Dr. Richard A. MacKinnon

Managing Director

About Richard

The Founder and Managing Director of WorkLifePsych, Richard is a Chartered Psychologist, a Chartered Scientist, registered EuroPsy Psychologist and Registered Coaching Psychologist.

He spends the majority of his time coaching individuals through key stages in their career, helping employees deal with workplace stress and challenges and facilitating the development of teams.

He is particularly interested in employee wellbeing, boosting productivity and helping clients develop their psychological flexibility to better cope with challenges.

Richard co-hosts our fortnightly podcast, ‘My Pocket Psych‘ and creates videos for our YouTube channel.

Professional Experience

Richard has over 20 years of experience as a practitioner psychologist. He has worked on both sides of ‘the fence’, as an internal professional and external consultant.

Originally from Dublin, he began his career as a consultant at Royal Mail Group, spent time working with the Psychometrics Centre (then at City University), followed by several years at Kenexa, where he helped organisations interpret and act on employee opinion survey data.

Richard then spent over six years working with Talent Q, where he was Head of Learning and Development Solutions. He grew Talent Q’s training and development proposition from two online courses to a full suite of development programmes and a coaching team.

Richard has worked with a wide variety of organisations, such as King, Dentsu Aegis Network, Untold Studios, Carlsberg, Virgin Atlantic, Lloyds Banking Group, Spirax Sarco Engineering, PepsiCo, BDO, Royal Mail and London Ambulance Service to help them identify and develop key talent. He has worked across sectors and at all levels of organisational seniority.

Richard has designed processes for identifying ‘high potential’ groups of future leaders, coaching interventions for new graduates, leadership development programmes for technical specialists and development centres to inform succession planning activities.

All of these projects were underpinned by a single principle: the application of psychological science at work.

Professional Accreditation

Below is a breakdown of Richard’s professional accreditations:

Qualifications

Below is a breakdown of Richard’s qualifications:

  • Doctorate in Occupational Psychology, University of East London (2012)
  • MSc in Occupational Psychology, Goldsmiths College, University of London (2000)
  • BA (Hons) Psychology, Trinity College Dublin (1998)
  • Postgraduate Diploma in Health Ergonomics, University of Surrey (2005)
  • Certificate in Coaching, Centre for Coaching (2012)
  • Primary Certificate in Occupational Stress Management, Centre for Coaching (2013)
  • British Psychological Society, Occupational Testing (Level A – Ability)
  • British Psychological Society, Occupational Testing (Level B – Personality)
  • British Psychological Society, Occupational Testing (Level B plus)
  • Qualified in a range of psychometric assessments, including:
    • Occupational Personality Questionnaire (OPQ), SHL
    • Dimensions Personality Questionnaire, Talent Q
    • NEO-PIR, Hogrefe