‘The ambition is to make the Society a more welcoming place’

For any members who are unaware of the Member Board's work, could you tell me about some of its aims and objectives?

I often get asked that question – what exactly is the Member Board, what does it do? I can understand why people can find it puzzling, because most BPS boards and/or committees are concerned with some aspect of members' work – research, practice, education. However, the remit of the Member Board is on membership issues that would concern any membership organisation – issues like 'who can become a member?', 'what are the admissions criteria?', 'how many different kinds of member grades do we have?', 'what kind of ethical behaviour do we expect from our members – our member conduct rules?', 'what are the benefits of being a BPS member?', 'how can we make the BPS more attractive as a membership organisation?'. Indeed, one of the main purposes in our terms of reference is 'to grow' the membership… that means both retaining existing members, attracting new members, and being a welcoming and inclusive place for all members. 

The Member Board is one of five strategic boards that advise the Board of Trustees. The other strategic boards are the Research Board, the Practice Board, the Education and Training Board, and the Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) Board. The Chairs of each board meet regularly to identify common themes and issues, where remits of responsibility can overlap. For example, the Member Board is currently working in partnership with the EDI Board on inclusion and diversity, specifically, as a first step, to maximise the recording of members' EDI characteristics in the new member database.

Why did you want to be Chair of the Member Board in the first place?

I have been a member of the BPS for a long time, since I was a postgraduate student – and that is some considerable time ago! Over the years I have been actively involved in BPS committees and working groups, in divisions, special groups, sections and branches. For example, I was chair of the Northern Ireland Branch for six years. From these experiences I learned to appreciate not just the benefits of being a member, the professional identity and feelings of belonging that it engenders, but also the tensions and frustrations of trying to 'get things done' in a big organisation which can have competing interests. So I learned a lot about the BPS through my own membership experiences. 

I was talking recently to the BPS Student Committee and found myself describing what I learned by being a member of the BPS, especially in the earlier stages of my career. For example, I learned how 'to do things' like organising conferences and workshops, I began to appreciate the value of networking and getting to know people outside of my immediate circle of colleagues, to feel part of a bigger community, and as I became more experienced helping to give a voice for psychology to wider audiences. So, despite some frustrations, a lot of my experience was positive. 

However, two recent BPS initiatives gave me deeper insights into the diversity of experiences of members. The first of these was the findings from the Member Journey Initiative conducted by Social Kinetic between October 2019 and April 2020. A striking finding for me was that members had significantly different member journeys – both their journeys into psychology and their journeys as they progressed through a career in psychology. Some had straightforward and linear pathways where the transition points were easily (or fairly easily) negotiated, while for others the experience was bumpy and stop-start, revealing barriers to access, inequalities, and feelings of not being welcome. So members might need very different things from their membership organisation and at different points in their careers. The message was that membership organisations, including the BPS, need to be much more flexible and responsive to these different needs and expectations and to tailor what they offer to members accordingly. The new Member Board was charged with taking forward these ideas from the Member Journey Initiative, and I was keen to be part of that. 

The second influence stretches further back. When I was Chair of the Northern Ireland Branch and the Branches Forum (around 2014/15) I had been part of an earlier review of member networks that had not made much progress. I was disappointed about that and recognised it was unfinished business. Issues about member networks resurfaced in the findings from the Member Journey Initiative – members pointed to the need for more collaboration and cooperation between networks, making networks more accessible and having more impact. The new Member Board was also charged with taking this forward, eventually resulting in the Korn Ferry recommendations about refreshing member networks and addressing long-standing problems. These recommendations are now part of the work of the Member Network Futures Group.     

So, apart from my own experiences as a member, these two broader perspectives drew me to apply for the Chair of the Member Board. 

What has your first term as Chair been like? Any particularly proud moments or challenges?

Perhaps my most vivid memory of the first term of the Member Board was that it was launched during the COVID-19 lockdown. The inaugural meeting was in July 2020. The members of the Board did not meet face-to-face until November 2022, and we had a great celebration at that first face-to-face meeting. In these Zoom circumstances, the challenge was to build relationships within the new Board, which had a largely new remit as well. I knew one or two members of the Board previously but for the most part, the members did not know one another. (As an aside, there are 11 members on the Board, and the members represent all the different grades in the Society, from student members to chartered members.) Fortunately, we had assembled a great bunch of members who were enthusiastic about moving forward the agenda.

And what was on the immediate agenda for the Board? Fortunately, the agenda was largely driven by the findings from the Member Journey Initiative, and there was an urgency about some of the work. For example, the work on changes to member grades would require changes to the Society's Royal Charter and there was a precise timeline for that, which we did meet! Also, the Member Board had oversight of the application to the Professional Standards Authority (PSA) for the Society to hold a register for the new wider psychological workforce, and that had tight deadlines as well. The main work of the Board was carried out by Task and Finish groups, ably supported by BPS staff who produced documentation, held consultations with groups of members, and revised and amended documents, all on tight turnarounds. I want to take this opportunity to recognise their work and their contribution to the Board in the first term. We had task and finish groups on the volunteering strategy, member grades, the revisions to the member conduct rules, developing the criteria for full membership and the changes to the processes for awarding Associate Fellows and Fellows, as well as on mentoring. Our latest task and finish group worked on revisions to the Social Media guidelines for members. We also commissioned the Korn Ferry review of member networks and set that in train. Recommendations from that report are now being taken forward by a different group, the Member Network Futures Group, as I mentioned earlier.  

As you can see, the Board worked very hard over the past three years!  At least, I think so… 

One of the things I am particularly proud of is that we systematically reviewed the effectiveness of the Board at the end of the first year, including the role of the Chair! Feedback on all this was very useful, especially as meetings had been virtual and it was difficult, for me as Chair, to get a 'feel' for how the Board was working. And there are merits in collecting this information systematically, as it allows each person to have their 'say', not just the loudest… and it is anonymous. This approach is now being adopted across all the main strategic boards as well as in the Board of Trustees. 

What do you hope the Board can achieve during your second term?    

Well, as the saying goes about second terms – much has been done, much remains to be done.

Much of the work that was started in the first term is not yet fully complete in terms of the impact it was designed to have. For example, the new grades of full member and associate member have just been launched and their takeup is in the very early stages. The PSA register for the wider psychological workforce is a major initiative for the Society and the purpose is to attract that new cohort of psychological practitioners and welcome them into the Society. The mentoring scheme is still in the pilot phase.  

In terms of new work, at our first face-to-face meeting in November 2022, we identified a primary goal for the next phase of the Board will on retention and growth of the membership, why people join the Society and why they leave. We spent some time discussing 'churn' in membership numbers – that we can have substantial numbers of new members each year but also lose substantial numbers which can cancel one another. So while it may look like we have a stable membership or even a small increase, the composition of the membership is changing, and we need to find out where the 'leakage' is and why. For answers to these questions, we will need more precise data, not just numbers but reasons for joining and reasons for leaving. Some of you may have noticed that we have started a Pulse Survey of members that involves a percentage of the membership being sampled every month on questions related to membership and what they value. When these data are aggregated over time, it will help us understand more fully what members think about the Society and what they value, what they might want more or less of, so that we can adapt and modify. Having this kind of information will be crucial to decision-making for the Member Board, and indeed for other sections of the Society and the networks, going forward.   

As I mentioned earlier, the Board is also working with the EDI Board on diversity and inclusion issues.  Specifically, we want to encourage members (especially more longstanding members) to complete their profiles in the new member database so that the Society can have a fuller picture of the characteristics of the membership. You can expect to hear more callouts for that over the next few months.  

Another item in our brief that we have not paid much attention to so far is international membership. We plan to develop that stream of work over the next term.
Lastly, as the programme of work progresses, I expect the work of the Board will be less about new initiatives and more about oversight and review, checking that the goals of earlier initiatives have been fulfilled. Then scanning the horizon and being responsive to the next set of challenges – and on it goes.

As you will have realised by now, much of the work of the Member Board can seem quite technical, to do with criteria, rules, guidelines, numbers, data and so on. Behind it all, the ambition is to make the Society a more welcoming place for members – welcome, come and join us!