While exploring your career options, you may have come across the field of Industrial-Organizational (I-O) Psychology, the American Psychological Association’s Division 14. I-O psychology is the study of behavior in the workplace. I-O psychologists frequently help businesses better hire, motivate, and retain employees. On the surface, this work might not look personally meaningful or exciting. But, dig a little deeper and you’ll find that many I-O psychologists apply their skills in surprising ways and their work can extend far beyond helping businesses succeed.
This is the first of a series of blogs that will bring you interviews with I-O psychologists about their passion projects. We’ll show you how these individuals have applied their training to try to make a difference in human or animal lives.
Meet Dr. Haley Woznyj. She is currently an Assistant Professor of Management at the College of Business and Economics at Longwood University in Richmond, Virginia. She received her Ph.D. in Organizational Science from the University of North Carolina (UNC) at Charlotte in 2017. The Organizational Science program at UNC Charlotte is interdisciplinary and offered Haley a combination of I-O psychology, management, organizational communications, and organizational sociology classes. As a graduate student, Haley worked on a project with Maddie’s Fund, a foundation whose mission is to “revolutionize the status and well-being of companion animals.” The goal of the project was to understand and alleviate the challenges animal foster programs face in order to help such programs be more effective.
Juliya: How did you get involved in the project with Maddie’s Fund? What got you interested?
Haley: I was the co-director of the Volunteer Program Assessment (VPA) at UNC Charlotte at the time. VPA is a non-profit consulting unit that assesses key aspects of non-profit organizations’ volunteer programs. The Director, Dr. Steven Rogelberg, was working closely with Maddie’s Fund. They had a need that they wanted addressed: to understand the principal challenges that foster programs face. In the animal welfare space, foster programs and fosters are essential to the effectiveness of animal rescue organizations. Addressing and mitigating some of the challenges these programs face can help rescue organizations to execute their missions and, ultimately, save animal lives.
Before I came in as co-director, Dr. Rogelberg put together a proposal to help address this question and worked with the leadership at Maddie’s Fund to come up with the best method to uncover the challenges that foster programs face. Once I assumed the co-director position, I jumped right in to help execute the proposal.
I was interested in the project with Maddie’s because it extended the work we were doing with VPA, which relied more on standardized assessment. The project was a very targeted way to help serve an otherwise underserved group of organizations that are doing some really great work for the larger community.
Juliya: Can you tell me more about your role?
Haley: I was in charge of putting together the surveys we asked those involved with animal welfare organizations to complete, monitoring response rates, analyzing the data, and putting results of the analyses into the final report for Maddie’s Fund. I worked collaboratively with Dr. Rogelberg throughout the process, and we sought input from the leaders at Maddie’s Fund as well.
Juliya: How did your training as an I-O psychologist help you with this work?
Haley: I wouldn’t be able to do the work at all without my organizational science training. The training that I’ve received has taught me to think critically about issues that organizations face, so I can ask important questions, collect high quality data, analyze data, and communicate results to lay audiences who aren’t necessarily well-versed in statistics or all of the fancy methodological processes we go through. This last piece is key – if you don’t have that skill, you can have the best methodology in the world, but the client organization can’t reap the benefits if you can’t make the results of the methodology accessible for them. This is something that my graduate program and experiences with VPA have really emphasized.
Juliya: Can you tell me more about the specific project steps?
Haley: The project was divided into 3 phases. In Phase 1, we conducted a literature review to learn about the challenges present in animal fostering programs; the information from this phase helped to inform our efforts in subsequent phases.
During Phase 2, we conducted an online survey of animal welfare organizations. We asked for basic descriptive information about the organization, its mission, and whether it uses fostering (94% of the sample did). We also asked respondents to describe their biggest challenges with regard to their foster programs. Approximately 1,500 people completed this survey. The information they provided helped us build a second, more targeted survey.
We had several goals for the survey conducted during Phase 3. First, we wanted to better understand the structure and organization of fostering programs. For example, the types and number of animals they serve, where animals are housed, the composition of their “workforce” (i.e., paid and volunteers), and the organization’s budget. Second, we wanted a deeper understanding of what people involved in foster programs see as their principal challenges and needs from the people, management, and leadership perspectives. Finally, we wanted to learn about the education and training needs that foster programs have.
The results of our second survey, based on 461 responses, pointed to 9 key challenges that foster programs face. In our final report to Maddie’s Fund, we detailed these challenges and offered actionable recommendations to address them.
Juliya: What personal value did you get out of this project?
Haley: VPA’s motto has been “helping those who help others.” I think that through my experience with VPA and special projects like the one with Maddie’s Fund, I have internalized that motto. It also summarizes the value that I got from this project and from projects with many of the other VPA clients I’ve worked with. I value giving back to the community, and I am also an animal lover. However, free time and extra money is hard to come by as a graduate student. So, volunteering at the animal shelter or donating a meaningful amount of money isn’t always possible. With this project, I felt that I was still helping Maddie’s Fund to achieve its mission of increasing the well-being of animals.
Juliya: Is there anything else you’d like to share to help convey the importance of the work with Maddie’s Fund, or to highlight the value that I-O psychologists can bring to various fields?
Haley: As an undergrad, I had a perception that as an I-O psychologist, I could help organizations be more efficient and make more money, which isn’t necessarily personally meaningful. However, throughout my experience in grad school and beyond, I realized that there are many metrics of performance – it isn’t always just money. In the non-profit world, performance can include the number of animals saved, or the number of meals served to people in the community who don’t have the means or ability to cook them themselves. Wherever there are organizations of people, there is a need that I-O psychology can fill. The number of ways that I-O psychologists can use their knowledge, skills, and training to help is endless.
Dr. Rogelberg, who is currently a Professor of Organizational Science, Management, and Psychology as well as the Director of Organizational Science at UNC Charlotte, has continued working with Maddie’s Fund since Haley’s graduation from her Ph.D. program. He shared that the biggest outcome of the work with Maddie’s Fund has been the design of a massive outreach project to help fosters. Foster programs across the world will get access to a survey system called the “FAST 15.” It will allow them to assess their current levels of foster volunteer engagement and learn strategies for doing even better. Normative data will be provided so that they can compare their performance against that of other foster programs. Dr. Rogelberg is excited that this survey system will be grounded in science and completely free to use.
Want to learn more about the field of I-O psychology? Read our recent blog posts for an overview, to find out other ways I-O psychologists have given back to society, and to discover your dream job in the field.
