Psychologists Study and Contribute to the Work Environment

DR. ELIZABETH KOLMSTETTER
is an industrial psychologist, a researcher, and a program administrator.

“If we are going to keep up with the ‘bad guys,’ we need to keep skills and procedures moving forward,” says Dr. Elizabeth Kolmstetter, the industrial psychologist who led the drive to heighten airport security after September 11 and continues the work. Following the September 11, 2001, attacks, Dr. Kolmstetter helped lead a massive effort to hire more than 50,000 airport screeners for the government. The undertaking—called for in the Aviation and Transportation Security Act that President Bush signed into law soon after the attacks—sought to strengthen airport security screening by federalizing it.

Dr. Kolmstetter is the director of Standards, Testing, Evaluation, and Policy for the Transportation Security Administration (TSA). As director of the screeners project, she created a team of industrial psychologists, medical experts, and trainers to develop higher standards and the accompanying tests for screeners’ physical ability and competency. The new standards required applicants to demonstrate proficiency in security screening functions and technology and the ability to meet customer and security needs.

The team first determined the skill-level requirement for each element and then tested applicants using physical ability and competency measures. Using the newly established standards, TSA processed more than 1.8 million applications and hired about 50,000 screeners by the congressionally mandated deadline. Throughout the process, the team faced many obstacles, but, says Dr. Kolmstetter, “We did get it done. And we did it against unbelievable odds.”

According to Dianne Maranto, the American Psychological Association director of psychology in the workplace, “Having come from the National Skill ideal for this project, which required the team to begin with the empirical establishment of performance standards for these jobs. . . . Once you establish performance standards, everything else flows from that—selection tests, training and job performance evaluations.”

Dr. Kolmstetter received her PhD in industrial/organizational psychology from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. In her current position, she is responsible for all job analyses, testing and assessments, and related research for the Security Screener and Law Enforcement Officer workforces at TSA. She is also developing standards for flight deck officers so they can carry firearms in the cockpit.

Dr. Kolmstetter has served as senior technical director for Standards, Assessment, and Certification at the National Skill Standards Board (NSSB), Department of Labor; and as chief of Personnel Assessment and Research at the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

“Being a psychologist, it was fascinating for me to watch the team’s different backgrounds come together for this. We didn’t have a rulebook to follow. A lot of it had to be done with creativity and innovation.”

DR. DAVID SIROTA
is an industrial/organizational psychologist and a consultant.

When I began my career as an industrial/organizational psychologist there was an emphasis on testing — ability testing, personality testing, and so on — in an effort to put the right person in the right job. Today, the emphasis is turning to establishing the atmosphere most conducive to productivity and quality work.

The field has become extremely influential, in part because of the overwhelming competition from Japan. Studies indicate that Japanese companies tend to manage the way industrial/organizational psychologists say people should be managed.

Most industrial/organizational psychologists hold that people go to work wanting to do good work. Nevertheless, when we look at a company that has a problem— let’s say, a drop in customers or a large turnover in labor—we see large percentages of people not working very hard. When we analyze what causes people to lose their motivation, the answer usually has to do with how they’re being managed. For example, if management treats employees like children or criminals, the employees are likely to become demoralized.

I had wanted to be a psychologist since I was a psychology major at City College of New York. (I originally thought I would go into engineering.) One great influence on me was my father. He was a strong union man. From him I learned that workers’ opinions are very important to a company’s overall wellbeing. While earning my doctorate in social psychology at the University of Michigan, I also became enamored of survey work at the university’s Institute for Social Research.

I was an industrial/organizational psychologist for IBM for 13 years and then set up my own consulting firm, Sirota and Associates, in New York City. We do work for companies all over the world. Earlier in my career, I also taught at a number of universities.

My particular branch of the field focuses on data collection. We diagnose an organization’s problems by surveying people in the organization through questionnaires, informal interviews, focus groups, or a combination of all three methods. Why do employees stay with the company? What helps them produce quality products or quality service? Do they have the right training, the right equipment, the right management, the right whatever? Does the way management treats employees cause them to feel good or bad about the company’s customers? Often we interview the customers, too. All these variables comprise the heart of what we do.

We come back to management with our analysis. We try to be candid, but not abrasive, pointing out what’s being done well and the opportunities for improvement. We then try to get the managers involved in coming to their own solutions.

Unlike a doctor who finds out what’s wrong with you and then writes a prescription, most industrial/organizational psychologists want people to become their own doctors. We’re not necessarily interested in people liking each other or becoming “nice guys,” per se. Of course, it’s good if they do, but what we want is for them to deal with what has to be done in terms of business objectives.

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