Pandemic Productivity Online

Richard Landers Creates a “Get-Together” for the IO Psychology Community
Image of "The Great IO Get-Together" title slide
The Great IO Get-Together describes itself as the “premier IO online brown-bag/water-cooler/meetup community.”

When the world almost shut down during the COVID-19 pandemic, some people used this time to exercise their creative problem-solving skills. Associate Professor Richard Landers, who holds the John P. Campbell Professorship of Industrial-Organizational Psychology, demonstrated what “pandemic productivity” meant by addressing a problem that he saw in his field—people missing out on the social connection. 

How GIG Began

Landers created his YouTube channel, “The Great IO Get-Together” (GIG), in 2021 with his colleague Tara Behrend from Purdue University when they began to feel disconnected from their professional field. Prior to the pandemic, thousands of people in the IO field—students, practitioners, and academics—would meet for an annual conference and other social events. Landers started to reflect on how the loss of these in-person events meant that students in the field had lost access to the wide variety of high-profile IO psychologists they would normally meet. He worried about the possible negative impacts this disconnection could have on the future of the field.  

Landers credits a lot of his motivation for entering academia to these social networking events, where he got a first-hand view of how influential and highly published academics talked to organizational representatives, the press, and pitched in to help with major initiatives and services. “The social networks of IO psychology are really important in terms of both getting research done and in terms of our research being used in the world,” Landers comments. “[Students] weren't getting that social piece that we thought was so important because it shapes not only your knowledge but also your values and the culture of the field. So we wanted to bring some of that culture to everybody.” 

Streamed live on YouTube with the hosts answering questions from the chat, “The Great IO Get-Together” (a spin-off of the Minnesota State Fair’s popular slogan "The Great Minnesota Get-Together"), was Landers’ way of recreating some of the social experience of conferences for current students. Each episode is about an hour long, and Landers often brings in a number of guest speakers in his show, people whom he admires and who are willing to talk about their experiences in the IO psychology profession. “We really want the guests to be the stars of the show, as much as possible,” Landers says.

The GIG Community

The GIG not only relays the industry culture, but also portrays an honest and realistic picture of what it’s like to be in the field of IO psychology. The show strives to make people feel like they are part of an interactive and engaging community. This community acknowledges that being in the IO psychology field can be a grind at times, as with any other job, but the hardships are not the whole picture, and you can also have fun with what you are doing. 

Despite starting with a relatively humble viewership, the show now reaches nearly 250 subscribers and 3500 views, and this momentum shows no signs of stopping. “We’ve gotten unexpected kinds of feedback in terms of viewership. A couple of our episodes, for example, have been assigned in IO psychology courses to watch, which is neat,” Landers remarks. 

Beginning with Discord and a YouTube channel and then expanding to Spotify and other podcast platforms, the first year of the GIG has indeed been successful. Landers says while the experience can be stressful at times (with constantly checking the monitors and adjusting tech issues), it is still enjoyable and exciting. 

Even though the show has triumphed so far, Landers does have a few ideas for switching things up in the future. “We're thinking about doing things like responding to current events that are kind of related to IO, almost like [what] you would get in a lab meeting or in a talk that someone might hear in IO psychology,” he says. “We haven’t really decided yet, but regardless, we're probably gonna stick for the next year in the same general kind of format.” 

This story was written by an undergraduate student in CLA.

Share on: