University of Minnesota professor of psychology Paul Sackett is the winner of the 2023 Michael R. Losey Excellence in Human Resource Research Award. The $50,000 award was announced Nov. 17 at the SHRM Volunteer Leaders' Business Meeting. Sackett also will be recognized at the SHRM Annual Conference & Expo 2024 in Chicago. 
The SHRM Foundation administers the award named in honor of Losey, who served the HR profession for more than 45 years. Losey retired as president and CEO of SHRM in 2000.
This recognition is the latest for Sackett, who in 2020 received the Dunnette Prize, a $50,000 award from the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology (SIOP). The award honored his programmatic, significant and lasting contributions to understanding the causal nature of individual differences in behavior and performance.
He is the only person to receive lifetime achievement awards from SIOP in three domains of teaching, research and service:
- Distinguished Service Contribution Award in 2000.
- Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award in 2003.
- Distinguished Teaching Contribution Award in 2018.
Sackett is also a much-published author whose journal articles, books and book chapters have five recurring themes:
- The tension between designing selection systems to maximize job performance versus to maximize ethnic, racial and gender diversity.
- The measurement and prediction of counterproductive behavior in the workplace.
- The need for methodological rigor and psychometric sophistication in evaluating personnel decision-making.
- The assessment of managerial potential.
- The role of personality in personnel selection.
Sackett has been in academia since 1979. He taught at the University of Kansas and at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He has been with the University of Minnesota since 1988, and since 2006 has held the Beverly and Richard Fink Distinguished Professorship of Psychology and Liberal Arts.
"I'm incredibly grateful," Sackett said of the Losey Award. He was nominated by a former student who is now a professor at Michigan State University and by a retired chief learning officer at General Mills, where Sackett had served as a longtime advisor to the company's HR department.
"I have tremendous respect of all the prior winners," he said. "It's amazing to be in their company."
Sackett plans to donate the award money to a scholarship he and his wife, a chemist, created many years ago that benefits Marquette University, where they met as undergraduates. The scholarship is for a female student in the STEM field.
"When a windfall of this sort comes along, it's nice to pass it along," he told SHRM Online.
"I'm at a point of life [where] I'm trying to be somewhat philanthropic."
Human Resources
Sackett has served on a variety of advisory boards, and currently sits on the Certification Commission of SHRM. He also is a longtime member of the Human Resources Research Organization, chairing it since 2015. He has taught courses in HR management and HR systems. In 2007 he received the Herbert G. Heneman Jr. Career Achievement Award from the Human Resources Division of the Academy of Management.
He is a member of a number of editorial boards, including the Journal of Applied Psychology, the International Journal of Selection and Assessment and the Journal of Personnel Psychology.
Past service on a long list of national commissions includes chairing the National Research Council Committee on the Social and Behavior Sciences for National Security, chairing the National Research Council Committee on Measuring Human Capabilities, and serving as vice chair of the National Research Council Roundtable on Work, Learning, and Assessment.
Sackett has a doctorate in industrial/organizational psychology and a master's degree from Ohio State University. He graduated magna cum laude from Marquette University, where he majored in psychology; in 2018 the university's College of Arts and Sciences named him Alumnus of the Year. In 2011, Ghent University in Belgium awarded him an honorary doctorate.
Wendi Safstrom, SHRM Foundation president, congratulated Sackett.
"His work to evolve workplaces and enhance performance is crucial to ensuring a diverse and effective workforce," she said. "He joins an incredible group of previous award winners, and we are thrilled he was nominated and look forward to seeing his work continue transform the sector."
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