Retraining Of Workers Research Articles

Financial and employment impacts of serious injury: A qualitative study

ObjectivesTo explore the financial and employment impacts following serious injury. DesignSemi-structured telephone administered qualitative interviews with purposive sampling and thematic qualitative analysis.Participants: 118 patients (18–81 years) registered by the Victorian State Trauma Registry or Victorian Orthopaedic Trauma Outcomes Registry 12–24 months post-injury. ResultsKey findings of the study were that although out-of-pocket treatment costs were generally low, financial hardship was prevalent after hospitalisation for serious injury, and was predominantly experienced by working age patients due to prolonged absences from paid employment. Where participants were financially pressured prior to injury, injury further exacerbated these financial concerns. Reliance on savings and loans and the need to budget carefully to limit financial burden were discussed. Financial implications of loss of income were generally less for those covered by compensation schemes, with non-compensable participants requiring welfare payments due to an inability to earn an income. Most participants reported that the injury had a negative impact on work. Loss of earnings payments from injury compensation schemes and income protection policies, supportive employers, and return to work programs were perceived as key factors in reducing the financial burden of injured participants. Employer-related barriers to return to work included the employer not listening to the needs of the injured participant, not understanding their physical limitations, and placing unrealistic expectations on the injured person. While the financial benefits of compensation schemes were acknowledged, issues accessing entitlements and delays in receiving benefits were commonly reported by participants, suggesting that improvements in scheme processes could have substantial benefits for injured patients. ConclusionsSeriously injured patients commonly experienced substantial financial and work-related impacts of injury. Participants of working age who were unemployed prior to injury, did not have extensive leave accrual at their pre-injury employment, and those not covered by injury compensation schemes or income protection insurance clearly represent participants “at risk” for substantial financial hardship post-injury. Early identification of these patients, and improved provision of information about financial support services, budgeting and work retraining could assist in alleviating financial stress after injury

Threats to the International Trade Regime: Economic and Legal Challenges Arising from Anti-Offshoring Measures Across the Globe

The stability and growth of the international trade regime is threatened by the emergence and proliferation of anti-offshoring measures by governments worldwide. The business practice of offshoring transfers domestic production of goods and services abroad as a means of achieving optimal use of a firm’s resources and capitalizing on comparative advantage. While companies have relocated manufacturing activities for centuries, the emergence and growth of services offshoring in recent decades has not only contributed significantly to greater global economic growth and prosperity, but also ignited a fluctuating frenzy of protectionist fears and measures at national and sub-national levels against offshoring that continues to the present day. Such a backlash is based on concerns that offshoring results in domestic job losses, wage reduction and inequality, and disruption of business innovation and productivity. This motivates examination of the legitimacy of these perceptions and the legality of governmental actions in the offshoring arena, as such measures undercut and potentially violate the commitments made by nations to the World Trade Organization and various other trade agreements. In the United States, the majority of state governments have proposed anti-offshoring bills, several of which have been enacted. The US Constitution empowers the federal government with exclusive authority over the areas of interstate commerce, foreign affairs and foreign trade. All these constitutional principles are arguably violated when state governments enact anti-offshoring legislation. The US experience is not singular, as similar policies are being considered and/or implemented in other nations or nation-groups. In particular, the European Union (EU) and a host of other countries have adopted discriminatory measures relating to personal data protection that place foreign service suppliers at a disadvantage compared to their domestic counterparts. These countries and the EU are strong proponents of free trade and have signed onto a variety of trade agreements. Adherence to these commitments means accepting that free trade is a two-way street, and comes with benefits and constraints. Furthermore, countries must look beyond restrictive approaches to embrace a combination of pro-business policies that promote labor market flexibility and investment as well as employment security initiatives around worker retraining and mobility to resolve the short-term distributional effects of globalization. These issues are analyzed with respect to the current situation.

Stress Factors and Coping Strategies among Workers in an Organization

This article focuses on stress factors and coping strategies among workers. Stress has posed a worrisome situation that affects the performance of workers. In the bid to cope with such situations workers usually employ certain strategies. Extensive review of related literature was carried out and the article relied on secondary source of data. The study findings show that workers perceive workload, inadequate facilities, method and style of management as stressors and they cope with them by recognizing their limits, relaxing, being friendly, engaging in physical exercise and so on. The article recommends among other things that provision of conducive working environment, seminars and workshops, retraining of workers be carried out. Workers should be allowed to participate in decision-making.

The cost of implementing a nationwide program to decrease the epilepsy treatment gap in a high gap country

Healthcare systems in many low income countries have evolved to provide services for acute, infections and are poorly structured for the provision of chronic, non-communicable diseases which are increasingly common. Epilepsy is a common chronic neurologic condition and antiepileptic drugs are affordable, but the epilepsy treatment gap remains >90% in most African countries. The World Health Organization has recently released evidence-based guidelines for epilepsy care provision at the primary care level. Based upon these guidelines, we estimated all direct costs associated with epilepsy care provision as well as the cost of healthcare worker training and social marketing. We developed a model for epilepsy care delivery primarily by primary healthcare workers. We then used a variety of sources to develop cost estimates for the actual implementation and maintenance of this program being as comprehensive as possible to include all costs incurred within the health sector. Key sensitivity analyses were completed to better understand how changes in costs for individual aspects of care impact the overall cost of care delivery. Even after including the costs of healthcare worker retraining, social marketing and capital expenditures, epilepsy care can be provided at less than $25.00 per person with epilepsy per year. This is substantially less than for drugs alone for other common chronic conditions. Implementation of epilepsy care guidelines for patients receiving care at the primary care level is a cost effective approach to decreasing the epilepsy treatment gap in high gap, low income countries.

The Responsibility of Human Resource Management and Development Professionals in the Development of Low-Skilled Workers in the Nigeria Public Sector

The need for making human asset of an economy, public and private, relevant and adequately responsive to thegrowth and development of the nation is stressed in this paper. Public sector is owned and controlled by thegovernment. This makes government to be the largest employer of labour. The onus of developing humanresources largely devolves on employers of labour. Human resources are relevant in organization for they makethings happen. The paper critically examined the concept of human resource, human resource management andworkers development and training as well as the relevance of human resource and the need for employeedevelopment in an organization. This paper submits that training and re-training of workers is needed, especiallyfor low-skilled workers for any organization to survive and realize its goals in this era of globalization andcompetitive economy.

The ‘Ability’ Paradigm in Vocational Rehabilitation: Challenges in an Ontario Injured Worker Retraining Program

In recent years, a focus on workers' ability, rather than impairment, has guided disability management services. However, a challenge with the notion of 'ability' is identification of the border between ability and inability. This article considers this gray zone of disability management in the case of a workers' compensation vocational retraining program for injured workers in Ontario. In-depth interviews and focus groups were conducted with a purposive sample of 71 participants who were directly involved with the vocational retraining process. Workers in the program had on average incurred injury 3 years earlier. Procedural and legal documents were also analyzed. Principles of grounded theory and discourse analysis guided the data gathering and analysis. A program focus on worker abilities did not allow for consideration of unresolved medical problems. Concepts such as maximum medical rehabilitation distracted attention from workers' ongoing chronic and unstable health situations, and incentive levers to employers directed some of the least capable workers into the program. As well, communication pathways for discussing health problems were limited by rules and provider reluctance to reveal problems. Therefore, workers completing the program were deemed 'employable', while ongoing and problematic health conditions preventing employment remained relatively uncharted and invisible. This study reinforces how the shift in disability management paradigm to a focus on ability and return to work requires consideration of environmental conditions, including policies and programs and implementation. A focus on the environment in which worker ability can be enacted might be as important as a focus on improving individual worker characteristics.

Use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) Among Private Agricultural Organization Workers in Oyo State, Nigeria

This study was designed to investigate the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) among private agricultural organization workers in Oyo State, Nigeria. Data were collected using structured questionnaires. One hundred and five respondents were randomly sampled for the study. Frequency counts, percentages, chi-square, Pearson product moment correlation (PPMC), and analysis of variance (ANOVA) were used in analyzing the data. Findings revealed that respondents’ age is significantly related to the use of ICTs and that age and marital status are significantly related to attitude toward use of ICTs. In addition, the study revealed that respondents’ age was significantly related to the benefits derived from the use of ICTs. Recommendations include a better supply of electricity, periodic training and continuous retraining of workers in the use of ICTs, and the creation and enforcement of government policies that will bring about sustainable use of ICTs for agricultural development.

Net Impact Estimates of the Workforce Development System in Washington State

This study estimates the net impacts and private and social benefits and costs of nine workforce development programs administered in Washington State. Five of the programs serve job-ready adults: Community and Technical College Job Training, Private Career Schools, Apprenticeships, Job Training and Partnership Act (JTPA) Title III programs, and Community and Technical College Worker Retraining. Two of the programs serve adults with employment barriers: Community and Technical College Adult Basic Skills Education and JTPA Title II-A programs. The other two programs serve youth: JTPA Title II-C programs and Secondary Career Technical Education. The net impact analyses were conducted using a nonexperimental methodology. Individuals who encountered the workforce development programs were statistically matched to individuals who did not. Administrative data with information from the universe of program participants and Employment Service registrants (who served as the comparison group pool) supported the analyses. These data included over 10 years of pre-program and outcome information including demographics, employment and earnings information from the Unemployment Insurance wage record system, and transfer income information such as Food Stamp and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) recipiency and benefits. A variety of estimation techniques were used to calculate net impacts including comparison of means, regression-adjusted comparison of means, and difference-in-difference comparison of means. We estimated short-run net impacts that examined outcomes for individuals who exited from the education or training programs (or from the employment service) in the fiscal year 1999/2000 and longer-run impacts for individuals who exited in the fiscal year 1997/98. Short- run employment impacts are positive for seven of the nine programs and negative for the other two. Short-run earnings impacts are insignificant for four of the programs, negative for two, and positive for the remaining three. The longer-run impacts are more sanguine. Employment impacts are positive for all nine programs, and earnings are positive for seven and insignificantly different from zero for the other two. The benefit-cost analyses show that all of the programs have discounted future benefits that far exceed the costs for participants, and that society also receives a positive return on investment.

Training and Technological Change: Case Evidence from the Printing Industry

This article examines the connection between training and technological change by looking at the printing industry through the experiences of six companies. The study revealed that these companies hold training to be strategic, not just peripheral. They invest heavily in the retraining of workers, using a multiplicity of strategies, including training by equipment manufacturers, OJT, peer tutoring, teamwork, customized training at vocational colleges, and tuition reimbursement. The study adds an empirical dimension to what is largely a rhetorical literature on the connection between technological change, training, and competitiveness.

The high‐performance work system: is it worth using?

Businesses worldwide are beginning to explore new areas of workplace change. Gone are the days of changing an element in one department and expecting results throughout the entire firm. The latest trend is the high performance work system. The implementation of such a system is not based around one department, but focuses on firm‐wide change. Key elements are workplace restructuring, retraining of workers and adding new technology. It has been found that by improving the flow of information through workplace redesign, using state of the art technology and empowering employees by training them to be daily decision makers, productivity and overall quality of production increases significantly. The implementation of a high performance work system can be risky and costly but the US Government is currently developing ways to aid companies so that they can take advantage of the benefits that can result from the implementation of such a successful system.

Labour Market Transitions and the Erosion of the Fordist Lifecycle: Discarding Older Workers in the Automobile Manufacturing and Banking Industries in the United States

The automobile manufacturing and banking industries provide ideal contrasting cases for analysing the changing nature of the employment contract and the resultant effect on older workers. In the auto industry the main thrust of firm activity has been to discard older workers who are viewed as dispensable because of their higher wages and health care costs compared to younger workers. The primary tactics employed have been to offer early retirement incentives and to extend overtime to older workers during periods of production increases instead of hiring younger workers. The prospect of a lengthy working week provides an additional incentive for older workers to retire. In the banking industry, older workers are viewed as costly and untrainable, and bank managers have taken every opportunity to discard them. In different ways, both industries illustrate a more general lack of concern with older workers as evidenced by the absence of worker retraining programmes and government efforts to encourage older worker retention in the U.S.

Worker Re-Training and Labor Market Outcomes: A New Focus for Labor Research Published in The Review of Black Political Economy

Worker Re-Training and Labor Market Outcomes: A New Focus for Labor Research Published in <i>The Review of Black Political Economy</i>

Infrastructure: A More Comprehensive Policy is Needed

Infrastructure investment to create jobs is an attractive short‐run economic strategy, but a fragmented policy. A comprehensive infrastructure policy should be a tool for economic growth, research and development, and human‐resources development, and should also benefit educational institutions, urban areas, public health, and the environment. Industrial policy can provide concepts that focus on the contributions infrastructure can make to the economy, education and training, technology and development, and the retraining of workers in shrinking industries. This approach can help remake institutional links and bring interests together in different ways, the greatest needs of employment policy. Use of educational institutions and public works agencies can provide an effective management mechanism and help overcome past problems. Federal investments are required to initiate such a program. The goal of the present paper is to stimulate discussion about how civil engineers can contribute to this strategy. Dis...

Management commitment and company policies on education and training

AbstractThis article presents evidence from a 1991 survey of 406 large companies indicating that corporate education and training practices are shaped by four company characteristics: (1) human resource innovativeness, (2) management resistance to change, (3) work redesigns to enhance quality and involvement, and (4) firm downsizing. When managements create an innovative climate, their companies invest more in worker retraining and contribute more to public schooling; when they resist change, they find it more difficult to recruit entry‐level employees. When managements redesign work, their companies place greater emphasis on training, development, and school relations. When managements downsize, their companies take more interest in entry‐level training and apprenticeship programs. © 1993 by John Wiley &amp; Sons, Inc.

The “export-import” effect and economic growth

This paper proposes that singular improvements in productivity and growth are a result of increased exports and imports, especially in the manufacturing sector, but that sustainable increases in growth can only emerge through industrial diversification. Trade liberalizations between Canada and the United States have caused a narrowing of manufacturing productivity differentials, a predominance of intraindustry trade, and a positive Canadian trade balance for manufactured end products and fabricated materials. Sustained growth, however, relies more on the diversification of the industrial structure. Toward this end, Canadian trade policies should: (1) concentrate productivity in the exportable, rather than importable, sectors, (2) rationalize and specialize between rather than within industries, (3) encourage two-way trade in each industry, (4) liberalize trade gradually to avoid interindustry disruptions, and (5) redirect job real- location funds toward worker retraining and firm-specific modernization programs.

Training of project managers in Czechoslovakia

The methods and forms of training available for project managers in Czechoslovakia are discussed taking into account the unique characteristics of the labour force. With the foreseen important structural changes in the economy, the retraining of workers to cope with different forms of work is seen as an important issue to come to terms with. Moreover, the structure of training courses would need to be examined with a view to future developments.

Technology and the human factor

Technologies are conceived in science, gestated in engineering and applied in industry under the influence of economics and politics. Automation, the application in industry of information technology (IT) and other forms of new technology replace what were previously known as craft skills by other forms of activity. The controversial question is whether this replacement need constitute deskilling; and a difficulty is that repetitive and seemingly unskilled tasks may contain an element of inspection. IT can contribute to the retraining of workers, but a difficult question is what proportion of the population can be retrained for information-based instead of manual work. Automation is neither the sole cause of unemployment nor the remedy for it.

Ford and the UAW have a Better Idea: A Joint Labor-Management Approach to Plant Closings and Worker Retraining

Responding to the severe recession in the U.S. automobile industry in the late 1970s, Ford Motor Company and the United Automobile Workers negotiated, as part of their 1982 national agreement, innovative provisions to deal with the problems faced by redundant workers. This article outlines the basic components of the UAW-Ford model for plant closings and describes the implementation of the model at a San Jose site. The UAW-Ford approach is an example of best practice in the area of joint labor-management cooperation when dealing with the human resource problems of a plant closure. Among the lessons learned from the San Jose experience are the value of early advance notice; the importance of an external catalyst and source of technical assistance in getting the program under way and moving in the right direction; the necessity of good union and management leadership; the importance of on-site delivery of services to the displaced workers; the importance of frequent communication with the workers; the value of having a flexible, readily available resource base to underpin the readjustment program; and the employer's sense of responsibility in discharging obligations to the dislocated work force.

Review and reappraisal of human aspects in planning robotic systems

Abstract The social issues of worker displacement and worker retraining due to introduction of robotics are discussed and the impact of industrial robots on organization design and job design are reviewed and safety issues mentioned. The impact of human industrial work performance on designing robotics systems is reviewed with special reference to the range of human performance abilities; human information-processing, memory and decision making capabilities; paced-work; supervisory control of robotics systems; and, social and management impacts of robot diffusion.

Unemployment among black youths: a policy dilemma

tory in the United States, but they have seldom equipped workers for lifelong advancement in skills, earnings, and occupational mobility. Instead, most of these policies have focused on short term economic goals. Only in periods of low general economic activity marked by rising levels of unemploy ment has the federal government de veloped manpower measures directed toward helping people find work and improve their skills and earnings. For example, during the years of the Great Depression, which caused mass unem ployment, the administration of Presi dent Franklin D. Roosevelt undertook large-scale intervention in the labor market by creating jobs through the Public Works Administration, the Works Progress Administration, the Civilian Conservation Corps, and the National Youth Administration—all of which continued into the early years of World War II. And during the early 1960s, when unemployment reached the highest level since World War II, the administrations of Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson developed new manpower policies to meet the special needs of workers who were displaced by automation. These policies called for the training or re training of workers for new occu pational opportunities. One of the mea sures, the Manpower Development and Training Act of 1962, shifted its focus from adult workers to youths because unemployment among the young, espe cially among young members of racial minorities in urban areas, had emerged as a major social issue and because the levels of unemployment among adult workers had begun to decline in 1963. Few contemporary social problems appear as intractable as unemployment among blacks, especially among black youths between the ages of 16 and 24. Some groups of young people have been served through a variety of man power programs instituted under the Manpower Development and Training Act and the 1964 Economic Opportu nity Act and finally brought together under the Comprehensive Employ ment and Training Act (CETA) in 1974. (See Table 1.) Some CETA programs, for example, the Job Corps, have strict Unemployment among black youths: a policy dilemma