Dr. Richard MacKinnon

Experience

• 

  Royal Mail

  Jan 2000 - Jan 2003

  Consultant
• 

  MacKinnon Consulting

  Jan 2003 - Jan 2005

  Director
• 

  IBM

  Sept 2005 - Mar 2008

  Consultant
• 

  Talent Q

  Apr 2008 - Sept 2014

  • Head of Learning & Development Solutions

    Apr 2010 - Sept 2014

  • Senior Consultant

    Apr 2008 - Apr 2010
• 

  WorkLifePsych

  Sept 2014 - now

  Managing Director

  WorkLifePsych provides coaching, structured development programmes and training courses to help your organisation achieve success through - and with - its employees. We're a team of accredited workplace psychologists and coaches who support individuals, teams and organisations to develop their effectiveness, productivity and wellbeing. Our approach is to develop people from a whole person perspective, acknowledging that they have lives outside the workplace, multiple roles within their lives and strengths and development areas across all these areas. It’s pointless to ignore who we are outside of work when we’re trying to be our very best when at work. We call this “whole-person development” and see these three areas as core to individual and in turn, organisational success.We approach development from three complementary perspectives: 1. When it comes to professional effectiveness, we avoid any reference to ‘soft skills’. We focus on the skills that allow professionals to leverage their technical skills and experience and work with greater impact, influence and success. 2. Given the multiple and sometimes competing demands we face in the modern workplace, we help professionals become productive – that is, ensuring our limited resources are focused on the most important tasks at the right time. 3. Finally, effectiveness and productivity are both undermined when our wellbeing is threatened by workload, pressure and the unhelpful coping habits we’ve picked up over the years. Our focus on wellbeing emphasises positive and sustainable change that represents an investment in future success. Show less

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  The Future Work Centre

  Nov 2014 - Sept 2017

  Insight Director

  The Future Work Centre conducts innovative, high quality psychological research about peoples’ experience of work. By openly sharing the results and actionable insights, we hope to improve the quality and experience of work, both now and in the future. As occupational psychologists, our focus is on the human experience of work from the perspectives of the employee and the organisation. The workplace is changing fast, therefore how we adapt and grow is critical. The Future Work Centre provides robust evidence-based insights to help individuals and organisations equip themselves for success in the future. Show less

• 

  Sheffield Business School

  Jan 2015 - now

  Visiting Fellow
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  My Pocket Psych podcast

  Oct 2017 - now

  Founder and co-host

  I'm the founder and co-host of the fortnightly podcast, 'My Pocket Psych'. Each episode we look at an aspect of the psychology of the workplace, attempt to demystify it and explore ways in which we can help listeners thrive at work. Episodes are available on your podcast app of choice or via our website, worklifepsych.com/podcast.

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  Psychology for Business

  Jan 2018 - now

  Co-Founder

  Psychology for Business is a Dublin-based group designed to bring together people who would like to apply evidence-based psychology initiatives to their field; be it organizational change, people development, learning, media, marketing, education, interaction design, and more. Each event is focused on curated topics, debunking myths, unpicking the value of trends and it will aim to bring researchers and practitioners together to make things better for the humans with whom we do business and for whom we design products and services. Why? Because all business is psychology. Show less