In this episode of Better Thinking, Nesh Nikolic speaks with Stacey Parker about how jobs and careers can be designed to maximise wellbeing, motivation, and performance, and what psychological principles can help create healthier and more fulfilling working lives.
Associate Professor Stacey Parker is an organisational psychologist and academic for the School of Psychology, University of Queensland, Australia. Her research aims to help organisations and their employees devise strategies for realising the dual concerns of feeling well and performing well. To this end, she examines how employees manage their energy during work, how employees recover from work stress in off-the-job time, and how jobs and careers can be designed to maximise well-being, motivation, and performance. She also explores the hidden costs of performance management systems.
She studies these phenomena using controlled work simulations and field research in a range of high-performance settings (e.g., small business owners, professional musicians, elite athletes, and safety critical work in healthcare and transport industries). Her consulting and advisory work has included tackling issues with selection and recruitment, training and development, career management, work design, change management, and operational safety.
She serves on the Editorial Boards for the Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, and European Journal of Work and Organisational Psychology. Her achievements have been recognised by the Australian Psychological Society, with a Doctoral Thesis Award in Occupational Health Psychology (2013) and Early Career Award in Organisational Psychology (2022).
