individuals contributed to their organizations?

In her presentation, “The Impact of Learning Agility on Career Success,” at the 2019 SIOP Annual Conference she took an in-depth look at the links between learning agility and learning and performance—two indicators of career success.