Industrial and organizational psychology "focuses the lens of psychological science on a key aspect of human life, namely, their work lives. In general, the goals of I-O psychology are to better understand and optimize the effectiveness, health, and well-being of both individuals and organizations." It is an applied discipline within psychology and is an international profession. I-O psychology is also known as occupational psychology in the United Kingdom, organisational psychology in Australia and New Zealand, and work and organizational (WO) psychology throughout Europe and Brazil. Industrial, work, and organizational (IWO) psychology is the broader, more global term for the science and profession.
Occupational therapists (OTs) are health care professionals specializing in occupational therapy and occupational science. OTs and occupational therapy assistants (OTAs) use scientific bases and a holistic perspective to promote a person's ability to fulfill their daily routines and roles. OTs have training in the physical, psychological, and social aspects of human functioning deriving from an education grounded in anatomical and physiological concepts, and psychological perspectives. They enable individuals across the lifespan by optimizing their abilities to perform activities that are meaningful to them ("occupations"). Human occupations include activities of daily living, work/vocation, play, education, leisure, rest and sleep, and social participation.
Vocational education is education that prepares people for a skilled craft. Vocational education can also be seen as that type of education given to an individual to prepare that individual to be gainfully employed or self employed with requisite skill. Vocational education is known by a variety of names, depending on the country concerned, including career and technical education, or acronyms such as TVET and TAFE. TVE refers to all forms and levels of education which provide knowledge and skills related to occupations in various sectors of economic and social life through formal, non-formal and informal learning methods in both school-based and work-based learning contexts. To achieve its aims and purposes, TVE focuses on the learning and mastery of specialized techniques and the scientific principles underlying those techniques, as well as general knowledge, skills and values.
A blue-collar worker is a person who performs manual labor or skilled trades. Blue-collar work may involve skilled or unskilled labor. The type of work may involve manufacturing, retail, warehousing, mining, excavation, carpentry, electricity generation and power plant operations, electrical construction and maintenance, custodial work, farming, commercial fishing, logging, landscaping, pest control, food processing, oil field work, waste collection and disposal, recycling, construction, maintenance, shipping, driving, trucking, and many other types of physical work. Blue-collar work often involves something being physically built or maintained. In social status, blue-collar workers generally belong to the working class.
Occupational therapy (OT) is a healthcare profession that involves the use of assessment, intervention, consultation, and coaching to develop, recover, or maintain meaningful occupations of individuals, groups, or communities. The field of OT consists of health care practitioners trained and educated to support mental health and physical performance. Occupational therapists specialize in teaching, educating, and supporting participation in activities that occupy an individual's time. It is an independent health profession sometimes categorized as an allied health profession and consists of occupational therapists (OTs) and occupational therapy assistants (OTAs). OTs and OTAs have different roles, with OTs licensed to complete comprehensive occupational therapy evaluations. Both professionals work with people who want to improve their ability to participate in meaningful occupations.
The Standard Occupational Classification (SOC) System is a United States government system for classifying occupations. It is used by U.S. federal government agencies collecting occupational data, enabling comparison of occupations across data sets. It is designed to cover all occupations in which work is performed for pay or profit, reflecting the current occupational structure in the United States. The 2018 SOC includes 867 detailed occupations.
The Holland Codes or the Holland Occupational Themes (RIASEC) refers to a taxonomy of interests based on a theory of careers and vocational choice that was initially developed by American psychologist John L. Holland.
Job analysis is a family of procedures to identify the content of a job in terms of the activities it involves in addition to the attributes or requirements necessary to perform those activities. Job analysis provides information to organizations that helps them determine which employees are best fit for specific jobs.
The Dictionary of Occupational Titles or D-O-T (DOT) refers to a publication produced by the United States Department of Labor which helped employers, government officials, and workforce development professionals to define over 13,000 different types of work, from 1938 to the late 1990s. The DOT was created by job analysts who visited thousands of US worksites to observe and record the various types of work, and what was involved. Innovative at the time, the DOT included information still used today in settling EEO and Workers Comp claims, like the physical abilities required to perform that occupation, and the time and repetitiveness of those physical actions.
The Selected Characteristics of Occupations (SCO) is a companion volume to the U.S. Department of Labor's Dictionary of Occupational Titles, Revised Fourth Edition, published in 1991. These volumes were intended to provide a detailed representation of thousands of individual occupations in the United States, for the purpose of occupational information, occupational exploration, and job placement.
Grey-collar refers to the balance of employed people not classified as white- or blue collar. It is occasionally used to describe elderly individuals working beyond the age of retirement, as well as those occupations that incorporate some of the elements of both blue- and white-collar, and generally are in between the two categories in terms of income-earning capability.
Skill is a measure of the amount of worker's expertise, specialization, wages, and supervisory capacity. Skilled workers are generally more trained, higher paid, and have more responsibilities than unskilled workers.
Career counseling is a type of advice-giving and support provided by career counselors to their clients, to help the clients manage their journey through life, learning and work changes (career). This includes career exploration, making career choices, managing career changes, lifelong career development and dealing with other career-related issues. There is no agreed definition of the role of a career or employment counsellor worldwide, mainly due to conceptual, cultural and linguistic differences. However, the terminology of 'career counseling' typically denotes a professional intervention which is conducted either one-on-one or in a small group. Career counseling is related to other types of counseling. What unites all types of professional counseling is the role of practitioners, who combine giving advice on their topic of expertise with counseling techniques that support clients in making complex decisions and facing difficult situations.
Occupational inequality is the unequal treatment of people based on gender, sexuality, age, disability, socioeconomic status, religion, height, weight, accent, or ethnicity in the workplace. When researchers study trends in occupational inequality they usually focus on distribution or allocation pattern of groups across occupations, for example, the distribution of men compared to women in a certain occupation. Secondly, they focus on the link between occupation and income, for example, comparing the income of whites with blacks in the same occupation.
The Occupational Information Network (O*NET) is a free online database that contains hundreds of job definitions to help students, job seekers, businesses and workforce development professionals to understand today's world of work in the United States. It was developed under the sponsorship of the US Department of Labor/Employment and Training Administration (USDOL/ETA) through a grant to the North Carolina Employment Security Commission during the 1990s. John L. Holland's vocational model, often referred to as the Holland Codes, is used in the "Interests" section of the O*NET.
National Occupational Standards (NOS), also known as professional standards, specify UK standards of performance that people are expected to achieve in their work, and the knowledge and skills they need to perform effectively.
A dead-end job is a job where there is little or no chance of career development and advancement into a better position. If an individual requires further education to progress within their firm that is difficult to obtain for any reason, this can result in the occupation being classified as a dead-end position. Based on human resources and career strategist Toni Howard Lowe, some individuals who have worked for the same company for several years may not be privy to the signs that they are currently employed in a dead-end job.
Individual psychological assessment (IPA) is a tool used by organizations to make decisions on employment. IPA allows employers to evaluate and maintain potential candidates for hiring, promotion, and development by using a series of job analysis instruments such as position analysis questionnaires (PAQ), occupational analysis inventory (OAI), and functional job analysis (FJA). These instruments allow the assessor to develop valid measures of intelligence, personality tests, and a range of other factors as means to determine selection and promotion decisions. Personality and cognitive ability are good predictors of performance. Emotional Intelligence helps individuals navigate through challenging organizational and interpersonal encounters. Since individual differences have a long history in explaining human behavior and the different ways in which individuals respond to similar events and circumstances, these factors allow the organization to determine if an applicant has the competence to effectively and successfully do the work that the job requires. These assessments are administered throughout organizations in different forms, but they share one common goal in the selection process, and that is the right candidate for the job.
Work or labor is the intentional activity people perform to support the needs and desires of themselves, other people, or organizations. In the context of economics, work can be viewed as the human activity that contributes towards the goods and services within an economy.
The Standard Occupational Classification, often abbreviated as the SOC, is the system used by the United Kingdom's Office for National Statistics (ONS) to classify people for statistical purposes according to their job. Under this system, a job is defined as "a set of tasks or duties to be carried out by one person". The SOC classifies jobs according to the level and specialisation of skill. The SOC was introduced in 1990. It has undergone several revisions; the latest, SOC 2020, includes nine major groups of occupations, each broken down into smaller units: there are 26 sub-major groups, 104 minor groups and 412 unit groups. The groups are designed to be as similar as possible to the International Standard Classification of Occupations 2008.