Full-time Workforce Research Articles

Association Between Workplace Absenteeism and Alcohol Use Disorder From the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, 2015-2019

Alcohol use disorder (AUD) is common and associated with increased morbidity. The degree to which AUD currently factors into workplace absenteeism needs further characterization in the US. To examine the association between AUD and workplace absenteeism in a nationally representative sample. This cross-sectional study used data from a nationally representative sample of noninstitutionalized US residents from the 2015-2019 National Survey on Drug Use and Health to examine the association of AUD with workplace absenteeism. Eligible respondents were aged 18 years and older who reported full-time employment. Data were analyzed from March to September 2021. Primary outcomes were markers of workplace absenteeism as defined by the number of days missed from work because of illness or injury and days skipped from work in the last 30 days. Descriptive statistics, prevalence ratios, and logistic regression analyses were performed to assess the association between AUD and absenteeism. A total of 110 701 adults aged 18 years and older reported current full-time employment (58 948 [53.2%] men, 51 753 [46.8%] women; 12 776 [11.5%] Black, 18 096 [16.3%] Hispanic, and 69 506 [62.8%] White respondents). Weighted prevalence of AUD in this sample of working adults was 9.3% (95% CI, 9.0%-9.5%); 6.2% (95% CI, 6.0%-6.4%) of respondents met criteria for mild AUD, 1.9% (95% CI, 1.7%-2.0%) for moderate AUD, and 1.2% (95% CI, 1.1%-1.3%) for severe AUD. Mean days missed from work annually increased in a stepwise fashion with increasing AUD severity (no AUD, 13.0 days; 95% CI, 12.7-13.2 days; mild AUD, 17.7 days; 95% CI, 16.4-19.1 days; moderate AUD, 23.6 days; 95% CI, 21.5-25.7 days; severe AUD, 32.3 days; 95% CI, 27.5-37.0 days). People with AUD represented 9.3% of the full-time workforce and contributed to 14.1% of total reported workplace absences. In this cross-sectional study, AUD was disproportionately associated with an increased prevalence of workplace absenteeism, with individuals with AUD contributing over 232 million missed workdays annually. These results provide economic incentive for increased investment in AUD prevention and treatment, both for employers and policy makers.

Incentivizing Full-time Employment for New Graduate Nurses in Ontario: Impact of Policy on Care

There is consensus that a professional full-time nursing workforce leads to better patient outcomes and a safer health care environment. In 2007, the Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care introduced the Nursing Graduate Guarantee (NGG), a policy mechanism designed to strengthen the nursing workforce by increasing full-time (FT) employment for newly graduated nurses. Several factors have affected the supply and employment status of nurses in the province over the past two decades, including the introduction of unregulated health care workers and crises such as SARS and COVID-19. A secondary analysis of the College of Nurses of Ontario registration database was conducted to identify and evaluate trends in the supply and employment of nurses in Ontario prior to and following introduction of the NGG. The results demonstrate that full-time employment of new registered nurses and new registered practical nurses initially increased but has since fallen to below pre-policy levels. Part-time work among newly graduated nurses is increasing across all sectors, signaling a diminishing effect of the NGG investments over time. Investments in health human resources have a stabilizing effect on the nursing workforce. Ensuring an adequate number of nurses is necessary for crisis preparation, management and recovery, particularly in sectors with low surge capacity such as long-term care. However, sustained financial, political, public, and professional support is required.

Freelancing in Croatia: Differences among Regions, Company Sizes, Industries and Markets

Abstract Background: Freelancers have a significant impact on economic growth due to their specific skills that are nowadays often used as complements to the regular full-time workforce of a company, not as their competition. Objectives: The study aims to investigate employers’ attitudes towards the employment of freelancers in Croatia, taking into account the place of establishment, the operational market, the size, and the industry of the organization hiring freelancers. Methods/Approach: Differences among organizations according to their attitudes towards freelancers are analyzed by multiple 2xc Fisher’s exact tests with the Monte Carlo Simulation, and binomial logistic regression analysis. Results: Significant differences are found in terms of the operational market and the industry in which the company operates. Besides, the binomial logistic regression analysis identified the following independent constructs as significant predictors of hiring freelancers: the region of the company’s seat, company size, and area of operation. Conclusions: The national legislation should complement the developmental policies to encourage employment and especially self-employment of freelancers.

Negotiating the workplace: second-generation Asian American professionals’ early experiences

ABSTRACT Research on Asian American educational attainment suggests that a combination of immigrant hyper-selectivity and ethnic capital enables second-generation Asian Americans to succeed according to a narrowly-defined success frame. However, recent quantitative work suggests that ethnoracialized advantages within the educational system do not translate into advantages in the workplace. This study therefore examines second-generation Asian Americans’ experiences as they seek work in the labour market. I draw from 30 semi-structured qualitative interviews with 1.5- and second-generation Asian Americans in the New York City area, all of whom had entered the full-time workforce within the previous ten years. I find that these recent labour market entrants faced three major constraints and enacted several strategies in response. Family and community networks no longer provided the same ethnoracialized resources and network ties that might enable educational success; in response, workers mobilised institutional resources and peer networks. Once in the workplace, respondents experienced racialized microaggressions; in response, they minimised the role of race. Finally, they encountered negative stereotyping; in response, they worked to distance themselves from such stereotypes. Overall, these findings shed light on how ethnoracialized processes impact the presumed link between educational and occupational success.

GidaExpress: Grocery Delivery in Turkey

This fictional, international case explores online delivery models through the voices of two female protagonists: Melis Aydin, COO, who is from Turkey; and Athena Galini, CEO, who is from Greece. They have recently begun an online grocery-delivery (OGD) service called GidaExpress (i.e., Express Food) by closing on a TRY300,000 low-interest loan and entering a start-up incubator in Istanbul, Turkey. Aydin and Galani are evaluating three models for hiring drivers—all full-time employees who can be trained (and perhaps provide more consistent and higher-quality customer service); all independent workers who are paid a wage rate that escalates in order to meet demand; or a hybrid of the two. This story allows for a discussion of the strategic trade-offs between investing in a full-time workforce and sourcing independent workers of unknown quality using a fluctuating wage rate, and how these decisions impact the ability of the business to deliver on the value proposition. Excerpt UVA-OM-1635 Dec. 3, 2019 GidaExpress: Grocery Delivery in Turkey You Can't Spend It Twice Melis Aydin, COO, and Athena Galini, CEO, sat together in their new conference room in a start-up incubator in Istanbul, Turkey. The two women had just finalized a TRY300,000 low-interest loan through a program offered in a partnership between the Turkish government and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) to start their new business, GidaExpress. GidaExpress, roughly translated as express food, would be an online grocery-delivery (OGD) service. The business model for GidaExpress was similar to that of US-based InstaCart, in which users placed orders online, available drivers who were also professional shoppers accepted the orders, and then those same drivers performed the shopping and delivered groceries to the customers. Several years prior, Yemeksepeti, a Turkish food-delivery service, had been acquired by Delivery Hero for USD589million, and GidaExpress's founders were enthusiastically hoping to duplicate this success in the OGD market. Aydin, who was from Turkey, and Galani, who was from Greece, had met while studying accounting at the London School of Economics. Aydin had then gone on to earn her MBA at the Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia, while Galani had earned hers at the University College Dublin School of Business. They planned to purchase a basic but functional software platform from another former classmate to meet their needs, but also would require some additional investment to modify for the Turkish market. The friends were now building their first venture together on a sweat-equity basis, and had recently experienced the first serious disagreement of their partnership. They had only TRY150,000 budgeted for payments to drivers, and, while both of them wanted to stretch these funds as far as possible, they had very different ideas on how to accomplish this. (See Table 1 for the initial company budget.) Once that money was spent, if their fledgling venture wasn't pulling in enough money to support their other business functions, they would run out of money. . . .

Gender Equality in Work and COVID-19 Deaths

On average, women comprise a smaller share of deaths from COVID-19. Variation in the share of COVID-19 deaths for women across countries and US States suggests that biological factors cannot fully account for this gender difference. I hypothesize that women’s participation in the workforce is related to women’s share of COVID-19 deaths. I show that the percent of the full-time workforce comprised by women is positively related to the percent of female Covid-19 deaths across countries. I also show that the percent of the full-time workforce comprised by women is positively related to the incidence of various diseases associated with a more severe impact of COVID-19 and the percent of medical doctors and nurses who are women. My results suggest that in countries where women participate more fully in the workforce, women may be more susceptible to COVID-19 due to increased exposure to the virus and a higher risk of developing comorbidities. Future research should be careful to consider social factors when examining gender differences in health outcomes.

Hypertension management in rural western Kenya: a needs-based health workforce estimation model

BackgroundElevated blood pressure is the leading risk for mortality in the world. Task redistribution has been shown to be efficacious for hypertension management in low- and middle-income countries. However, the workforce requirements for such a task redistribution strategy are largely unknown. Therefore, we developed a needs-based workforce estimation model for hypertension management in western Kenya, using need and capacity as inputs.MethodsKey informant interviews, focus group discussions, a Delphi exercise, and time-motion studies were conducted among administrative leadership, clinicians, patients, community leaders, and experts in hypertension management. These results were triangulated to generate the best estimates for the inputs into the health workforce model. The local hypertension clinical protocol was used to derive a schedule of encounters with different levels of clinician and health facility staff. A Microsoft Excel-based spreadsheet was developed to enter the inputs and generate the full-time equivalent workforce requirement estimates over 3 years.ResultsTwo different scenarios were modeled: (1) “ramp-up” (increasing growth of patients each year) and (2) “steady state” (constant rate of patient enrollment each month). The ramp-up scenario estimated cumulative enrollment of 7000 patients by year 3, and an average clinical encounter time of 8.9 min, yielding nurse full-time equivalent requirements of 4.8, 13.5, and 30.2 in years 1, 2, and 3, respectively. In contrast, the steady-state scenario assumed a constant monthly enrollment of 100 patients and yielded nurse full-time equivalent requirements of 5.8, 10.5, and 14.3 over the same time period.ConclusionsA needs-based workforce estimation model yielded health worker full-time equivalent estimates required for hypertension management in western Kenya. The model is able to provide workforce projections that are useful for program planning, human resource allocation, and policy formulation. This approach can serve as a benchmark for chronic disease management programs in low-resource settings worldwide.

Inter-Generational Transmission and the 21st Century Rise in Skilled Mothers' Labor Supply

By most measures, gender progress in the U.S. labor market has stagnated since the 1990s. Yet, this paper reveals that skilled U.S. mothers' full-time employment rate rose by 12 percentage points between 1999 and 2016. After ruling out several standard explanations for such a change, I hypothesize that the surge of skilled mothers entering the full-time workforce in the previous generation has induced a recent shift in household gender norms. I develop a model in which a new mother's ex ante valuation of the disutility of pursuing a career is conditioned by her own mother's prior career behavior, and find empirical support for the model in two-generation datasets constructed from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics. An accounting exercise attributes roughly 30 percent of the recent change to the model's inter-generational mechanism. Shifting norms appear to be promoting gender equality in household labor supply in the 21st century.

Job sharing as a tool for flexible work systems

PurposeWomen experience insurmountable work life balance challenges, which are the reasons a large percentage of women leak out of the workforce pipeline. Flexible work systems empower women to contribute in meaningful ways to their personal and professional lives. Job sharing is one such strategy of flexible work system, which is proposed as an empowering management practice. This paper aims to create a model of empowerment for housewives. Non-working housewives are the most neglected lot of society in terms of getting their dues.Design/methodology/approachFor the purpose of this study, qualitative study was conducted and data were analyzed using thematic content analysis. Focus group discussions with 266 housewives were conducted to find out their reasons of not joining the full-time workforce, and their willingness to contribute, if they have any. In-depth interviews of nine HR managers were also conducted to assess the openness of the corporate side toward job sharing as a work design. The paper has significance for the corporate as well as for the social and government agencies.FindingsQualitative data collected from 266 housewives presented three core themes – the bottlenecks to employment, the available opportunities of employment and growth and their preferred status of employment. The qualitative data further revealed that though they can easily do with some more money at their disposal, they cannot join in the full-time workforce as they have family responsibilities. They were willing to put in half a day’s work. Thus, the investigators recommended job sharing for them, which would engage this talented human resource and give them back their due for selflessly giving in their most productive years to their families. The interviews of nine HR managers from three multinational companies revealed the skillsets of these housewives as the major concern for putting them back on work.Originality/valueThe paper has significance for the corporate, women as the contingent workforce and social and government agencies.

The gender wage gap and sample selection in Japan

This paper examines how much the observed convergence in the gender wage gap in Japan from 1992 to 2002 is affected by changes in female labor participation behavior. The existing literature focuses on full-time workers, but the replacement of low-paid regular full-time workers by non-regular workers and the introduction of the Equal Employment Opportunity Law may have changed the selection of females in full-time work force. I consider a three-choice framework for a woman based on the Roy model: a woman chooses either no work, non-regular work, or regular work. This framework shows that large (potential) wage inequality within a gender can draw high-earning people into the workforce and push low-earning people out. I apply Lee’s (1983) method to the microdata from the Employment Social Surveys 1992 and 2002. The results show that female selection in regular workers became stricter in 2002 and women with low-earning ability tended to be pushed out from regular work force. The wage structure for female regular workers has become more ability based. This change in the female selection explains 63.27% of the observed convergence in the mean log wage gap between female regular workers and male workers.

Challenges Experienced By One Academic Mother Transitioning From Maternity Leave Back to Academia

While many scholars have written about the experience of academic motherhood in higher education, with their research revealing a number of challenges faced by academic mothers, none have presented an in-depth view of the transition of returning to work after maternity leave. For this reason, the authors used a narrative inquiry approach to analyze and interpret the first author’s thoughts, feelings, and experiences as she transitioned from maternity leave to full-time academic work as a tenured, associate professor of education at a research university. During that transition, she faced challenges related to the prioritization and fulfillment of her academic work as well as those associated with childcare and household responsibilities. The authors provide suggestions for new, or soon-to-be-new, academic mothers and recommendations for higher education personnel to support new academic mothers who are transitioning to the full-time workforce.

Nursing casualization and communication: a critical ethnography.

The aim was to explore the relationship between nursing casualization and the culture of communication for nurses in a healthcare facility. Casualization, or non-standard work, is the use of temporary, contract, part-time and casual labour. An increase in casual labour has been part of a global shift in work organization aimed at creating a more flexible and cheaper workforce. It has been argued that flexibility of labour has enabled nurses to manage both non-work related needs and an increasingly complex work environment. Yet no research has explored casualization and how it impacts on the communication culture for nurses in a healthcare facility. Critical ethnography. Methods included observation, field notes, formal interviews and focus groups. Data collection was undertaken over the 2years 2008-2009. The concepts of knowing and belonging were perceived as important to nursing teamwork and yet the traditional time/task work model, designed for a full-time workforce, marginalized non-standard workers. The combination of medical dominance and traditional stereotyping of the nurse and work as full-time shaped the behaviours of nurses and situated casual workers on the periphery. The overall finding was that entrenched systemic structures and processes shaped the physical and cultural dimensions of a contemporary work environment and contributed to an ineffective communication culture. Flexible work is an important feature of contemporary nursing. Traditional work models and nurse attitudes and practices have not progressed and are discordant with a contemporary approach to nursing labour management.

Human Development and Macroeconomic Returns within the Context of Investments in Telecoms: An Exploration of Transition Economies

Previous investigations into macroeconomic impact of investments in information and communications technology (ICT), while primarily focused on developed economies, have yielded some important insights. For example, it was determined that: (1) the investments-to-revenues model works well only if a threshold level of ICT capital infrastructure has been developed, (2) it is not the quantity but the quality of the full-time ICT workforce that plays an important role in converting a stream of investments in ICT into revenues and in achieving a spillover effect of investments that is captured by total factor productivity (TFP). In this study we investigate the impact of human development, as measured by the human development index (HDI), on macroeconomic outcomes and TFP. The subject of the study is a group of transition economies, a set of highly related economies that has the Leaders group that has some of the characteristics of developed economies and the Followers group that has some of the characteristics of less-developed economies. Results of our investigation offer evidence that HDI has a statistically significant impact on GDP (gross domestic product) and TFP only in the case of the Leaders.

Lessons learned from a part-time worker typology applied to full-timers

Purpose– Research on work status differences has yielded inconsistent results and is not relevant for today's workforce, economic circumstances, or the changing nature of work. Inconsistencies may be due to substantial heterogeneity, rather than homogeneity, within each group (part-time (PT) and full-time (FT)). Thus, researchers created a PT worker typology based on demographics and personal life roles. Systematic differences in attitudes and behaviors across derived groups of PT workers were found. The purpose of the current study is to test the applicability of this PT worker typology on FT workers and to extend the typology's foundational theory, partial inclusion theory (PIT).Design/methodology/approach– The current study employs cluster analysis on three diverse samples (n=3,747) to establish a basis for the generalizability of the FT typology.Findings– Strong support was found for a similar, but distinct, FT employee typology. Attitudinal and behavioral differences were also found among the various FT groups which were similar to the differences found among the PT groups.Research limitations/implications– The current study has implications both for the application of PIT as well management and human resources. Targeted wellness and retention programs can be designed for various groups of FT employees, including scheduling flexibility and benefit plans.Originality/value– This is one of the first studies to examine the heterogeneity of the FT workforce, understanding that FT workers also have substantial life roles outside of work that likely affect their involvement and attitudes at work.

Validation of a questionnaire to screen for shift work disorder.

At least 15% of the full-time work force is shift workers. Working during the overnight hours, early morning start times, and variable or rotating schedules present a challenge to the circadian system, and these shifts are associated with adverse health and safety consequences. Shift work disorder (SWD), a primary (circadian rhythm) sleep disorder indicated by excessive daytime sleepiness and/or insomnia associated with a shiftwork schedule, is under-recognized by primary care physicians. We sought to develop and validate a questionnaire to screen for high risk of SWD in a shift working population. Shift workers completed a 26-item questionnaire and were evaluated by a sleep specialist (physician) who diagnosed them as either positive or negative for SWD. The physician assessment of SWD was guided by a flow chart that operationalized the ICSD-2 criteria for SWD. 18 sleep clinics in the USA. 311 shift workers. Not applicable. Responses to the items in the questionnaire were entered into a series of discrimination function analyses to determine the diagnostic value of the items and the fewest number of questions with the best predictive value. The function was then cross-validated. A final 4-item questionnaire has 89% positive predictive value and 62% negative predictive value (sensitivity = 0.74; specificity = 0.82). This Shiftwork Disorder Screening Questionnaire may be appropriate for use in primary care settings to aid in the diagnosis of SWD.

Part‐time general surgical training in South Australia: its success and future implications (or: pinnacles, pitfalls and lessons for the future)

Flexible training options are sought by an increasing number of Australasian surgical trainees. Reasons include increased participation of women in the surgical workforce, postgraduate training and changing attitudes to family responsibilities. Despite endorsement of flexible training by the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons and Board in General Surgery, part-time (PT) training in General Surgery in Australia and New Zealand is not well established. A permanent 'stand-alone' PT training position was established at the Royal Adelaide Hospital in 2007 under the Surgical Education and Training Program. This position offered 12 months of General Surgical training on a 0.5 full-time (FT) equivalent basis with pro rata emergency and on-call commitments and was accredited for 6 months of General Surgical training. This paper reviews the PT training experience in South Australia. De-identified logbook data were obtained from the South Australian Regional Subcommittee of the Board in General Surgery with consent of each of the trainees. Totals of operative cases were compared against matched FT trainees working on the same unit. Overall, PT trainees achieved comparable operative caseloads compared with their FT colleagues. All trainees included in this review have subsequently passed the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons Fellowship Examination in General Surgery and returned to FT workforce positions. This paper presents two validated models of PT training. Training, resource and regulatory requirements and individual and institutional barriers to flexible training are substantial. Successful PT models offer positive and beneficial training alternatives for General Surgical trainees and contribute to workforce flexibility.

Investigating factors associated with the spillover effect of investments in telecoms: Do some transition economies pay too much for too little?

One of the routes by which investments in information and communication technologies (ICT) could impact a macroeconomic bottom line of economies is by contributing to total factor productivity (TFP), an important component of economic growth. While the more traditional “investments to revenues” resource-intensive path has been well researched, the nature of the indirect “investments to TFP” link remains much less clear. Specifically, it is not well understood what conditions must be present for economies to exhibit the relationship between investments and TFP. In the current study, conducted in the context of 18 transition economies in Europe and the former Soviet Union, we aim to identify some of the factors associated with the presence of the relationship between the subset of investments in ICT, investments in telecoms, and two components of TFP – change in efficiency and change in technology. The results of the analysis of the data set spanning from 1993 to 2002 suggest that while the presence of the link between investments and change in technology was associated with the level of investments, the presence of the relationship between investments and change in efficiency was associated with the quality of a full-time telecom workforce. The consequent analysis of the data set spanning from 2003 to 2008 supports this finding and also provides evidence of the importance of the macroeconomic strategies that balance an increase in the levels of investments with the increase in the levels of efficiency of utilization of investments and the generation of revenues.

The impact of bullying on health care administration staff

Investigations of workplace bullying in health care settings have tended to focus on nurses or other clinical staff. However, the organizational and power structures enabling bullying in health care are present for all employees, including administrative staff. : The purpose of this study was to specifically focus on health care administration staff and examine the prevalence and consequences of workplace bullying in this occupational group. A cross-sectional study was conducted based on questionnaire data from health care administration staff who work across facilities within a medium to large health care organization in Australia. The questionnaire included measures of bullying, negative affectivity (NA), job satisfaction, organizational commitment, well-being, and psychological distress. The three hypotheses of the study were that (a) workplace bullying will be linked to negative employee outcomes, (b) individual differences on demographic factors will have an impact on these outcomes, and (c) individual differences in NA will be a significant covariate in the analyses. The hypotheses were tested using t tests and analyses of covariances. A total of 150 health care administration staff completed the questionnaire (76% response rate). Significant main effects were found for workplace bullying, with lower organizational commitment and well-being with the effect on commitment remaining over and above NA. Main effects were found for age on job satisfaction and for employment type on psychological distress. A significant interaction between bullying and employment type for psychological distress was also observed. Negative affectivity was a significant covariate for all analyses of covariance. The applications of these results include the need to consider the occupations receiving attention in health care to include administration employees, that bullying is present across health care occupations, and that some employees, particularly part-time staff, may need to be managed slightly differently to the full-time workforce.

Hospital pharmacists’ job stability improves, survey finds

New research suggests that the full-time pharmacist work force in hospitals has grown more stable and its members now spend about one fourth of the workweek providing patient care services. According to a report released March 1 by Pharmacy Manpower Project Inc., 12.9% of full-time hospital pharmacists in 2009 had worked less than three years for their current employer—down from 21% in 2004 and 26% in 2000. Full-time hospital pharmacists who participated in the 2009 work-force survey had been working an average of 13.4 years for their current employer. The average length of employment for this segment of survey participants had been 9.9 years in 2004 and 9.2 years in 2000. As a whole, 16.4% of full-time practicing pharmacists in 2009 had not yet reached a third anniversary with their current employer. Supermarkets and chains were the only practice settings in which pharmacists had better job stability than in hospitals at the three-year mark. Only pharmacists in the independent practice setting had worked for their current employer, on average, longer than hospital pharmacists.

The Dynamics of Teleworking: Case Studies of Women Medical Transcriptionists from Bangalore, India

Although teleworking promises full-time workforce participation within the protective sanctuary of the home, issues relating to work-life balance, identity, career, collectivization, control, trust and commitment remain to be answered. Through the adoption of a multiple case study design and within-case and cross-case analyses, the present work is aimed at generating propositions that could provide insights into the complexities of teleworking. The fi ndings highlighted that although teleworking provides some fl exibility, how time and roles are managed depends on the ages of children, the availability and perceived trustworthiness of support, the family constellation and the number of activities the family member is involved in, against the backdrop of organizational expectations of work output. The attempt to strike a balance between work and family could leave the participants with a sense of strain, offset by gains in terms of reassurance about family well-being and of fulfi lment of teleworkers’ needs and desires to work. Employer controls to ensure quality and quantity of output add to the pressure, while simultaneously facilitating the transition from offi ce-based to homebased work through the provision of direction and focus. Teleworking is considered to be a means of alternatively defi ning one’s career either in terms of a professional orientation, fi nding equilibrium between one’s personal and professional life, or of getting free. At the same time, the absence of traditional organizational referents and of physical proximity did not impede employee collectivization and redressal, even though spatial distribution of colleagues created isolation and loneliness.