Quality inspection is a crucial step in ensuring product conformity and avoiding rework waste, while job priority constraints are prevalent in the production of complex products with assembly structures. This paper presents a modeling and solution framework for the multi-objective flexible job shop scheduling problem that incorporates both quality inspection activities and job priority constraints. An optimization model is constructed with the objectives of minimizing the makespan, minimizing the total energy consumption, and maximizing the processing quality. To solve this model, an improved multi-objective evolutionary algorithm based on decomposition is developed, which integrates several well-established mechanisms into a unified framework. The algorithm integrates multi-product assembly structures via virtual nodes, employs a two-vector encoding scheme, and incorporates a product—group repair mechanism based on binary sorting tree to handle job priority constraints. To maintain diversity among non-dominated solutions, a niching-based elite archive strategy is adopted. Furthermore, a quality enhancement strategy and a memory vector-based local search mechanism are embedded to strengthen the algorithm’s search capability. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm outperforms the compared algorithms in terms of both convergence and diversity.

Nurses’ Readiness for Digitalization in Relation to Job Quality and Social Dialogue

Especially since the COVID-19 pandemic, working from home (WFH) has become a common practice in the workplace. This raises the question of whether WFH changes the non-monetary benefits of work, such as job quality or social contacts. Thus, in this article, we investigate how working from home affects Jahoda's latent functions of employment as well as job quality measures. To this end, we use panel data from the German Panel Study Labour Market and Social Security (PASS) and estimate the effects of changing work patterns on the aforementioned outcomes. Our findings reveal basically no effects of WFH on job quality measures and latent benefits. This, in contrast to anecdotal evidence, implies that WFH does not harm psychological well-being.

ABSTRACT This study examines the work implications of “degrowth” as an alternative to the mainstream green economy or sustainable development approach. Rather than seeking to reconcile economic growth with ecological limits, degrowth calls for a fundamental socio-economic transformation that prioritizes ecological balance, social justice, and a redefinition of work. The paper examines the implications of this approach across five key dimensions: sectoral reorganization, financial mechanisms, job quality, work time, and specific target groups affected by the transition. By focusing on these domains, the article critically assesses how degrowth envisions a post-growth working environment, in contrast to market-driven green reforms. It argues that degrowth’s vision entails not only ecological downsizing, but also a shift in the normative and institutional foundations of work life.

The article analyzed the challenges faced by employees and employers involved in the process of workforce digitalization. The challenges arising from workforce digitalization, job task transformations, the complexity of professional skills and the quality of jobs were highlighted. The issues related to how workforce digitalization has affected the business environment, in terms of planning, management, coordination and control of work within the economic entity were addressed.

IntroductionProfessionalizing the long-term care workforce, defined as improving the quality of care jobs, has been proposed as part of a solution to workforce challenges in long-term care. However, professionalization is argued to be in tension with personalization, a policy at the center of English long-term care. This article explores tensions and complementarities between the two policies through a workforce lens.MethodsWe conducted qualitative group (n = 2) and one-to-one interviews (n = 7) with long-term care stakeholders (n = 25) representing a wide range of organizations in England. We have adopted the method of thematic analysis to explore stakeholders' views on the relationship between the professionalization of the hands-on care workforce and the personalization of care and support services.ResultsWe have identified three points of intersection between professionalization and personalization in stakeholders' narratives: care workers' autonomy, training and registration. Autonomy is defined here as care workers' discretion to make practical decisions in a care situation without the immediate approval of a manager or care professional. We have found that narratives reflected a complex relationship between the two policies. Stakeholders viewed care workers' autonomy and training as directly supporting the goals of personalization but they perceived personal assistants' formal training and registration as being in tension with personalization.DiscussionCare workers' practical autonomy emerged from our analysis of stakeholder narratives as a key aspect of improving care jobs (professionalization). This supports research findings that a higher degree of autonomy improves job satisfaction and it is a source of dignity in an undervalued occupation. Yet, autonomy is not explicitly included in definitions of professionalization in the context of English long-term care. This article contributes to the literature by conceptualizing care workers' autonomy as a dimension of professionalization, along with pay, terms and conditions of employment, training and registration. Secondly, the results contribute to the literature and to policy debates about the relationship between professionalization and personalization, two mechanisms of reforming long-term care systems globally. Our results demonstrate that there is a complex relationship between the two policy areas, characterized by synergies and tensions.

Job Quality, Search, and Optimal Unemployment Contracts

To conduct an in-depth concept analysis of exnovation, exploring its significance, conceptual mechanisms and impacts in administration, business and healthcare, particularly emphasising its relevance to nursing. Exnovation is applicable in diverse fields, including information technology, manufacturing, business, education and cultural contexts; however, its utilisation in nursing and healthcare is limited and not widely adopted. The literature for this concept analysis was retrieved from two databases, PubMed and Scopus. A systematic search approach was employed across studies from business, administration and health care, specifically without restriction based on the year of publication. The article utilised Walker and Avant's 8-step approach to concept analysis, which entailed identifying the applications of the concept in various settings, its fundamental conceptual characteristics and developing model, borderline, related and contradictory instances. Additionally, the antecedents, consequences and empirical references of exnovation in nursing were established. The analysis revealed both onomasiological approaches to elucidate the evolution of innovation terminology and a semasiological approach to explain the concept across various contexts. Moreover, it identified antecedents to innovation in nursing, such as technological advancements and the adoption of evidence-based practices (EBPs), while also delineating consequences primarily focused on enhancing quality patient care and job satisfaction. As exnovation emerges as a novel concept in nursing and medical practice, further research is warranted to tackle the recognised limitations and formulate practical guidelines for effectively integrating exnovation within nursing and healthcare settings.

The Effect of Job Quality on Health of Older Workers in Europe

Substantial scholarship has estimated the susceptibility of jobs to automation, but little has examined how job contents evolve in the information age as new technologies substitute for tasks, shifting required skills rather than eliminating entire jobs. Here we explore patterns of occupational skill change and characterize occupations and workers subject to the greatest re-skilling requirements in the United States. Recent work found that changing skill requirements are greatest for STEM occupations in the 2010s. Nevertheless, analyzing 167 million online job posts covering 721 occupations, we find that when accounting for distance between skills, skill change is greater for lower-skilled occupations: those with fewer skills, lower wages, and less educational requirements. We further investigate the differences in skill change across employer and market size, as well as social demographic groups. We find that jobs from small employers and markets experienced larger skill upgrades to catch up with the skill demands of their large employers and markets. While these varied skill changes could create uneven reskilling pressures across workers, they may also lead to a narrowing of gaps in job quality and prospects. We conclude by showcasing our model’s potential to chart job evolution directions using skill embedding spaces.

Brain fog was first described in the 1850s as a form of mental fatigue, particularly observed among individuals engaged in occupations requiring intensive cognitive effort. The present study aims to examine the occurrence of brain fog among healthcare professionals—who are required to perform multiple tasks simultaneously and make critical decisions—and to identify contributing factors through a review of the current literature. Accordingly, a traditional literature review was conducted by retrieving articles published between 2019 and 2025 from the PubMed database using the keywords “brain fog”, “cognitive impairment” and “mental fatigue”. Brain fog is characterized by forgetfulness, difficulty concentrating, impaired multitasking ability, and diminished cognitive functioning. Healthcare professionals constitute one of the occupational groups most frequently exposed to brain fog. Physicians, nurses, and other healthcare personnel are subjected to various stressors and adverse working conditions that may precipitate brain fog, including time pressure, uncertainty in patient treatment and care processes, extended working hours and insufficient nutrition. Given that healthcare professionals are responsible for improving and maintaining individual health and quality of life, the experience of brain fog within this group poses risks to patient safety due to the cognitive symptoms it entails. Examining brain fog and its associated factors among healthcare professionals is essential for implementing preventive strategies, enhancing the quality of patient care, minimizing errors during clinical practice, and improving job satisfaction and quality of life among healthcare personnel. Furthermore, investigations may provide a foundation for developing evidence-based strategies to mitigate brain fog in healthcare settings.

Youth unemployment remains one of the most pressing development challenges in Africa, occurring alongside the continued centrality of agriculture as a major source of livelihoods and economic activity. Despite the sector’s potential to absorb a growing youth labor force, youth engagement in agriculture remains limited, unstable, and often characterized by precarious working conditions. This study presents a literature review that synthesizes existing scholarly and policy-oriented research on youth engagement and employment in the African agricultural sector. Drawing on peer-reviewed articles, books, and institutional reports, the review examines how youth participation in agriculture has been conceptualized, the quality of employment opportunities available, and the key factors shaping youth engagement across diverse African contexts. The findings indicate that while agriculture continues to function as a significant employer of youth, it is predominantly marked by informality, low productivity, income insecurity, and limited social protection. Negative perceptions of agriculture, aspirational mismatches, and persistent structural barriers particularly limited access to land, finance, education, and markets emerge as central constraints on sustained youth participation. The review also highlights significant gaps between education and labor market needs, which undermine youth employability and the sector’s capacity for innovation. Overall, the literature reveals a fundamental contradiction between agriculture’s employment potential and the poor quality of jobs it currently offers to young people. By synthesizing key themes and identifying persistent gaps, this study contributes to a clearer understanding of the challenges and opportunities associated with youth employment in African agriculture and provides a foundation for more coherent research and policy approaches.

This paper analyzes the success of the "Womenomics" policy, launched in Japan in 2013 in response to demographic and economic challenges and aimed at increasing women's participation in the workforce, as well as the structural barriers behind it. Among the policy's main goals were increasing women's labour force participation rate and boosting their representation in management positions. Therefore, womenomics has failed to achieve its goals. Although women's labour force participation rate has increased since 1986 (reaching 66% in 2016), this increase has largely coincided with a rise in irregular (precarious) employment rates. Notwithstanding, womenomics, within a neoliberal framework, primarily aims for economic growth rather than genuine social equality. This top-down approach does not adequately address the various economic challenges and pressure to leave the workforce faced by women, particularly in low-skilled occupations. All in all, to create a sustainable impact for womenomics, it must go beyond mere participation metrics and target deep-rooted cultural and institutional transformations that ensure job quality and parental leave are accessible to both genders.

Digital printing studios have been growing at a rapid pace, which has resulted in a pressing demand of smart, automated and scalable management tools that can support high volume manufacturing, various materials and multiple design types and deliver within strict deadlines. Conventional studio processes, including job intake, color correction, resource allocation and quality check are in most cases manualized, fragmented and liable to inefficiencies that lower productivity and consistency. In this paper, the author suggests a unified AI-based management system of digital printing studio, based on the application of machine learning, computer vision, and predictive analytics to improve workflow automation, operational intelligence, and human-machine interaction. The system architecture has real-time data acquisition, automated job logging, print pipeline monitoring, and dynamic scheduling algorithms as part of it to optimize machine use and material flow. AI-based tools assist in pre-press optimization, color correction, layout optimization, prediction of queue and minimization of material, hence optimizing throughput and minimizing wastage. Moreover, to provide operational transparency and skill improvement, the design interface, training recommendations, and human-in-the-loop decision verification powered by AI are included in the framework.

While agriculture remains a key source of livelihoods in rural Africa, employment in other economic sectors is gaining in importance. However, details of the labor conditions are under-researched. Here, we examine labor conditions in different sectors of the rural economy using survey data from wage workers and key employers in Kenya, Namibia, Tanzania, and Zambia. We find that close to 60% of the adult population are self-employed in agriculture or small non-agricultural businesses, whereas only 7% are wage-employed. Over 60% of those in wage employment earn below the minimum wage. The main employers are agricultural farms and small private firms in hospitality and other services sectors. Average working conditions remain poor. Payment above the minimum wage, employment stability, and certain social benefits are more widely observed in sectors such as public administration, education, and healthcare, where longer-term or permanent contracts are common. Workers in agriculture and construction predominantly depend on seasonal and temporary contracts. Although individual education levels, training, and experience enhance payment and job quality, those with higher education often report lower job satisfaction. Our findings underscore the need for policies that broaden wage employment opportunities and improve the labor conditions in rural Africa.

Topicality. The full-scale invasion of Ukraine by the russian federation has had a profound effect on the country's economy, resulting in widespread closures, relocations, and business pivots among small businesses. However, a countervailing dynamic has become evident. From August 2022 to February 2025, the number of newly registered small businesses increased from 132,000 to 763,000, while 685,000 ceased operations over the same period, indicating intense churn and renewal. In the context of this period of renewal, there has been a marked increase in the visibility of women as economic actors. The proportion of women among new sole proprietors has increased to 61%, with significant regional variations and sectoral patterns that show a tendency towards services, education, retail, and garment production. In contrast, men continue to be concentrated in construction, transport, logistics, and programming. In light of the aforementioned context, the article addresses a policy problem that has not yet been resolved: namely, the question of how public regulation and support can be designed in such a manner as to transform women's small businesses from a survival response into a durable driver of territorial communities recovery. Aim and tasks. The research is aimed on the development of the mechanisms of state support for women's small business in the territorial communities of Ukraine in the context of post-war recoveryn and European integration. The tasks of the study include the analysis of tendencies of women's small business development in Ukraine under the modern challenges, study of the national and EU institutional basis for the women's small businesses development, design of the model state program for the development of women's entrepreneurship support, with mechanisms and tools for its implementation. Materials and methods. Methodologically, the study combines descriptive analytics with a targeted SWOT analysis of women's entrepreneurship at the community level, identifying the following: strengths (motivation, adaptability, social orientation); weaknesses (limited finance, skills gaps, network deficits); opportunities (donor support, digital markets, PPPs, gender mainstreaming); and threats (macroeconomic volatility, labour shortages, inflation, entrenched bias). In order to internationalize the lens, the paper aligns national measures with the European Commission's A Guide to Fostering Women's Entrepreneurship (awareness, lifelong entrepreneurial learning, access to finance, umbrella networks, data/analytics), mapping each action to feasible Ukrainian instruments. Research results. The article presents a comprehensive model of public support for women’s small entrepreneurship in the context of territorial communities post-war recovery, which is built upon five interrelated components. First, financial inclusion encompasses access to grants, state guarantees, concessional loans, and vouchers for rental and equipment. Second, an important element is “smart” regulation and the provision of priority access for women entrepreneurs to the public procurement system. Third, the educational and mentoring dimension covers the establishment of regional entrepreneurship development centres, training programmes in financial and digital literacy, as well as mentoring from experienced experts. The fourth block incorporates infrastructural and social factors, including the operation of business incubators, co-working centres, the development of women’s cooperatives, and expanded access to social services, particularly preschool education and eldercare. Finally, the fifth dimension consists of social and communication measures aimed at promoting women’s success stories, creating networking platforms for experience exchange, and conducting information campaigns. The proposed model is tailored to the needs of territorial communities and is designed to strengthen social cohesion by prioritizing support for internally displaced women, female veterans, and residents of the regions most affected by the war. Conclusion. The findings suggest that harmonizing Ukrainian policy with EU practice, while tailoring instruments to local constraints, can raise business survival, expand decent employment, and strengthen fiscal resilience at the municipal level. The contribution is twofold: firstly, it consolidates a fragmented support landscape into a coherent, gender-responsive policy architecture; and secondly, it offers a practical roadmap for embedding women's small entrepreneurship in territorial recovery strategies. Subsequent endeavours will centre on the formulation of a succinct indicator system to oversee outcomes, encompassing business creation and survival, finance access, job quality, and social inclusion. This will facilitate rigorous evaluation and iterative enhancement of support programmes.

This paper investigates workers’ experiences with collaborative robots in e-commerce fulfillment centers (FCs). Powered by the latest algorithmic technologies, collaborative robots operate alongside their users rather than independently. There are conflicting accounts of how they will impact job quality. On the one hand, they are dismissed for reducing worker autonomy and permitting more pervasive means of managerial control. On the other, they are heralded for augmenting human capabilities, taking on undesirable tasks, and giving workers more command over their jobs. Yet the actual effects of collaborative robots are underexplored. Using data from a survey of more than 1,500 hourly workers employed in 16 FCs operated by a U.S. retailer, I compare job characteristics and worker attitudes across facilities that use one of three main technologies to retrieve customer orders: collaborative robots, conveyors, or hand-pulled carts. The findings show that, compared to the older technologies, collaborative robots are not associated with significantly better jobs. Relative to workers in cart facilities, workers in robotics facilities report lower levels of job satisfaction, decision authority, skill discretion, and supervisor and coworker support, along with increased job insecurity, turnover intentions, and alienation. These levels are similar to those reported in conveyor facilities. In light of these findings, collaborative robots appear to be a refined means of managerial control rather than a liberating departure from past automating technologies. They are likely to impose burdens on growing numbers of workers as the e-commerce industry expands and as they find their way into other sectors.

ABSTRACT Guided by the framework of socio‐emotional learning and technology‐enhanced pedagogy, this study examines the role of AI‐based emotion recognition in shaping educational outcomes, including teacher feedback quality, classroom dynamics and teacher job satisfaction. Findings indicate that AI‐based emotion recognition significantly enhances classroom interactions and feedback quality, which in turn positively influences teacher job satisfaction. The study highlights the interconnectedness of emotional, pedagogical, and technological factors, offering novel insights into how AI tools can foster emotionally responsive and effective teaching environments. By emphasising the theoretical and practical implications, this research underscores innovative pathways for integrating emotionally intelligent AI in education, while encouraging consideration of ethical and contextual factors.

This study analyzes the determinants of female labor absorption in modern sectors in Indonesia, utilizing provincial panel data (2020-2024) and an Error Correction Model (ECM). The results show that regional economic structure, as reflected in the modern sector's GRDP contribution, has a positive effect on women's participation in the modern sector, although the effect is small in the long run. The Gender Development Index (GDI) has a significant effect, reinforcing the role of gender equality in increasing women's participation in the modern sector. Conversely, the Open Unemployment Rate (TPT) has a negative effect, indicating that the modern sector is less able to absorb women in conditions of high unemployment. This study provides important implications for policies that encourage increased gender equality and the creation of quality jobs in the modern sector.

Teacher burnout is a big problem in education right now, especially because teachers must do more work. This study also aimed to find out what parts of school-related tasks lead to burnout and how these factors affect teachers' job performance. A qualitative and descriptive phenomenological approach was used to gather data by doing open-ended interviews with some elementary school teachers. A thematic analysis was also employed to find patterns and themes that came up in their answers. The results of the findings showed that teachers are experiencing high levels of workload, which significantly leads to burnout. As much as teachers want to provide quality job performance, the results revealed a strong correlation between workload and burnout, which affects teachers in various ways. Based on the respondents' answers, the effects include physical and emotional exhaustion, extended work hours, overwhelming administrative and instructional duties, and fluctuating motivation and job satisfaction. These factors collectively hinder teaching effectiveness and negatively impact overall well-being, not only mentally but also physically. This study highlighted that proper workload management is essential to reducing stress and preventing burnout among many teachers. It is also highly recommended that school administrators implement high-support systems and the right policies that promote teacher wellness and improve working conditions in the educational setting.