Our research group brings together leading academics in organisational psychology, behaviour and healthcare management — including Professor Michael West CBE — to shape and strengthen the evidence behind our tools and team-coaching approaches.
Meeting twice a year, the group reviews emerging research, sets future priorities, and ensures our work stays grounded in robust, relevant evidence.
It supports our mission by:
Lecturer in Organisational Behaviour, University of Liverpool Management School
Pascale completed her PhD in Management (emphasis in Work and Organisational Psychology) at Aston Business School. Her research interest is in leadership effectiveness with a particular focus on stress and well-being, and gender.
Professor of Health Management, Sheffield University Management School, AOD Research Advisor
A statistician by background, Jeremy works in the fields of work psychology, management and healthcare. His research focusses on staff experience in the NHS (particularly in team working, HR management, climate and culture, and EDI) and its links with outcomes.
Associate Professor in Organisational Behaviour, University of Liverpool, and Registered Occupational Psychologist
Joanne has a sustained track record of conducting research on teams in organisations. She has a particular interest in the influence of team composition, team processes and team leadership on performance, creativity and innovation. Joanne’s research helps us to understand team dynamics and effectiveness in healthcare teams and how they can improve both staff and patient outcomes.
Professor of Organisational Psychology at Lancaster University, Senior Visiting Fellow at The King’s Fund, Advisory Consultant at Affina
Michael’s ground-breaking research into team effectiveness and his role as a national adviser in health and care leadership has had a significant and sustained influence on policy and practice in the NHS. His research continues to inform the work of Affina and the development of its diagnostic and development tools.
Lecturer in Healthcare Leadership and Management at the University of Bristol
Thomas has a background in occupational psychology and his research focuses on leadership theory (and practice), as well as leadership in healthcare. His work also looks at organisational culture (and collaborative leadership), employee well being and engagement, teamwork, and cross-boundary working.
Affina OD
We firmly believe that the internet should be available and accessible to anyone, and are committed to providing a website that is accessible to the widest possible audience, regardless of circumstance and ability.
To fulfill this, we aim to adhere as strictly as possible to the World Wide Web Consortium’s (W3C) Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.1 (WCAG 2.1) at the AA level. These guidelines explain how to make web content accessible to people with a wide array of disabilities. Complying with those guidelines helps us ensure that the website is accessible to all people: blind people, people with motor impairments, visual impairment, cognitive disabilities, and more.
This website utilizes various technologies that are meant to make it as accessible as possible at all times. We utilize an accessibility interface that allows persons with specific disabilities to adjust the website’s UI (user interface) and design it to their personal needs.
Additionally, the website utilizes an AI-based application that runs in the background and optimizes its accessibility level constantly. This application remediates the website’s HTML, adapts Its functionality and behavior for screen-readers used by the blind users, and for keyboard functions used by individuals with motor impairments.
If you’ve found a malfunction or have ideas for improvement, we’ll be happy to hear from you. You can reach out to the website’s operators by using the following email
Our website implements the ARIA attributes (Accessible Rich Internet Applications) technique, alongside various different behavioral changes, to ensure blind users visiting with screen-readers are able to read, comprehend, and enjoy the website’s functions. As soon as a user with a screen-reader enters your site, they immediately receive a prompt to enter the Screen-Reader Profile so they can browse and operate your site effectively. Here’s how our website covers some of the most important screen-reader requirements, alongside console screenshots of code examples:
Screen-reader optimization: we run a background process that learns the website’s components from top to bottom, to ensure ongoing compliance even when updating the website. In this process, we provide screen-readers with meaningful data using the ARIA set of attributes. For example, we provide accurate form labels; descriptions for actionable icons (social media icons, search icons, cart icons, etc.); validation guidance for form inputs; element roles such as buttons, menus, modal dialogues (popups), and others. Additionally, the background process scans all the website’s images and provides an accurate and meaningful image-object-recognition-based description as an ALT (alternate text) tag for images that are not described. It will also extract texts that are embedded within the image, using an OCR (optical character recognition) technology. To turn on screen-reader adjustments at any time, users need only to press the Alt+1 keyboard combination. Screen-reader users also get automatic announcements to turn the Screen-reader mode on as soon as they enter the website.
These adjustments are compatible with all popular screen readers, including JAWS and NVDA.
Keyboard navigation optimization: The background process also adjusts the website’s HTML, and adds various behaviors using JavaScript code to make the website operable by the keyboard. This includes the ability to navigate the website using the Tab and Shift+Tab keys, operate dropdowns with the arrow keys, close them with Esc, trigger buttons and links using the Enter key, navigate between radio and checkbox elements using the arrow keys, and fill them in with the Spacebar or Enter key.Additionally, keyboard users will find quick-navigation and content-skip menus, available at any time by clicking Alt+1, or as the first elements of the site while navigating with the keyboard. The background process also handles triggered popups by moving the keyboard focus towards them as soon as they appear, and not allow the focus drift outside it.
Users can also use shortcuts such as “M” (menus), “H” (headings), “F” (forms), “B” (buttons), and “G” (graphics) to jump to specific elements.
We aim to support the widest array of browsers and assistive technologies as possible, so our users can choose the best fitting tools for them, with as few limitations as possible. Therefore, we have worked very hard to be able to support all major systems that comprise over 95% of the user market share including Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari, Opera and Microsoft Edge, JAWS and NVDA (screen readers).
Despite our very best efforts to allow anybody to adjust the website to their needs. There may still be pages or sections that are not fully accessible, are in the process of becoming accessible, or are lacking an adequate technological solution to make them accessible. Still, we are continually improving our accessibility, adding, updating and improving its options and features, and developing and adopting new technologies. All this is meant to reach the optimal level of accessibility, following technological advancements. For any assistance, please reach out to