David Towner is a Chartered Occupational Psychologist, Chartered Member of the CIPD, Honorary Professor at Heriot-Watt University (School of Life Sciences) and Deputy Chair of the Division of Occupational Psychology . After completing his BA degree in psychology from Antioch College (USA) and the University of Sussex (UK) David spent 8 years working as a psychologist in mental health therapeutic communities in the UK.

During this time he received additional training and in particular is trained in the group dynamics model of the Tavistock Clinic (UK) and completed a one-year certificate course in Psycho-Education from the department of Psychoeducation, University of Montreal (Canada).

Currently, David is the Global Head of Assessment within Group Resourcing & Development at the Royal Bank of Scotland Group (RBS). For 10 years prior to this, David was an independent psychologist working with a range of clients from both the private and public sectors. Earlier still in his career, David was employed for two years as a Managing Consultant with MKA Management Consulting and was with Ernst & Young for three years.

At RBS David and his team are actively engaged on the following areas of work:

• Business Co-operation support to the Bank of China - RBS lead in supporting BoC’s development of a Leadership Competency Model and Job Design
• Organisation Design - development of an organisation design intervention and upskilling programme for HR teams involved in business re-structures
• Group Resourcing Architecture (GRA) - analysis & assessment design for Volume 1B Roles
• Establishment of a Group-wide Assessment Governance & Practice Framework
• Re-design of HR Assessment Centre
• Graduate Strategic Review - graduate assessment process
• Job Design - Establishment of a Community of Practice and focus on re-design of call centre jobs
• Further embedding and development of the RBS Group-wide Work-Out (continuous improvement) programme

David actively contributes back into the profession and has recently lectured at City University and Nankai University in China and is a member of the CIPD Work Psychology Faculty.

Topics:

• Tessting, assessment
• Stress
• Talent Management