Today's Workforce Research Articles

Decentralized management of laboratory automation

It is generally believed that successful robot users have dedicated centralized robotic groups. While such a generalization holds some merit historically, the availability of newer more user-friendly robots and workstations in recent years and a more computer-literate work force today is changing the way that automation can be managed. Decentralization recognizes robots and workstations as additional tools for all analysts, not a select few. Such an approach initiates involvement and education of more staff with respect to automation. This further ushers the development of automated methods instead of the automation of manually-developed methods. Decentralization also provides local control of resources to address the priorities of a specific functional group within the department. Both a vision of the future, as well as a look at the past, should be considered when determining how to manage robotic and other means of automation. This paper discusses decentralized management of robots as currently applied and envisioned in a large pharmaceutical analytical R & D department.

The Diversity Dynamic: Implications for Organizations in 2005

This article examines the forces that influence our understanding of and responses to diversity in the work place. Conceptually, diversity may either be understood as variety, in which all people are regarded as unique individuals, or as difference, in which specific groups of people (e.g., nonwhites and women), are regarded as being different with respect to a dominant group (e.g., white men). From either perspective, today's work force is becoming increasingly diverse as a result of changes in immigration patterns; demographic trends; and the increasing polar ization of society with respect to education, skills, and wealth. In the past, because of the influence of mechanistic management principles, organizations typically responded to diversity by minimizing or eliminating differences. In the future, the particular needs ofselectgroups of people willlikely be accommodated. In the distant future, organizations that fail to acknowledge the full range of variety inherent in their employee and customer popu...

The "potential" contributions of cognitive behavior modification to literacy training for deaf students.

This article will address the background and "potential" use of Cognitive Behavior Modification (CBM) as an approach for increasing literacy skills among deaf people. We highlight the word "potential" because most CBM interventions with the deaf have been quite preliminary. But before we consider this "potential" let us first examine the role illiteracy plays for both deaf and hearing adults as they enter the workforce today. For many decades, the literature has documented significant academic and employment underachievement among the deaf population. The itemization of this underachievement, relative to their hearing counterparts, sets the stage for the present proposal and represents a "call to action" for all who are interested in nurturing literacy in deaf children and adults. Consider the following findings on the relative levels of academic underachievement of the deaf population. 1. Thirty percent of students with hearing impairment exit school without a diploma or certificate (Nash, 1992). 2. The average math achievement level at secondary school graduation for deaf students is only at the sixth to seventh grades (Allen, 1986). 3. The reading achievement test scores of deaf children continue to lag far behind those of hearing students, with reading achievement test scores remaining at approximately the third-grade level (Allen, 1986). While many members of the deaf community rise above these academic limitations, for those who do not the financial, social, and personal consequences can be substantial. A major contributing factor to the bleak employment picture is an individual's level of literacy. We are using this term "literacy" in its broadest meaning to include not only the comprehension of prose in its various forms, but also literacy in reading the demands and expectations of social and employment situations.

Zen Sociology: Don't Just Do Something, Stand There!

The following materials are a small segment of my Introduction to Sociology course. In regards to craft of teaching, my concern is to devise field experiments that both allow and provoke students to experience personally sociological ideas and principles we are studying. In regard to temperament and style, many of us teach the subject matter; now and then a few of us teach the student. This approach attempts to systematically combine these dimensions. My primary frame of reference is a wedding of basic premises found in BuddhismI with ethnomethodological strategy of breaching taken-for-granted, obvious-yet-invisible norms of ordinary societal life. An accompanying concern is critical sociology's analysis of dynamics of internalized oppression. We get at this by repetitive, course long use of koan/question Where does society end and my self begin? I am interested in practicing and teaching a liberation sociology. Our first required reading for course consisted of selections from Studs Terkel's (1972) Working: People Talk about What They DoAllDay andHow TheyFeel about What They Do, a widely diverse collection of interviews with in all sorts of occupations: steelworkers, firemen, ad executives, millionaire entrepreneurs, prostitutes, policemen. It's a very honest book that deglamorizes many of our preconceptions about occupations and professions in contemporary American society by giving a firsthand account of everyday disillusionment and daily despair of great majority of today's work force. I use Terkel in my introductory course to gain access to, or to bring us into presence of, a number of sociological problems: relationship of working to nature and complexity of social structure and to nature and complexity of personal life and to our intimate, accomplished sense of identity. As an opening text in an introductory course it has rich resonances with a number of foundation stones, sociological concepts, and preoccupations: nature of human labor and alienation (Marx); division of labor, social solidarity, and anomie (Durkheim); moral value and meaning of work and Protestant ethic (Weber); capitalism and socialism; exploitation and social justice; social construction and accomplishment of human identity and social order (Mead, Goffman, Berger and Luckman, and Garfinkel). Robert Nisbet (1966) in his classic work The Sociological Tradition, presents in detail these and other unit-ideas of sociology. In order to examine this constellation of rather abstract concepts directly and personally, we engaged in our first experiment: unoccupied, unemployed. The was to nothing, to be unoccupied and unemployed for 10 minutes and to see what you can see. I explained that I preferred that students this experiment in a relatively busy place and that I meant what I was saying to be taken quite literally. They were to stand in an ordinary social setting and nothing for 10 minutes. They were to stand still. They weren't allowed to pretend they were waiting for someone. That would be doing waiting, to use Goffmanesque terminology, with all activity entailed by that particular behavioral pattern: glancing nervously at one's watch, looking around periodically and repeatedly so as to appear to be looking for someone, and so on. They weren't allowed to do sightseeing--that is, self-consciously to act way we think when they're sightseeing: scrutinizing and admiring architecture, landscape, and like. They weren't to sit down and do relaxing or time out or people watching. They were, quite simply, to nothing.

What Will Work Consist of in the Future?

Change is driven by trends and value shifts in the key areas of science and technology, social and cultural issues, politics, economics and, increasingly, environmental sustainability. Science holds some mind-boggling changes. Research is under way that seeks to unravel the circuitry of the brain. Educators may be able to run up a training program for, say, becoming a doctor, the imprinting of which on a student might become as simple as customising software for today's computers. Technology is leading to massive restructuring of the workplace, and is supposedly responsible for two thirds of the jobs lost since 1989. In post industrial society, the majority of the labour force will no longer be employed in such traditional areas as manufacturing and retailing. To find employment, people will have to move into the information and service sectors, where 40 per cent of today's workforce can be found. The new information and communication technologies create the potential for radically reorganising the location of employment to meet both environmental and social goals: that is, of reducing travel and bringing the home, the school and the workplace together. The reality, however, is that much high-tech home working is targeted at women caring for young children at home. Such home work thereby reinforces the traditional distinction between men's and women's work. Social and cultural issues play a major part in setting future trends. One of the major challenges is to look at how men could be encouraged to broaden their focus from the competitive climb up the career ladder to taking up caring roles both in the home and in the community. Environmental management, both at the government and corporate level, is likely to be one of the key career growth areas. On the economic front, many would now argue that, in its traditional sense, full employment is unachievable. Unless current policies change, we can expect the creation of a permanent rump of unemployed, many of whom we can expect to be young. Any discussion of future employment and education needs, therefore, to look beyond the traditional definition of what constitutes a job.

Workforce 2000: Coming Soon to Your Workplace

The workforce is shrinking as the baby‐bust generation succeeds the baby boomers, and it is becoming increasingly diverse, with fewer white males and more women, minorities, immigrants, and disabled and older workers. Today's workforce also has different needs and expectations from yesterday's workforce, ranging from family‐friendly benefits to inclusion in employer decision‐making processes. Water utilities are taking action in response to these workforce changes, which are elevating the importance of personnel operations. Implementation of innovative management methods based on flexibility, teamwork, and quality service are showing signs of success.

How to cultivate today's multi-cultural work force

Employment Relations TodayVolume 18, Issue 2 p. 157-160 New Idea How to cultivate today's multi-cultural work force Constance Gemson, Constance Gemson Constance Gemson is the training officer at the Brooklyn Public Library, Brooklyn, New York.Search for more papers by this author Constance Gemson, Constance Gemson Constance Gemson is the training officer at the Brooklyn Public Library, Brooklyn, New York.Search for more papers by this author First published: Summer 1991 https://doi.org/10.1002/ert.3910180205 AboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat Volume18, Issue2Summer 1991Pages 157-160 RelatedInformation

Beyond demography: A psychographic profile of the workforce

AbstractThis article examines the life and work attitudes of a national sample of the US workforce surveyed in 1990. It presents a model of work‐ and nonwork‐related factors impinging on attitudes and the impact of these factors on high levels of cynicism found in the workforce today. The survey results show a strong correspondence between people's general perceptions of society, leadership, and the motives of other people and more specific views of their own organization, managers, and co‐workers. Analyses detail the spread of cynicism among demographic segments of the workforce, considering age, race, social class, gender, occupation, and organization type. Concluding sections highlight strategies that companies such as Ben & Jerry's ice cream, Caterpillar Tractor, and others have followed to counter cynicism in their workforce.

Alternative work scheduling for professional social workers.

The authors present some practical evidence that the changing nature of today's work force requires innovative alternatives to traditional scheduling based on the 9 to 5, five-day workweek. They support alternative work scheduling (AWS) as an updated and promising approach. Described is their experience with a two-year AWS pilot project in the Social Work Service of an urban medical center, with their focus upon the processes of negotiating, programming, and implementing the concepts of "flex-time," "compressed workweek," and "job sharing." Informal assessment indicates strongly positive responses from the participating social workers, other members of the health care team, and the consumers of the services.

Information and productivity

AbstractThe growth of U.S. productivity has been declining for several years. The reasons for this decline are complex, and there is little consensus among experts as to the real cause. Part of the difficulty lies in accurately assessing the productivity of today's workforce. Much of the work being done in today's society is based on services, communications, and information and, therefore, no longer fits the traditional production processes and techniques used for measuring productivity in an industrial society. Traditional input and output measures do not work for measuring the productivity of most white collar workers. New measures and definitions are needed to measure productivity more accurately. Information technology and the effective management of information resources are beginning to play a significant role in reversing the declining rate of U.S. productivity growth. Traditionally, the introduction of new technologies into the workplace has focused on the blue collar worker or, within the office environment, on the secretarial or clerical population. However, the bulk of U.S. salary expenditures is spent on the managerial and professional population. The greatest productivity gains can be realized by improving the productivity of this group, often referred to as knowledge workers. By improving knowledge workers' ability to communicate more effectively and to find and use information more efficiently, significant improvements in productivity can be realized.

ENTREPRENEURIAL GERONTOLOGY: CREATIVE MARKETING OF GERONTOLOGICAL SKILLS

In order to operate successfully in today's work force, gerontologists need to learn, and to utilize, marketing of their gerontological skills. Entrepreneurial gerontology focuses on creative marketing for the individual gerontologist who wants to create gerontological positions within new or existing organizations and on the gerontologist who seeks to develop a gerontology‐related business. Essential are academic gerontologists who instill and promote within their students, their professional colleagues, older persons, and, indeed, within themselves, the entrepreneurial spirit, the innovative approach.

Senior Careerists: Strategies for Using Their Skills

Sound familiar? Unfortunately, too many of us too often hear similar statements. This article will share some of the concerns and issues related to an aging work force and what we in Colorado state government are doing about the people who are part of it. The discussion will focus on the career of the currently employed senior careerist (aged 50-64) and what can be done effectively to utilize and retain these employees. Part of the problems we encounter in managing today's changing work force result from outdated ways of thinking. In the areas of mandatory retirement, our slavish insistence on a 40-hour work week for all employees, and our boxed-in lives, we insist on an artificial world. When older employees question this model, we label them problems. The folly of mandatory retirement is discussed elsewhere in this series and work hours will be discussed later in this article. For now, consider Richard Bolles' challenge to us as stated in The Three Boxes of Life. Bolles writes that we have placed unnecessary stress and limitations on ourselves by compartmentalizing our lives in three boxes: education (for the first 20 years), work (for the following 40 years), and leisure (for the years after work). In order to live effectively, we need to break down the boxes and combine education in our working years and work in the years typically designated for leisure and education. It makes a lot of sense, doesn't it? The problem is, we don't do it. And when employees ask for opportunities that would allow them to get out of the boxes, we again label them as problems. Other problems we encounter are based on ignorance about the aging process and the capabilities of older people. Although many Americans believe that most old people live in institutions, the act is a little less than 4 percent of all persons over age 65 are institutionalized. Still another common belief is that after age 65, the human body steadily deteriorates. Actual studies detect no deterioration in physical condition because of age. Results suggest that any observable decline is due to boredom, inertia, and the awareness that infirm behavior is expected. Of all the myths that color our view of older workers, those concerning mental abilities and learning capacity are probably the most dangerous to the worker. Many people accept the belief that as we age our mental capacities diminish. But studies tell us that there is very little mental decline. Speed of response may decline slightly but there is no change in intelligence and little in memory. Why is it, then, that many older people seem frightened to learn a new skill? Why do so many seem to fit that stereotype so well? Research findings indicate that these behaviors result from the negative expectations we may have of older people. In addition to general attitudes, we need to consider those circumstances that affect the work environment in which workers perform. Briefly, there are a number of changes and conditions that have an impact on career management today.

Productivity, information technology and the office

It is well known that American productivity has advanced very little in the last ten years in contrast to many other countries' rapidly rising productivity. It is becoming evident that major productivity gains can be made, particularly in the office workforce, which constitutes the majority of the American workforce today. Rapidly developing information technologies are making it possible to achieve radically increased productivity in the office. This paper will discuss the specific technologies; the specific major office functions; how they interrelate; and how they are making such radical productivity increases possible. "The Paperless Office", created by Micronet, Inc. in Washington, D.C., will be described. The current project to automate the office activities of the American Productivity Center in Houston, Texas, will be described. Some projections of the significance of these projects will be given.

The Benefits of Leader Communication On Part-Time Worker Outcomes: A Comparison Between Part-Time and Full-Time Employees Using Motivating Language

This study presents findings on the differential effects that leader communicationhas on worker performance and job satisfaction for part-time and full-timeworkers. For both part- and full-time employees, structural equation model resultsindicate that leader communication, as measured through motivating language(ML) use, has the same significant and positive effect on job satisfaction. However,in the case of performance, leader ML use only has a significant relationshipwith the output of full-time workers. These results indicate a boundary conditionto the effectiveness of leader communication, and suggest practical implicationsfor management interventions with today's workforce.