Who are WorkLifePsych?
Founded in 2014 by Dr. Richard MacKinnon, WorkLifePsych is a team of accredited and experienced workplace psychologists who are passionate about the practical application of psychology in the workplace. We focus on the intersection of wellbeing, productivity and interpersonal effectiveness. Our mission is to help people move from merely surviving work to thriving at work.
We help individuals, teams and organisation to develop in these areas through provision of coaching, training courses and structured development programmes.
Collectively, we have over 100 years of experience as practitioner psychologists, gained across a wide range of countries, sectors and organisations. We have coached at all organisational levels, helped organisations identify their top talent, supported teams as they grow and address new challenges and developed cohorts of graduates, managers and aspiring leaders through structured development programmes. Read on to find out more about our approach and the kind of work we do.
Our Approach
A whole person perspective
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.
An evidence-based approach
As scientist-practitioners, we avoid fads and fashions, relying instead on the methods and concepts supported by the science of psychology. Whether it's coaching, a training course or a development programme, we'll only include approaches that can withstand scientific scrutiny - translated for simple and impactful use in your everyday life.
Nurturing wellbeing
The contemporary workplace has the potential to wear us down and leave us ill. The emphasis on 'doing everything', the difficulty with disconnecting from work each evening, combined with juggling life's ever-growing list or roles and responsibilities. It can all leave us feeling exhausted, stressed and burnt out. But it doesn't have to be that way. We help our clients better understand the roots of their difficulties, cultivate healthy ways to cope with demands, and ensure that their wellbeing turns from an afterthought to a priority.
Enabling productivity
The combination of increasing workload, intrusive technology, and demanding goals can leave us feeling like we're swimming against the tide. We can lose our sense of accomplishment and our connection with our priorities. Our coaching work focuses on enabling clients to reconnect with what matters and invest their limited time, attention and energy in the activities that really make a difference. All while side-stepping the challenges of procrastination, overwhelm and unsustainably long hours.
Supporting effectiveness
This area of our expertise is all about supporting clients in their interpersonal work: cooperation and collaboration, managing and leading others, providing feedback, team building, navigating friction and conflict. Interpersonal effectiveness is about building self-awareness and the awareness of others, developing the skills that allow you to make use of your existing technical skills and knowledge with even more impact. It's about learning how to get along, while getting ahead.
Who do you work with?
We have delivered our coaching, training and development programmes to clients all around the world. Since 2014, we have worked with clients in the UK, Ireland, Korea, Denmark, France, India, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, the USA, the Philippines, Singapore, Malaysia and Mexico.
Our experience covers work in contexts as varied as food and beverage conglomerates, financial services businesses, professional services consultancies, special effects studios, engineering consultancies, airlines, telecoms providers, local government and the NHS. Our clients includes organisations with 10 and 10,000 employees – and everywhere in between.
Recent projects include:
- Designing and delivering a wellbeing programme for an international financial services business
- Coaching aspiring leaders in a rapidly changing telecoms business
- Training scientists in personal productivity principles
- Designing and delivering a management development programme for an analytics startup
- Designing and delivering an international graduate development programme
- Training ‘fast track’ managers in basic coaching skills
- Designing and delivering a wellbeing programme for an NHS Trust
- Coaching the leadership team of global media and digital communications firm
- The design and facilitation of a global leadership development programme for engineering professionals
- Providing team development workshops for Clinical Psychologists in an NHS trust
There is a before and an after working with Richard. Once you embark on the coaching journey, be prepared for a tremendous positive change in your daily life. Thanks to his strong experience, focus, kindness and skills, Richard successfully and gently steers you towards personal breakthroughs and discoveries. The impact of having Richard as a coach has influenced me to sign up my leadership team for the same programme
Alvaro Duarte
Voodoo
WorkLifePsych have helped us successfully design from scratch a leadership programme which has been deployed across the Group which is now in its fourth year of delivery. It has been received extremely well, resulting in delegates making measurable change in their approach to leadership in their role and deployment into their teams.
Tammy Lillie
Spirax Sarco
We asked Richard and the WorkLifePsych team to assist in the start-up phase of our new business. As a new talent-based creative business, unencumbered from legacy ways of working we were determined to put in place the most contemporary and relevant people strategy. Richard worked closely with us to develop our people strategy, including how to clarify and communicate our organisation’s values, how to identify and nurture talent and how to create a sustainable people development strategy. Richard continues to support Untold Studios. He is insightful, attentive and challenging in all the right ways. He has been instrumental in our launch and remains a supportive and trusted advisor. I have no hesitation in recommending Richard to other startups - I’ve no doubt Richard and his team will have a huge positive impact on any new business.
Darren O’Kelly
Untold Studios
I worked with Richard as my coach across 2016/17 with my goal of being an “intrapreneur" who makes the business I’m taking care of sustainable. I want to innovate to surprise our audiences, foster people around a vision and multiply others’ talent. And in my business, there is a lot of passion and emotions, everything moves very fast and things change constantly. As I was gaining seniority, it was hard for me sometimes to keep a “cool head" when taking decisions. Thanks to Richard, I got way closer to achieving this goal! I became a better leader by clarifying my innate talent, managing my emotions better, understanding the complex system I’m working within and multiplying others to get their best. Richard provided me with tips and frameworks that help me navigate through this system better every day . There has been a before and after Richard for sure!
Delphine Sassi
King
We recently invited Richard to our first learning festival, to deliver a keynote as well as a workshop on the topic of psychological flexibility. Working in the public sector brings its own challenges and this is why it was really important to us to offer personal development opportunities centred on wellbeing, and practical tools for us to use on a daily basis when we may be feeling overwhelmed or experiencing anxiety. Feedback from those taking part was extremely positive and we are already looking at working with Richard on other initiatives.
Ruxandra Stewart
Essex Country Council
Richard has worked with DCC Group for over eight years within a variety of organisational contexts so we were delighted to invite him recently to present on the topic of “Coping with Change” to our employees in DCC Vital. Richard has a unique mix of broad experience, an ability to appropriately adapt a message to suit different audiences and is very practical. The feedback from our employees on his session was excellent and they appreciated the tools and techniques he shared through the session. Presenting virtually is a challenge to the best of us, but Richard makes it look easy! There was such a logical flow in his messaging that he hit the right note with our diverse workforce. We couldn’t recommend working with him more highly and we look forward to working with him on other projects going forward.
Orla Dempsey
DCC Vital
Our team
Click on any of the profiles below to learn more about the WorkLIfePsych team.