Hiring Of People Research Articles

Creating a virtuous spiral organization

AbstractOrganizations with outstanding people and outstanding management systems create a self‐reinforcing cycle of escalating performance—the virtuous spiral. Laying the groundwork for this win‐win condition requires the right management practices in seven key areas: defining the values of the workplace; hiring people who fit those values; making training and development ongoing; designing work as meaningful; delineating the strategies, goals, and values of the organizational mission; devising appropriate reward systems; and hiring and developing the right leadership under whom the organization can thrive.© 2006 Hewitt Associates LLC.

Able! How One Company's Disabled Workforce Became the Key to Extraordinary Success

Wurst NH. Dallas, TX 75206, Benbella Books, 2005, paperback, 199 pp, ISBN: 1-932100-44-X, $16.95. Able! is a thought-provoking book that chronicles a free-spirited entrepreneur's long journey through triumphs, pitfalls, initial and ongoing challenges, and various frustrating bureaucratic mazes associated with hiring people with a disability. It describes how Habitat International, a “company of positive distractions,” became a role model for corporations across the United States. Able! shares heartwarming individual success stories of workers who refused to be stereotyped, tackles real-life issues that surround hiring an individual with a disability, provides advice and concrete tips for entrepreneurs wanting to set up a hiring program for people with disabilities, and encourages readers to reflect on their own personal level of comfort, preconceived ideas, and stereotypical misconceptions about people with a disability. Able! is a “must-have” for any physical therapist who cares for people with disabilities, educators who want to expose students to the issues of cultural diversity and the various challenges that a person with a disability encounters, and administrators who want to improve corporate profitability. It should be required reading in every physical therapist professional education program, and it would be an excellent resource for social workers, human resource directors, and CEOs. …

A Study of Differential Employers' Attitude Towards Hiring People with Physical, Mental, and Sensory Disabilities in Restaurant Industry

ABSTRACT With a continued tight labor market and an increasing need for labor in restaurant industry, the time appears ripe for restaurant employers to pursue the untapped source of qualified workers-people with disabilities. The objectives of the study are (1) to determine if employers' attitude differs based on different disability types; (2) to discover the underlying dimensions of food service employers' attitude towards disabled employees and, (3) to examine the impact of restaurant employers' attitudes on their hiring practices. The survey population was restaurant employers who are members of Oklahoma Restaurant Association (ORA), and a simple random sampling approach was used to survey 500 ORA members. Repeated-measures one-way ANOVA, factor analysis, and multiple regression analysis were employed for data analysis. The study showed that employers held more positive attitude towards employees with sensory impairment and physical disability than towards those that are mentally disabled. It also revealed that employers' attitude towards physical and sensory disabled workers had a positive impact on the probability to hire the disabled people. The results also showed that prior positive working experiences with disabled people were related to favorable employers' attitudes.

The Paychex formula for talent: Hire attitude, teach skills

AbstractThe founder of Paychex built a high‐performing organization on an unconventional premise at the time: Hire people with the right “attitude” and then teach them the skills to do the job. But rapid growth in the 1990s showed Paychex that it needed a more systematic approach to reliably execute this philosophy throughout its geographically dispersed operations, especially at the important front line of customer service. The resulting solution—one that includes more sophisticated hiring practices, more extensive training and development, and multiple reinforcement mechanisms—still serves the company well today. © 2004 Paychex, Inc.

Weird ideas that work: an interview with Robert Sutton

In this interview Robert Sutton talks about some of the counterintuitive practices he believes spur innovation. He proposes that companies should adopt eleven practices. Hire slow learners (of the organizational code). Hire people who make you uncomfortable, even those you dislike. Hire people you probably do not need. Use job interviews to get ideas not just to screen candidates. Encourage people to ignore and defy superiors and peers. Find some happy people and get them to fight. Reward success and failure and punish inaction. Decide to do something that will probably fail, and then convince yourself and everyone else that success is certain. Think of some ridiculous or impractical things to do, and then plan to do them. Avoid, distract, and bore customers, critics and anyone else who just wants to talk about money. Do not try to learn anything from people who say they have solved the problems you face. Forget the past, especially your company’s successes. In sum, he believes that creative companies and teams are inefficient and annoying places to work.

Should a team be homogeneous?

Should an organization hire people with similar backgrounds or with different backgrounds? We formulate this question within the framework of team theory. The team is formed by n agents. The type of each agent is endogenous and determines his information structure and his cost for the team. We show that the sign of complementarity between jobs determines workforce homogeneity. With positive complementarities, the team should be composed of agents of the same type, while, with negative complementarities, workforce heterogeneity is optimal. These results do not rely on the restrictions on the way uncertainty is modeled or on the feasible set of agent types: they can be explained in terms of correlation between errors committed by different agents.

The Nature of Journalism Courses Devoted to Diversity

mass media have been dealing with their role in pluralistic since the 1968 Kerner Commission report criticized the news media for presenting information from white male perspective. Though the report focused on the portrayals of AfricanAmericans, the news media have also used it gauge their progress in their portrayals and hiring of people from other racial groups. Journalism educators actively began address this concern when the Accrediting Council on Education in Journalism and Mass Communications (ACEJMC) in 1982 required journalism programs make effective efforts recruit, advise, and retain minority students, staff, and women faculty members. Known as Standard 12, this requirement was expanded in 1992 include curriculum offering courses that prepares students to understand, cover, communicate with, and relate multicultural, multi-racial, and otherwise diverse society (Ruggles, 1993). This research will focus on the courses devoted entirely sensitizing or educating students about the media's relationship with groups that have experienced long-term discrimination and oppression; women, non-white racial groups, gays/lesbians, and the disabled. These are the types of courses that might be titled, Race and Gender and the Media, Race and the Media, Diversity in the Media, or Communication and Gender. This research seeks find out the nature of such courses: What are their objectives? What must students do earn grade? What are the in-class and/or out-of-class activities? This research also seeks find out the strengths and weaknesses of the courses and assess the extent which journalism programs are either offering such courses or integrating diversity issues into other journalism classes. For the purpose of consistency, and conciseness, the term minority will be used refer these oppressed groups, and the general term for these courses will be courses devoted diversity. Kerner Commission was not the first group evaluate the perfor- ''. mance of the press with respect its treatment of minorities. During the 1940s, the Hutchins Commission convened evaluate the roles and responsibilities of the press in free society. Though the Hutchins Commission did not specifically name minorities, one of its recommendations was for the media present a representative picture of the constituent groups in the society (Pease, 1993). As the population becomes increasingly non-white, it is essential far the professionals charged with presenting society's realities fully understand the diverse perspectives and concerns of people different from themselves. Furthermore, as minorities continue assert themselves economically, as well as politically, the ability connect with these groups becomes essential for the survival of mass communication businesses. Thus, it is hoped that journalism educators use the information from this research not only strengthen their existing courses in diversity, but also develop curricula that will prepare students for the challenges and opportunities of pluralistic society. Literature review Most of the literature came from articles published in Journalism Educator from 1968, the year of the Kerner report, 1997. relevant literature included articles on how journalism educators taught classes devoted entirely diversity, on how the issue of diversity was incorporated in other Journalism classes, as well as on how journalism programs were incorporating diversity issues into their curriculum. Early courses tended focus on the media targeted for particular racial group. Levy's (1970) class titled The Black American and Mass Media, compared the news coverage and overall characteristics (layout, sports, advertising, etc.) between mainstream and African-American newspapers. Polk's (1974) class familiarized students with nonmainstream publications such as those targeted for ethnic and religious groups, Native Americans, and labor unions. …

The Cost of Caring

Caring work involves providing a face-to-face service to recipients in jobs such as child care, teaching, therapy, and nursing. Such jobs offer low pay relative to their requirements for education and skill. What explains the penalty for doing caring work? Because caring labor is associated with women, cultural sexism militates against recognizing the value of the work. Also, the intrinsic reward people receive from helping others may allow employers to fill the jobs for lower pay. Caring labor creates public goods--widespread benefits that accrue even to those who pay nothing. For example, if children learn skills and discipline from teachers, the children's future employers benefit, with no market mechanism to make the pay given to care workers reflect these benefits. Even when the public or not-for-profit sectors do step in to hire people to provide such services for those too poor to pay, the pay is limited by how much decision makers really care about the poor. Finally, the fact that people feel queasy about putting a price on something as sacred as care limits the pay offered--as paradoxical as it is to pay less for something when it is seen as infinitely valuable!

Trends in the Hiring of People with Visual Impairments

Trends in the Hiring of People with Visual Impairments

Future Imperfect and Tense

Recruiting, training, and retaining new scientists in contributory roles in our society has been at the top of the agenda of issues discussed by Science 's editor-in-chief for the past 2 years. Our main avenue of communication with those entering scientific careers is Science 's Next Wave ( SNW , now at the URL http://www.nextwave.org/ ). Since its inception in October 1995 [see Science 270 , 11 (1995) ], this online-only publication has concentrated on discussing the concerns of young scientists and helping increase their awareness about the choices they have in developing and changing their career trajectory. Under the leadership of Editor John Benditt, now assisted by Associate Editors Nicole Ruediger and Wendy Yee, SNW has recently done a major redesign of its site and added three new features. “Tooling Up” is a monthly interactive column (edited by Peter Fiske) that focuses on the nuts-and-bolts aspects of science job-hunting (such as how to write a winning résumé). “Signposts” is a new department that will lead browsers to other career-related information on the Web, including staff reviews of Web sites deemed to be especially worthy of your clicks. “In the Loop” contains revamped and expanded coverage of career- and training-related news items generated by the worldwide network of SNW 's young scientist correspondents. In addition, SNW has continued to offer online discussion forums. The latest of these, “Balancing Career and Family,” will likely prove to be as popular as its seven predecessor forums, all of which can still be accessed at the Web site. SNW has already logged in several thousand registrants for its totally free online features since mandatory (but brief) registration began in 1997. Your willingness to complete this short registration form will help us to know better who our readers are and what concerns and hopes top their lists. Science and SNW have received the full support of the AAAS board of directors, who have their own concerns about the ferment and unrest they sense among young scientists and among senior colleagues who are concerned for their welfare and for the future health of U.S. research [see A. G. Kraut, Science 273, 1027 (1996) ]. Several months ago, the board created a AAAS Task Force on Careers for Young Scientists to develop recommendations for specific actions that could further address the concerns of young doctoral scientists preparing for uncertain careers. That report (available online at http://www.nextwave.org/server-java/SAM/task.htm ; free registration required for access) reaffirms the board's support for SNW and advocates, among other suggestions, the creation of a new AAAS unit dealing with young scientists' transition from training to the workplace. With all this effort, are there any indications that progress has been made in meeting young scientists' concerns? Recent events suggest that we have a long way to go. A guest editorial in Current Biology [ 6 , 1539 (1996)] describes how students at the University of California-San Francisco, dissatisfied with what they saw as one-dimensional training (that is, training aimed at research projects only), organized their faculty to create a “Practice of Science” course to deal with the other aspects of becoming a successful research professional (such as how to write proposals, hire people, and abide by budgets). In November 1996, significant numbers of young scientists in training at three University of California campuses, recent recruits to the United Auto Workers union, went on strike to pressure the university to deal with their demands (for pay equity, benefits, workload reduction, and grievance procedures) through the union. According to The Scientist [ 11 (no. 1), 1 (1997)], the strike took place amid a national surge in union activism among graduate student employees. Also in November 1996, at the annual meeting of a major national scientific society, this editor experienced firsthand the intense frustration of people who have been trained but face the prospects of the unemployed and unfunded. They were unable to share in the excitement of discovery that flourished around them and wondered whether they had been misused by those with whom they trained; they were en route to being not only disgruntled but disenfranchised. Clearly, our efforts here must continue in full force. As Mark Twain said, “There is no sadder sight than a young pessimist.”

Horticulture Hiring People with Disabilities

Since 1982, the American Horticultural Therapy Assn. (AHTA) has devoted a significant portion of its organizational energies to promoting the employment of people with disabilities in the horticultural industry. Since then, the AHTA has administered five federal grants, resulting in the employment of 2269 people with disabilities. This paper summarizes the data generated through these activities and presents program findings.