Regular Workforce Research Articles

Perceived barriers to the process of COVID-19 control among frontline healthcare workers in South Korea: a qualitative study

ObjectiveThis study aimed to explore barriers to disease control perceived by frontline healthcare workers (HCWs) working in community settings during the COVID-19 pandemic in South Korea.DesignA qualitative study was conducted...

E-Commerce and Teleworking: Business Opportunities in the COVID-19 Era

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a key effect on how people work, hang out, and prepare for the future. This social split has a substantial adverse effect on industries, affecting not just economic disruption but also instability and uncertainty. At the same time, as in any major catastrophe, clean and new ways to reinvent the e-commerce business industry in a brand new light and with a new wind will arise. The variations in the use of new technologies and more in particular the use of innovative online services on the Internet are related to the online business sector where the populace is employed and its level of training. One of the advanced services offered by the e-commerce companies is teleworking. This paper shows the results of a critical analysis of the business opportunities in e-commerce in post COVID-19 world about the practicability of teleworking within business organizations. Teleworking business opportunities in an organization’s practicability is meaningfully explained by the percentage of tasks suitable to teleworking, the employees' participation in task design and programming, the proportion of salespeople in the workforce, the degree of work-location allocation for e-commerce activities, the use of information and communication technologies, and the degree of innovation. E-commerce in the post COVID-19 world and teleworking perceive a greater feasibility than the regular workforce.

Engaging Contract Labour: Learnings from Landmark Judgements

Despite debates on its hiring, contract labour is a growing form of employment in India. Establishments usually maintain a workforce composition of both regular workers and contract labour for optimizing their available resources and ensuring financial prudence. However, in the process, they often get embroiled in compliance issues related to regularization and ‘equal pay for equal work’ in the context of contract labour. In this article, we have explored the different judicial interpretations of the Contract Labour (Regulation and Abolition) Act, 1970, on contract labour. For this, we have referred to the landmark judgements passed by the Supreme Court of India on the deployment and regularization of contract labour, and also their entitlement to equal pay for equal work. A scrutiny of these judgements directs us to advise establishments to avoid engaging contract labour in their core and perennial activities. Considering the statutory provisions and the possible legal complications, we have recommended some measures to establishments to mitigate the underlying risks in deploying contract labour alongside regular workforce in similar kinds of jobs or activities. We propose that the legislative framework grants flexibility to industries to generate employment to contract labour, without compromising on the rights of these workers.

Alternate Skilling and its Relevance for the Freelancing Choices for College Graduates: An Interpretation

Traditional higher education has been witnessing vast changes and trends are showing up that student across countries and courses have taken up the alternate skilling as career security. The students are not just studying their regular courseware but they are also exploring the skills which can make them more employable and attractive for the future job market. One of the alternate results of this alternate skilling has been as the freelancing work culture among fresh college graduates or its adoption by the regular workforce. This article interprets the relevance of the alternate skilling for the freelancing choices of college students.

A new framework to analyze changes in work organization for permanent employees on livestock farms

The importance of a hired workforce for the competitiveness of livestock farms emerges in a context of a decreasing family workforce and increasing farm size. Farmers’ need for a regular workforce to perform labor-intensive tasks can conflict with the attractiveness of jobs and high rates of turnover among farm employees. Within farmers’ strategies to attract and retain employees, little attention has been given to understand the role of work changes over time during the careers of employees on farms. We thus developed a framework to understand how employees’ work organization on farms change over time since recruitment. Key concepts from human resource management and organizational change are the theoretical guidelines used to shape the framework. This conceptual base indicates what needs to be considered to understand changes in employees’ work. Empirical data were used to transform the concepts into practical variables to analyze changes in employees’ work. We interviewed 14 employees and 8 farmers (their employers) on dairy farms and collected data on work organization and changes over time, focusing on tasks performed by employees since recruitment, team composition, and farm history. The framework is composed of 8 variables that describe how work evolves according to changes in task assignments, changes in the way work is organized (versatility vs. specialization), and the level of autonomy afforded to workers. It also considers what drives these evolutions and the rhythm of evolution over time. The framework can be used by researchers to better understand trade-offs between labor management and farm changes over time. This is a new approach for analyzing work organization on livestock farms considering changes in work from the perspective of employees.

Empowering assembly workers with cognitive disabilities by working with collaborative robots: a study to capture design requirements

Collaborative robots and personalised human-automation load balancing strategies may be able to empower workers with cognitive disabilities to carry out complex assembly tasks. To design such assembly cells, it is necessary to investigate the human factors associated with this user group in relation to the technology proposed. We present a qualitative pilot user study in which an assembly worker with cognitive disabilities and multidisciplinary experts meet a collaborative robot in the context of routine assembly jobs. We draw requirements for the design of such cells and we contrast them with design requirements for regular workforce.

A New Service Class in the Public Sector? The Role of Femonationalism in Unemployment Policies

This article aims to explore the content embedded in the figuration of ‘foreign-born unemployed women’ and how discourses of gender equality are used to create an emerging racialised service class within the Swedish public sector. Influenced by the concept of femonationalism, the article explores how the introduction of the Extra Services unemployment reforms facilitates the creation of a service class whose purpose is to make it possible for the regular workforce to continue to function despite cutbacks and the neoliberal management of professional care work in the public sector. The study identifies a shift in the discourse, where, while migrant women continue to be represented as victims in public discourses concerning unemployment, they are also represented as being lazy and unwilling to work, qualities that legitimate the need for more repressive interventions towards the group, often described as feminist interventions that will rescue migrant women and their children.

Online, on call: the spread of digitally organised just‐in‐time working and its implications for standard employment models

This article questions whether the dominant policy discourse, in which a normative model of standard employment is counterposed to ‘non‐standard’ or ‘atypical’ employment, enables us to capture the diversity of fluid labour markets in which work is dynamically reshaped in an interaction between different kinds of employment status and work organisation. Drawing on surveys in the UK, Germany, Sweden and the Netherlands that investigate work managed via online platforms (‘crowdwork’) and associated practices, it demonstrates that crowdwork represents part of a continuum. Not only do most crowd workers combine work for online platforms with other forms of work or income generation, but also many of the ICT‐related practices associated with crowdwork are widespread across the rest of the labour market where a growing number of workers are ‘logged’. Future research should not just focus on crowdworkers as a special case but on new patterns of work organisation in the regular workforce.

Implementation of the evidence for the improvement of nursing care to the critical patient\u2019s family: a Participatory Action Research

BackgroundThere are many descriptive studies regarding the needs of the family, as well as those regarding nursing care aimed directly at family members. However, there is no widespread application of such evidence in clinical practice. There has also been no analysis made of the evolution of patterns of knowing during the act of improving clinical practice. Therefore, the purpose of the study is to understand the change process aimed at improving care to critical patient’s families, and to explore the evolution of patterns of knowing that nurses use in this process.MethodsQualitative study with a Participatory Action Research method, in accordance with the Kemmis and McTaggart model. In this model, nurses can observe their practice, reflect upon it and compare it with scientific evidence, as well as define, deploy and evaluate improvement strategies adapted to the context. Simultaneously, the process of empowerment derived from the Participatory Action Research allows for the identification of patterns of knowing and their development over time. The research will take place in the Intensive Care Units of a tertiary hospital. The participants will be nurses who are part of the regular workforce of these units, with more than five years of experience in critical patients, and who are motivated to consider and critique their practice. Data collection will take place through participant observation, multi-level discussion group meetings and documentary analysis. A content analysis will be carried out, following a process of codification and categorisation, with the help of Nvivo10. The approval date and the beginning of the funding were December 2012 and 2013, respectively.DiscussionThe definition, introduction and evaluation of care strategies for family members will allow for their real and immediate implementation in practice. The study of the patterns of knowing in the Participatory Action Research will be part of the theoretical and practical feedback process of a professional discipline. Also, the identification of the construction and evolution of knowledge will provide decision elements to managers and academics when choosing strategies for increased quality.

Guaranteed Employment and Universal Child Care for a New Social Contract

The United States is falling behind many other rich nations on a broad spectrum of measures of the quality of life. These include social mobility, inequality, education, crime, health and longevity. Polls suggest that many Americans have not only lost their optimism concerning the future, but have become angry as well. This article sets forth the elements of a new social contract, one that would deliver substantial results almost overnight and which conforms to the traditional American values of the importance of work, that everyone should have a fair opportunity for upwards mobility, and the central importance of the family. This proposal is composed of two parts: The first is guaranteed employment, and where necessary, the retraining required to enable workers to successfully enter the regular workforce. The second is universal child care to give all parents the possibility of participating in the labor force. The article discusses in depth how these measures would reverse the relative decline in quality of life in America. It also reveals how, although these measure would be costly, their payoff for the economy would far offset the costs.

A Study on the Development of Professional Choir in Korea

이 연구는 한국의 직업적 전문합창단 현황을 조사하고 그 결과를 토대로 직업적 전문합창단의 더 나은 발전을 위한 제안을 하는 데에 목적이 있다. 한국의 합창음악 발전에 따른 합창단의 출현을 시대별, 유형별로 조사하여 구분하고, 직업적 전문합창단의 정의와 구성요건을 선별된 3개의 시립합창단 현황을 바탕으로 제시한다. 발전적인 제안을 위해서 유럽과 독일의 직업적 전문합창단 현황을 살펴보고 한국의 시립합창단 현황을 조사, 분석하여 앞으로 나아가야 할 방향을 제시한다. 연구결과 첫째, 직업적 전문합창단의 효율적인 운영을 위해 정기적인 인력채용이 필요하며 전문적인 행정인력을 배출할 수 있는 실질적인 교육과정이 필요하다. 둘째, 단기적이고 규모위주의 성장보다 창의적이고 독창적인 프로그램 개발이 필요하며 이를 위해 공연에 관련된 예산의 비중을 더욱 늘려야 한다. 셋째, 공연장을 단순히 공연만을 위한 장소에서 벗어나 다양한 문화들을 체험할 수 있는 융복합 문화공간으로 만들어야 한다. 동시에 직업적 전문합창단원들에 대한 일반화되고 획일적인 근무환경을 효율적이고 유연하게 바꾸기 위한 연구와 조사가 필요하다. 넷째, 차별화된 인적, 물적 네트워크를 사용하여 개성적이고 효과적인 광고와 홍보가 필요하며 민간합창단의 발전에도 많은 지원과 관심, 그리고 지속적인 상호 교류와 협력이 필요하다.The purpose of this study is to investigate the present status of professional choirs in Korea and to make suggestions for the better development of professional choirs based on the results. It is investigated the emergence of choirs according to the development of choral music in Korea, by period and type, and presented the definition and composition requirements of professional chorus based on the selected three municipal choirs. In order to make a progressive proposal, the present situation of professional choir in Europe and Germany is examined, and the current status of municipal choir in Korea and ths directions for the future is presented. The results of this study are as follows: First, in order to operate professional choir effectively, it is necessary to hire regular workforce and practical training course to produce professional administrative manpower. Second, it is necessary to develop creative and original programs rather than short-term and scale-oriented growth, and the proportion of budgets related to performances should be further increased. Third, it is necessary to make the performance hall as a fusion cultural space that can experience various cultures by simply leaving the place for performance. At the same time, research and investigation are needed to change the generalized and uniform working environment of professional choir members in an efficient and flexible manner. Fourth, individual and effective advertising and publicity are needed by using differentiated human and material networks, and there is much support and interest in the development of private choir, and continuous interaction and cooperation are needed.

0414 INDIVIDUAL AND PSYCHOSOCIAL WORK FACTORS RELATED TO INSOMNIA IN MUSICIANS

We recently reported that Norwegian musicians have a higher prevalence of insomnia symptoms compared to a representative community sample (Prevalence Difference 6.9, 95% Confidence Interval 3.9–10.0). Further, musicians and artists generally report higher mental and work related stress compared to the regular workforce. Still, few studies have investigated interactions between musicians´ work and individual life and insomnia. In the present study, we investigate how personality traits and psychosocial work variables were related to insomnia among musicians. All members of the Norwegian Musician’s Union who were eligible (n= 4168) were invited to participate in the online questionnaire study. A total of 2121 individuals (51%) participated. Of these, 656 (30.9%) worked full time as professional performing musicians and constitute the study sample in the present study. Insomnia was measured with the Bergen Insomnia Scale. We used hierarchical multiple regression analyses to examine how age, work hours per week, personality traits, demands, control, efforts, support, rewards and work-family conflict were related to insomnia scores. The variables investigated explained 22% of the variance in insomnia among musicians (F=(11,532)=13.961, p=.000). In the full model, extraversion, neuroticism and high demands were significantly, positively related to insomnia, while social support was negatively related to insomnia. Age, work hours per week, openness, agreeableness, conscientiousness, control or work-family conflict were not related to insomnia score. Although we cannot conclude about causality, our results support that personality traits of musicians partly may explain their insomnia symptoms. Work conditions and psychosocial variables may be difficult to measure for musicians because of large differences in work context, but high levels of demands and low social support may contribute to developing insomnia symptoms among full-time musicians. The Norwegian ExtraFoundation for Health and Rehabilitation and Statistics Norway.

Myth and reality of labour flexibility in India

An analysis of recent employment trends shows a systematic and massive increase in labour flexibility in India’s organised sector. Firms have achieved increased flexibility not only by employing more of temporary and contract labour but also by making the regular workforce more flexible and reducing the role of labour unions and collective bargaining– thereby achieving “in-fact” informality/flexibility – and by outsourcing, and subcontracting down the value chain. Employer strategies have adapted existing informal social institutions and the legal framework to achieve their goals. How can the quest for a reasonable degree of flexibility be subordinated to labour rights and core labour standards? We argue that the answer lies not in the supposed legal constraints on flexibility in the organised sector but also in addressing infirmities in the Indian labour market as a whole.

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.

The interactive effects of abusive supervision and entitlement on emotional exhaustion and co‐worker abuse

In this study, we examine the relationship between employee perceptions of supervisor abuse, emotional exhaustion, psychological entitlement, and subsequent co‐worker abuse. We hypothesize that higher levels of employee psychological entitlement moderate the abusive supervisor – emotional exhaustion relationship – and this interaction mediates the abusive supervision – co‐worker abuse relationship. Using multilevel‐moderated mediation analysis to analyse day‐level survey data from a lagged panel design across five working days from 132 working adults and their co‐workers across multiple industries, we found support for our hypothesized model. We discuss implications for theory, future research, and management practice that result from our study.Practitioner points Psychologically entitled employees who perceive more abusive supervision are more emotionally exhausted and more likely to abuse their co‐workers; therefore, organizations need to identify patterns indicative of these types of employees. Stressed environments likely exacerbate these relationships, and organizations might consider regular workforce surveys assessing employee emotional exhaustion, which is a trigger for harmful employee work behaviours.

Company and contract labour in a central Indian steel plant

This paper offers a descriptive analysis of the way in which the working world of contract labourers in a public-sector Indian steel plant is differentiated from that of its regular workforce. The two kinds of workers regard themselves as distinct kinds of people and are now best seen as distinct social classes. While the sociology of India has broadly accepted the manual/non-manual labour distinction as the crucial marker of the boundary between the working and the middle classes, what is suggested here is that that between naukri (secure employment) and kam (insecure wage labour) – which cuts right across that distinction and is broadly congruent with that between formal- and informal-sector employment – is a more important marker of difference. At work, the two kinds of workforce are sharply distinguished by the material rewards of their jobs and by their security and conditions of employment; outside it by differences in life-style and attitudes – a gap that has grown with the liberalization of the Indian economy. The composition of the work groups to which the two kinds of labour characteristically belong are sharply differentiated by gender, by regional ethnicity and by urban or rural residence. Interactions within the work group are again very different, while interactions between regular and contract workers are largely confined to the work itself. Outside it they are kept to a minimum, testifying to a shared sense that socially the two kinds of workforce are profoundly different.

Sequencing mixed-model assembly lines to minimise the number of work overload situations

The mixed-model sequencing problem is to sequence different product models launched down an assembly line, so that work overload at the stations induced by direct succession of multiple labour-intensive models is avoided. As a concept of clearing overload situations, especially applied by Western automobile producers, a team of cross-trained utility workers stands by to support the regular workforce. Existing research assumes that regular and utility workers assemble side-by-side in an overload situation, so that the processing speed is doubled and the workpiece can be finished inside a station's boundaries. However, in many real-world assembly lines the application of utility workers is organised completely differently. Whenever it is foreseeable that a work overload will occur in a production cycle, a utility worker takes over to exclusively execute work, whereas the regular worker omits the respective cycle and starts processing the successive workpiece as soon as possible. This study investigates this more realistic sequencing problem and presents a binary linear program along with a complexity proof. Different exact and heuristic solution procedures are then introduced and tested. Additional experiments show that the new model is preferable from an economic point of view whenever utility work causes considerable setup activities, for example walking to the respective station.

Evaluation des stationären und ambulant betreuten Wohnens psychisch behinderter Menschen in den Wohnverbünden des Landschaftsverbands Westfalen-Lippe

During the deinstitutionalisation of psychiatric care in Germany, new psychiatric care approaches have been developed, which have been rarely scientifically evaluated. This study aims at evaluating the residential care and supported housing program of a public service in Westphalia, Northwestern Germany. Data on 1486 clients about sociodemographics, individual biographies, housing, social integration and perspective of care were collected by staff. Individual interviews on the clients' quality of life were conducted with 941 subjects. The residential care and supported housing program clients are chronically mentally ill and disabled. Clients from the supported housing sector have a much more favorable biographical and social background compared to those from residential care. Integration into the regular workforce does usually not happen. Clients from the residential care sector have only few social contacts outside their institution. The quality of life assessment revealed no differences between the settings. More external social contacts should be provided especially for the residential care clients. Motivational interventions might enhance the clients' social inclusion further.

Workforce survey for emergency nurses.

Emergency nurses across the UK are to be surveyed this autumn for the first time as part of a regular workforce exercise by the College of Emergency Medicine.

The Contingent Employee Benefits Problem

In the contemporary American workplace, benefits are a critical a component of overall compensation. American workers look to their employers for such non-salary items as retirement programs, health insurance, sick pay, and paid vacations. However, the costs of such benefits have been rising rapidly and employers have sought ways to avoid paying them. Increasingly, employers have been using various techniques to create a pool of contingent workers who, even if they work side-by-side with the employer's traditional employees, nevertheless receive none of the benefits made available to members of the regular workforce. These contingent employee arrangements include utilizing contract workers, leased staff, and temporary workers hired from agencies such as Manpower. In some instances courts have found that employer contingent workforce arrangements have failed to meet the legal hurdles required for exemption from the obligation to provide workplace benefits, but these decisions do no more than to guide employers in how to properly structure workplace relationships in order to meet their objectives. This article explores the limits of the major court decisions that have restricted the ability of employers to exclude contingent workers from access to benefits made available to regular employees and suggests legislative approaches that should be pursued.