Conference Workshops

Conference workshops provide delegates with a stimulating and interactive learning opportunity, complementing the scientific component of the program. These sessions always prove popular and spaces are limited, so early registration is recommended.

The following workshops have been confirmed for Thursday 25 June 2009:

Full Day:
  • Prof. Deniz Ones "New Findings and Innovative Approaches in Assessing Personality for Staffing"
Half Day:
  • Rosemarie Sainty "Designing organisations for sustainability: Metrics used in measuring performance"
  • Prof. Bob Wood "New perspectives on Leadership Development"
  • Evelyn Field Understanding, undermining and empowering employees to block workplace bullying
  • Prof. Phil Taylor "Keeping older workers workable"
  • David Rosete "Realising the Full Potential of Emerging Talent: A practitioner's guide to the identification and development of high potential employees"
  • Prof. Eduardo Salas "The Science of Training: Progress and a Look Ahead"

Workshop Abstracts

FULL-DAY WORKSHOP

Thursday 25 June 2009
9am - 5pm

TITLE: New Findings and Innovative Approaches in Assessing Personality for Staffing

PRESENTER:  Deniz Ones, PhD, University of Minnesota.

FORMAT:  Presentation style with opportunities to ask questions and exchange information 

NUMBER OF PARTCIPANTS: 25

SYNOPSIS

The influence of personality variables on work attitudes and behaviors is well established and measurement of personality in organisational decision-making is more prevalent than ever.  Frameworks informed by personality traits provide an important avenue for understanding, explaining, and predicting individual, team, and organizational behaviors in work settings. Paralleling broad applications in work settings such as employee screening, selection, placement and development, basic and applied research on personality measurement has increased exponentially since 2000s. Despite this popularity of the area of research, the measurement of personality - especially in high stakes organisational settings - is still an emergent science and not without its fair share of controversy and detractors.

In this workshop, cutting edge research on contemporary theories and measures of personality will be presented. This workshop will focus on two main questions: (1) how can one best use personality measures in personnel decisions? , and (2) what are some concerns and non-concerns about using personality scales in applied settings?  Current empirical research and illustrative applied examples will address concerns about predictive validity, social desirability, utility, cross-cultural applications and potential adverse impact of personality measures. Practice implications of key research findings will be interactively discussed.

HALF-DAY WORKSHOP 1
Thursday 25 June 2009
9am - 12.30pm

TITLE: "Designing organisations for sustainability: Metrics used in measuring performance"

PRESENTER: Rosemary Sainty, Head, Responsible Business &CR Leaders Project St James Ethics Centre

FORMAT: Interactive workshop style

NUMBER OF PARTICIPANTS: 25

SYNOPSIS:

Climate Change. Global Warming. In business this translates to Corporate Social Responsibility. What's it got to do with Organisational Psychologists? Have you ever considered that CSR is about promoting attitudinal and behavioural change? Organisational psychologists could play a significant role in facilitating these changes in Australian businesses.  This workshop is designed to help Organisational Psychologists understand some of the metrics used by Australian Businesses to measure their success in implementing CSR strategies. We explore some of the strategies used by Australian businesses in implementing these metrics and bringing about change.

Rosemary Sainty, a Psychologist,  from the St James Ethics Centre will speak about her important work in managing the National Responsible Business Practice Project. This project is funded by the Federal Government, through Treasury to engage Australian businesses in identifying and adopting more responsible business practices.  Working closely with key Australian business leaders (including ANZ, BHP Billiton, EnergyAustralia, Toyota and Westpac) Rosemary has been driving the uptake of responsible business practice nationally, across businesses of all sizes. An important part of the project is the development and the promotion of business metrics including the corporate responsibility index, Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) and the UNGlobal Compact.

Rosemary will discuss key findings of the project and characteristics of high performing organisations. Case Studies will be presented by guest speakers describing some of the challenges that businesses can expect in implementing CSR into their businesses, how these impact on important organisational metrics and how we, as organisational psychologists, can help.

HALF-DAY WORKSHOP 2 & 6

Thursday 25 June 2009
9am - 12.30pm & 1.30 - 5pm

TITLE: Talent Management

PRESENTER: Professor Bob Wood

FORMAT: Interactive workshop style

NUMBER OF PARTICIPANTS: 25

SYNOPSIS:

The half day Talent Management Workshop will have two aims and sets of related activities. First, we will review goals, practices and frameworks of existing talent management programs. Second, we will discuss and analyse a case study of a talent management program adopted by Amcor, a multi-divisional global packaging firm headquartered in Melbourne, to drive culture change and implement strategic initiatives in their sales and marketing functions. Workshop participants will receive the case study in advance and will be expected to complete some analyses before the Workshop.

Talent management has emerged as a central topic for Human Resource and Organizational Psychology practitioners. Many organisations now have talent management programs and these programs are designed to serve a wide variety of functions, including: identification of talented staff, accelerated development, creation of a supply pool for key positions, staffing growth strategies and retention of talented staff. At the same time, talent programs can give rise to many problems, including: poor identification of talent, envy reactions of those not selected, unrealistic expectations of participants; and failure to meet the expectations of participants. The development of talent programs has proceeded without much academic input or theory. This is not necessarily a bad thing but it does mean that there a wide array of different approaches without much analyses, either theoretical or empirical, of the effectiveness of different programs.

HALF-DAY WORKSHOP 3

Thursday 25 June 2009
9am - 12.30pm

TITLE: Understanding, undermining and empowering employees to block workplace bullying.

PRESENTER: Evelyn Field, a practising psychologist is an APS Fellow and a member of the APS College of Counselling Psychologists, a speaker and an author of two bestselling books, Bully Busting and Bully Blocking (2007) now in five languages. She specialises in understanding workplace bullying and helping those affected by it or working in the area. The core of her work is her social survival skills model.

FORMAT: Presentation Style

NUMBER OF PARTICIPANTS: 50

SYNOPSIS

More than one in five employees are bullied at work. Workplace bullying is like the canary down the coalmine. It's a sign of incompetent leadership and a toxic culture. It damages organizations, reducing productivity, lowering performance, enabling unethical behaviours and seriously injuring victims, bullies and onlookers. In fact, currently there are no diagnoses or evidence based treatments for victims of workplace bullying trauma.  The costs to organizations, community and individual employees are well in excess of  $17-34 billion dollars a year.

Organizations promoting growth need to understand subtle and blatant workplace bullying behaviours, the causes, its impact upon organizational functioning and the severe personal injuries, ie The Victim's Journey. They need to operate as a collaborative system not an adversarial one.

This workshop is designed to provide an introduction to understanding the dangers associated with workplace bullying, how the organization can prevent, reduce and empower managers, targets, bullies and onlookers to deal with bullying.

They need three basic strategies, 1. Prevention eg policies, programs, protocols, 2. Dispute resolution procedures, eg restorative practices, communication strategies and 3. Reconciliation, rehabilitation and follow-up procedures.

This workshop provides targets with a range of options to protect themselves and a clinically researched model to empower all employees to improve their communication skills and deal with difficult or bullying encounters.

HALF-DAY WORKSHOP 4 & 8
Thursday 25 June 2009
9am - 12.30pm & 1.30 - 5pm

TITLE: Keeping older workers workable

PRESENTER: Professor Philip Taylor

FORMAT: Interactive workshop style

NUMBER OF PARTICIPANTS: 25

SYNOPSIS:

This workshop will consider the changing composition of the labour market brought about by population ageing and the potential implications for the management of workforces. It will be evidence based, drawing on a range of international research projects undertaken by the workshop leader over a number of years among workers and employers.

The workshop will explore the challenges facing industry going forward as workforces age, the concepts of age management, workability and flexible retirement, explore the barriers to prolonging older people's employment, the factors affecting their retirement behaviour and the prospects for successful ageing.

It will take a critical stance, going beyond a discussion of ‘good practice' and challenging concepts such as ‘generations', gradual retirement and lifelong learning. It will consider the likely circumstances under which older people will or will not maintain footholds in labour markets and the likely reactions of employers confronted with ageing workforces.

It will also consider the changing role of public policy in terms of encouraging a longer work life and in supporting those for whom working on is an unrealistic prospect. The workshop will direct participants to a range of tools which will assist them in developing policies on age management and present case studies of employer and government approaches to policy on age, with evidence of outcomes.

HALF-DAY  WORKSHOP 5
Thursday 25 June 2009
1.30 - 5pm

TITLE:  Realising the Full Potential of Emerging Talent: A practitioner's guide to the identification and development of high potential employees

PRESENTER: David Rosete and Ms Vivien Weisz. David Rosete, PhD,  is the Manager of Organisation Development  for  HCF of Australia Limited

FORMAT: Interactive workshop style

NUMBER OF PARTICIPANTS: 25

Establishing talent management programs has become an imperative for organisations looking to respond to sharply escalating recruitment costs, a shrinking pool of available staff to fill important leadership positions, corporate downsizing and re-engineering trends. All of which have challenged traditional succession planning practices.

This workshop will support practitioners in managing the development of a talent management program within an organisation setting, with a focus on articulating the various practices used in the identification and development of high potential employees. Material will be drawn from both recent research and organisations where the presenters have successfully implemented talent programs including the Australian Tax Office, Hospital Contributions Fund Australia and Australian Psychological Society. Participants can expect to obtain hands on strategies that will assist them in successfully managing the careers of high potential employees.

HALF-DAY WORKSHOP 7

Thursday 25 June 2009
1.30 - 5pm

TITLE: The Science of the Training: Progress and a Look Ahead

PRESENTER: Eduardo Salas, Ph.D. Department of Psychology, Institute for Simulation & Training, University of Central Florida

FORMAT: Presentation style with opportunities to ask questions and exchange information

NUMBER OF PARTICIPANTS:  50

SYNOPSIS:

Training and learning is a way of life in organisations. It is, in fact, big business. Organizations invest billions of dollars in training and development activities. Training is seen as a force multiplier to achieve organisational goals. And the science has kept up with this investment. Over the last two decades, the science of training has made significant progress in understanding the factors that influence the design and delivery of training in organisations.   Indeed, progress has been made in understanding and uncovering what variables or constructs matter before, during and after training. 

This scientific (and practical) progress has shed light on, for example, how individuals learn and are motivated to apply the newly acquired competencies; how to elicit knowledge from experts; how expertise is developed; how to design practice-based training and how organisations need to promote and support learning to ensure transfer of training, just to name a few.  Therefore, this workshop will highlight and participants will learn about:

  • a) What constructs or variables matter in the design and delivery of training?
  • b) What theoretical- drivers and practically-relevant principles have been derived from the science.
  • c) What learning methodologies are best suited to support emerging organisational needs?
  • d) What practical advice can be given to organisations about the design, delivery, evaluation and transfer of training?
  • e) What the road ahead looks like for the Science. What is over the horizon that may benefit organisations.
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