Karen Moore

Karen Moore, MD and Principal Occupational Psychologist, Symbiotics

Karen Moore is a Chartered Occupational Psychologist with considerable experience of assessing individuals at all levels from graduate to board directors and in a diverse range of industries from nuclear, through utilities to banking and aviation. She is particularly concerned that personality profiling should not be seen as the route to protecting mental health, but as one indicator of the individual’s susceptibility.

Karen joined Symbiotics in 2017 as MD and Principal Occupational Psychologist, to further develop their assessment processes for high consequence industries. Symbiotics specialize in the assessment of pilots and specialist units within the police, such as firearms officers.

ABSTRACT
Selecting for Resilience Then Maintaining Mental Wellbeing – Keeping the Stuffing in the ‘Right Stuff’

Safety critical industries demand a lot of their employees, often requiring them to work in routine situations whilst at the same time maintaining a high level of readiness to react to critical incidents. Selecting people with the ‘right stuff’ is crucial, which means understanding the stressors that are specific to the particular workplace as well as the more common factors. How an individual will respond to these can be predicted through sophisticated psychological modelling, and the relevant attributes tested through a combination of personality and aptitude tests. Mental wellbeing is a topic that is now on the agenda for most organisations, and we see the beginnings of a preparedness to talk about what was once a taboo topic. But just how do you keep people who have the ‘right stuff’ mentally fit and able to carry out their duties?

Symbiotics have been working in the aviation sector and have preliminary results comparing the risk to mental wellbeing on eight key measures between individuals selected for resilience and those who have not undergone a robust selection process. These indicate that the right selection process can help keep people well.