This is an awareness month I created with some of SIOP’s Visibility Committee members in 2014 to help educate businesses and the public about the important societal contributions of I-O psychology as well as to increase member engagement and pride in SIOP and the profession.
The awareness month consists of various digital efforts, such as fun and entertaining digital badges, a list of tips for SIOP members to help spread the word about I-O psychology, press releases and feature articles about recent I-O psychology research, etc. We enlist members who have recently presented research at our annual conference to write press releases/articles about their projects that can be highlighted on our website and sent to reporters. We also use this month to help launch new branding initiatives, such as videos and projects, as well as to help promote to members the resources SIOP has relating to the history of the field.This is an awareness month I created with some of SIOP’s Visibility Committee members in 2014 to help educate businesses and the public about the important societal contributions of I-O psychology as well as to increase member engagement and pride in SIOP and the profession.
The event hashtag is #SmarterWorkplace, and all social media posts related to this effort use this hashtag. We chose September to coincide with Labor Day as well as many of our academic members and students returning to school.
Results: We utilize this month as a way to activate and energize SIOP members and as an opportunity for the Visibility Committee and Administrative Office to make a concerted effort to push out more press releases and feature articles. While we operate on limited resources, implementing a month where we can have a strong push has helped increase pride and energy around I-O from members and has also helped us make inroads with members of the media who see our press releases and write up stories on them.
Stephany Below 