Join Us for a Town Hall on Upcoming SIOP Nominations

In advance of this year’s election, the SIOP Executive Board has made several important changes to its composition, nomination process, and election process. These changes have been in discussion for roughly 4 years, with oversight and assistance from multiple compositions of the Board, task forces, working groups, and committees. All changes are to organizational policy, and no changes to the bylaws have been proposed. Some of the changes mark a significant departure from our current practices, but we strongly believe that they will result in a healthier SIOP by increasing organizational effectiveness, transparency, and alignment with peer organizations.

Board Composition: Currently, the SIOP Board is primarily composed of Portfolio Officers. The Portfolio Officer role was originally intended to blend strategic leadership of SIOP with management responsibilities linked to specific committees. However, in practice, this left Portfolio Officers with a great deal of ambiguity as to their roles and priorities. Since the creation of the Portfolio Officer roles, some have been heavily involved in the management of the committees within their portfolios, whereas others have taken a more hands-off approach. This inconsistency has created many operational challenges for both committee chairs and SIOP staff, as the involvement of Portfolio Officers was unpredictable. A committee chair with a great deal of freedom in their first year of service might have found their hands unexpectedly tied in the second, and vice-versa. It also tended to create personal affinities and advocacy for specific committees in Board discussions rather than a commitment to SIOP’s overall organizational success. To address these challenges, the Board is retiring all Portfolio Officer roles over the next three elections, replacing almost all of those roles with Member-at-Large roles. In contrast to a Portfolio Officer, a Member-at-Large is primarily intended to be representative of those who elected them and is primarily charged with identifying and pursuing the overall strategic priorities of SIOP. This is also the approach taken by all of our peer organizations. There is one exception to this change in that SIOP’s D&I Portfolio Officer will become our D&I Officer, making this role more central to daily operations. There will be no changes to the Presidential Trio or Financial Officer roles. Thus, in the coming election, the three Portfolio Officer terms ending this year will cease, and the election will instead be for the same number of Member-at-Large roles. This transition will be completed for all roles as of the 2027 election, and the goal is to make the SIOP Executive Board more effective, strategic, and nimble in responding to emergent concerns facing our profession.

Nomination Process: Changes to the nomination process are intended to both improve the alignment between the knowledge, skills, abilities, and other characteristics (KSAOs) of incoming Board members and the long-term strategic decision-making needs of SIOP as well as to improve the transparency and accessibility of the nominations process to Members. There are three main changes to accomplish this.

• First, a standard set of Qualifications for Nominations have been established for all elected roles. These qualifications balance expertise and familiarity with SIOP processes with the goals of increasing Board effectiveness and laying out a clearer leadership pipeline for enthusiastic volunteers. The Board has also created a mechanism to modify these qualifications on a year-to-year basis to address emergent strategic needs. Any such modification is also accompanied by mandatory reporting to Members regarding the nature and need for the modification. The qualifications will always be presented to members alongside all calls for nominations.
• Second, SIOP Election Committee procedures have been revised to provide SIOP leadership with the ability to encourage alignment between SIOP’s strategic needs and the KSAOs of those appearing on SIOP election ballots. Previously, ballots were decided purely by count such that a greater number of nominations would lead to appearance on the ballot. This had two major downsides. First, anyone who was aware of this policy could organize a nomination campaign to ensure that their preferred candidate appears on the ballot. After analyzing historical election data, the Board observed this pattern such that, for almost every recent SIOP election, only one candidate received more than a handful of nominations, allowing those coordinating nomination campaigns to shape the ballot directly, potentially decreasing fairness and member representation. Second, this practice aligned SIOP ballots more with popularity and name familiarity rather than vital KSAOs for successful SIOP leadership. The present revision to the nomination procedures is intended to balance these concerns with ensuring democratic member representation. Specifically, any person receiving at least four nominations is automatically placed on a draft ballot in descending order of nominations, up to the maximum size for that election. The Election Committee then reviews and adjusts the resulting draft ballots based upon the publicly shared qualifications. Removing or adding anyone requires explicit justification, documentation, and approval from the Executive Board, practices modeled on those recommended by APA. Further, the composition of the Election Committee has been revised to better accomplish this. Whereas the Election Committee was previously composed of only the Presidential Trio, it will now comprise the Trio, a member diversity advocate, a representative of I-O psychology practitioners, and a representative of I-O psychology academics.
• Third, transparency has increased. Recognizing member concerns about both the nomination and elections procedures being controlled by an unclear minority of “elite” members, structured reporting of both nomination and election results will now be mandatory after all elections. This includes mandatory reporting to Members on modifications to the qualifications, nomination counts and associated Election Committee actions, and vote counts for all elections.

Election Process: Changes to the election process follow solely from the other changes listed above. Most critically, due to the election of multiple Members-at-Large at the same time, SIOP’s previous strategy of scoring a single set of ranked choice votes for a single position is no longer viable. Instead, Members will rank all candidates for Member-at-Large in a given election year against each other in a single ranking, and the scoring procedure recommended by APA for this type of ballot will be used. Thus, in the next election, three Members-at-Large will be elected from a single ballot listing between six and nine candidates. In years when the Finance Officer or D&I Officer role is on the ballot, two Members-at-Large will be elected from between four and six candidates, and the officer to be elected will be elected from a ballot specific to their position, which is no change from current practice.

Overall, these changes are intended to improve the likelihood that SIOP nominations and elections will include candidates with the KSAOs vital for SIOP’s success, to improve nomination and election transparency with Members, and also to bring SIOP’s policies in these areas more in line with those of related organizations, especially other organizations and APA divisions of a similar size and complexity as SIOP.

Recognizing that the scope of these changes is significant, and also that we are in a particularly fraught time for democratic processes, SIOP will be hosting a town hall, currently planned for 1 to 2 p.m. ET August 21, to address all of your questions and concerns about these changes. We also hope that this town hall will encourage an increase in nominations for SIOP Board positions from members who would previously not have considered participating in the nomination process. An announcement confirming the date for this town hall with information on how to access it will be posted in the coming weeks.

We hope these changes are understandable and welcome, and we invite any questions or concerns, whether at the town hall or via email.