Peter Saville, Executive Chairman

Selected Publications and Presentations

Professor Peter Saville is International Chairman of Saville Consulting, an international group of psychologists, human resource, business and IT consultants, specialising in the attraction, assessment, selection and development of talent at work. He is acknowledged as a world-wide authority in the field of Industrial psychology and has been referred to as an “assessment guru”.

Previously Peter was Founder, Managing Director and Executive Chairman of SHL Group Plc, which was started on £100 and he took to a value of £250 million on the London Stock Exchange. Peter severed all links with SHL in 2004 following a major disagreement over board policy, particularly over new product development and the use of tests delivered unsupervised on the Internet, which he believed would lead to candidate cheating.

Peter formed Saville Consulting in 2004. He is heavily involved in new product development, training, consultancy and has established operations in Europe, the United States, Asia Pacific, Australia, South America and the Caribbean. He developed the Wave questionnaires with his team and his main current focus is Leadership research.

Peter graduated with Honours in Psychology and subsequently completed his Masters and Doctorate degrees with research into ability and personality structure, examined by Professor Hans Eysenck. In 1970 he joined the National Foundation for Educational Research as an assistant psychologist. When he left the NFER in 1977 he was Chief Psychologist of the Test Division  and responsible for the adaptation and standardisation of psychological tests for clinical, educational and industrial use, including Cattell’s 16PF and the Wecshler scales.

Peter has published over 200 academic papers, psychometric tests and books; from articles on test validation, occupational selection, ability and aptitude testing to personality research.  Saville Consulting is expanding rapidly and now operates in over 60 countries worldwide.

Peter’s consultancy experience includes many assignments for companies in managerial, engineering, graduate, technical and sales staff selection. He has acted as a specialist consultant to the United Nations in staff selection and spoken at numerous conferences worldwide including the British Educational Research Association, the American Psychological Association, the Institute of Personnel and Development, the British Psychological Society and the International Association of Applied Psychology. He has been invited to address management and professional institutes worldwide, from the United States to Japan. Peter succeeded Professor Philip Vernon as International Consultant Psychologist to Mensa.

Peter Saville is a Chartered Psychologist, a Fellow of the British Psychological Society, a Chartered Scientist, a Member of the Institute of Directors, an Associate of the Royal Society of Medicine and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. In January 2012 he was awarded the prestigious Acadmemic fellow by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development. In 1998 he was listed by Enterprise Magazine as one of the UK’s Top Entrepreneurs and in 2001 as one of Britain’s Top Ten Psychologists, the only Work Psychologist in the listing. Peter was Professor of Occupational Psychology at Queen’s University from 1991 to 1998, and is currently Visiting Professor at Kingston Business School.
Peter’s photograph hung in the National Portrait Gallery, London in 2001 as a result of receiving the British Psychological Society Centenary Award for Distinguished Contributions to Professional Psychology in 2000;  the first Industrial Psychologist to be so honoured.

“Ultimately the standardisation of questionnaires not specifically designed for an occupational arena made him frustrated and led him to found SHL in 1977. In doing so he has established Britain as a centre for Psychometric testing and is responsible for cementing the notion of fair and objective assessment in Human Resource departments across the world. As a skilled psychometrician and visionary leader, Peter Saville has made a significant impact on professional psychology in the UK and beyond. The widespread use of SHL tests by many major companies and public bodies is testament to the influence of Peter Saville’s remarkable ideas”.

In addition to addressing senior International management groups and keynote speeches, Peter has appeared on British, American and other TV and radio stations around the world.
Peter’s academic interests cover business psychology, marketing, intelligence, the structure and assessment of personality; recruitment and selection; human resource and business management; sports psychology, multivariate statistics and diversity. His main area, however, has been psychometrics: standardising, researching and developing tests of general intelligence (IQ) verbal, numerical, mechanical, and spatial abilities, as well as those of personality, not only for industry but also for military, educational and clinical applications.

Peter’s interests include military history and music from jazz, the blues and soul to Puccini. As a competitive sportsman, Peter played soccer into his fifties, qualified as a soccer coach and being born up in Shepherds Bush, London, a QPR supporter. He was an avid squash player, enjoyed cricket as a wicket-keeper and rugby as a number eight while at athletics he competed as a sprinter, in the long jump, the shot and discus. He still plays tennis and golf. Having lived in Barbados and Jersey, Peter has homes in Surrey and Lancashire, UK and the Portuguese Algarve.

Peter is married, has five children, including twins (born 2009) by Jemaine his second wife. Jemaine was a Senior Social Worker in Child Protection and Adult Mental Health. She has raised funds for numerous children’s charities including successful ascents of both Mount Kilimanjaro and Mount Kenya within a two-week period.