Peter Saville

Peter Francis Saville (26 October 1946 – 5 January 2022) was a British chartered occupational psychologist specialising in psychometrics, personality and talent management.

He co-founded Saville and Holdsworth Ltd (SHL) in 1977. He was founder of the Saville Consulting Group and its chairman from 2006 to 2015, when it was sold to Towers Watson (now Willis Towers Watson).

Saville was an instigator of psychometric testing in the modern workplace and held an Academic Fellowship of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development for Leadership and Research Innovation. here Saville was responsible for adapting and standardising a range of tests for educational, clinical and occupational use. Saville was involved in the acquisition of the tests of The National Institute of Industrial Psychology (NIIP), first founded by Charles Samuel Myers. In his PhD, Saville undertook a Promax factor analysis of Cattell's 16PF Questionnaire, on a sample of two thousand British adults using a sampling methodology proposed by Claus Moser. Factor analysis provided a five variable solution of traits; Anxiety, Extraversion, Warmth, Imagination and Conscientiousness – later known as the Five-factor model (FFM) or Big Five of Personality. Professor Raymond Cattell praised Saville for his contribution to British psychology. Professor Hans Eysenck was Saville's PhD external examiner. Saville's findings caused Eysenck to start an argument with internal examiner Professor Desmond Furneax over the nature of intelligence. Developed for use in workplace settings, the original OPQ contained four different versions. The Pentagon model measured five scales. The Octagon, Factor and Concept versions of the OPQ measured respectively 8, 16 and 30 scales. Previously, employers widely used personality tests created by Raymond Cattell. The OPQ was specifically related to assess an individual's suitability for different types of work. Saville left SHL in 2003 following a boardroom dispute after SHL's share price crashed. SHL's board of directors wanted co-founder Holdsworth to step down. Holdsworth refused to step down, Saville backed him up along with the external shareholder, Manpower. During a general meeting, Saville put forward a motion to oust the company's new chief executive. Because SHL staff were also shareholders, they were allowed a vote. However, despite most of the staff voting to oust the new leaders, the motion failed by a narrow margin.

In 2004 he founded his second company, Saville Consulting Group, now Saville Assessment. SHL attempted to stop Saville from legally using his name for his new company, but failed after Saville took legal action.

Saville was professor of occupational psychology at Queen's University from 1990 to 1998, and was latterly a visiting professor of Talent Management and Leadership at Kingston Business School. In 2015, Towers Watson took over Saville Consulting, stating that combining the latter's online tools and their own engagement and talent software would "help companies that want efficient, technology-enabled solutions to identify and develop talent".

Personal life and death He was twice married and had five children. Saville died on 5 January 2022, at the age of 75.

Awards Saville was an Academic Fellow of The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (UK).

In November 2015, Saville was awarded Lifetime Membership and Honorary Membership of the Association of Business Psychologists.

Saville was awarded a Doctor of Science Honoris Causa (Hon. Dr. Sc.) for outstanding services to Occupational Psychology by Kingston University in July 2016.

In 2001, Saville received the British Psychological Society's Centenary Award for Distinguished Contributions to Professional Psychology.

In August 2012, the British Psychological Society awarded Saville an Honorary Fellowship, its highest award. Saville, P., Blinkhorn, S., Undergraduate personality by factored scales: a large scale study on Cattell's 16 PF and the Eysenck personality inventory, NFER Publishing Company

Journals Peter Saville, Eric Willson. The reliability and validity of normative and ipsative approaches in the measurement of personality, Journal of Occupational Psychology