Workplace Efficiency Research Articles

Ergonomics: Need of the Hour

The success in any practice is dependent on efficient workflow, with minimum risk to injury and cumulative trauma. Work in a dental office calls for deftness in cognitive abilities and can, more often than not, be physically challenging. Repeated use of movements and postures that go against the natural or anatomical alignment and limitations of the human body often lead to what is known as cumulative trauma leading to development of musculoskeletal disorders. The whole idea of ergonomics in the workplace is to avoid any such exigencies. Through this review it is intended to bring forth the widely known yet often neglected aspect of dental practice; that is the human factor in workplace efficiency.

Technostress: Implications for Adults in the Workforce

The use of technology can enhance workplace efficiency, productivity, and flexibility; yet, technological tools can have negative effects on individuals’ cognitive, psychological, and physical health, as well as on organizations (e.g., lowered employee satisfaction, decreased employee commitment). The use of information and communications technologies (ICT) adds to existing work stress. The authors reviewed recent literature to identify ICT trends, define key terms, and gain insights to improve awareness of ICT issues related to career development, health and wellness, and job security. The potential for inquiry as it relates to career exploration, development, and advancement is relevant to counselors and clients in today's workplace. Research is needed to examine the effects of technostress across different industries, to identify workers at greatest risk of adverse effects, to explore the impact on career decision making, to help clients develop personal coping resources, and to determine strategies for career professionals to collaborate with workplace managers.

Utilization of Lean Techniques in Pharmacy Residency Training: Modifying the PGY1 Management and Leadership Experience.

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to utilize lean process improvement principles to enhance the health-system pharmacy administration learning experience within a postgraduate year 1 (PGY1) residency program. Summary: The Richard L. Roudebush VA Medical Center adopted the use of lean to improve customer service and workplace efficiency. The Residency Advisory Council, overseeing the 6 pharmacy residency programs, felt that training residents in a proven process improvement technique would benefit the service and assist in developing problem-solving skills. Yellow Belt training was incorporated into the residency programs in 2012, and the Yellow Belt project for the 2014-2015 residency class was the modification of the PGY1 Health-System Pharmacy Administration learning experience. Residents focused on a few key areas as part of their completion plan: educating residents and preceptors on the importance of leadership activities, establishing a list of consistent topic discussions to be held during the administration learning experience, confirming a topic list for the pharmacy practice management and leadership seminars, piloting collaborative precepting for the administration experience, revising the staff development program, and increasing resident involvement in the PGY1 interview process. Two portions of the project lacked effective and timely communication, and as a result, those areas were not fully implemented. The remainder of the items achieved 100% completion. Conclusion: Lean techniques were effectively utilized within a residency program to enhance the health-system pharmacy administration learning experience. Successful implementation of lean requires engagement of stakeholders within the health-system, timely communication, frequent reassessments, and accountability.

Relieving the Bottleneck: An Investigation of Barriers to Expansion of Supervision Networks at Genetic Counseling Training Programs.

Rapid growth in the demand for genetic counselors has led to a workforce shortage. There is a prevailing assumption that the number of training slots for genetic counseling students is linked to the availability of clinical supervisors. This study aimed to determine and compare barriers to expansion of supervision networks at genetic counseling training programs as perceived by supervisors, non-supervisors, and Program Directors. Genetic counselors were recruited via National Society of Genetic Counselors e-blast; Program Directors received personal emails. Online surveys were completed by 216 supervisors, 98 non-supervisors, and 23 Program Directors. Respondents rated impact of 35 barriers; comparisons were made using Kruskal-Wallis and Wilcoxon ranked sum tests. Half of supervisors (51%) indicated willingness to increase supervision. All non-supervisors were willing to supervise. However, all agreed that being too busy impacted ability to supervise, highlighted by supervisors' most impactful barriers: lack of time, other responsibilities, intensive nature of supervision, desire for breaks, and unfilled positions. Non-supervisors noted unique barriers: distance, institutional barriers, and non-clinical roles. Program Directors' perceptions were congruent with those of genetic counselors with three exceptions they rated as impactful: lack of money, prefer not to supervise, and never been asked. In order to expand supervision networks and provide comprehensive student experiences, the profession must examine service delivery models to increase workplace efficiency, reconsider the supervision paradigm, and redefine what constitutes a countable case or place value on non-direct patient care experiences.

P072 Adaptation of NGS technology for engraftment monitoring in hematopoietic cell transplantation

Aim Increasingly, laboratories that support hematopoietic cell transplantation programs are implementing NGS technology for high resolution HLA genotyping. Extension of NGS to other laboratory services can provide efficiency in staffing and equipment usage. We have evaluated NGS of SNP and InDel polymorphisms for engraftment monitoring. Beyond workplace efficiencies, NGS of InDel polymorphism is not subject to stutter artifacts that can compromise results from the STR technology currently in wide use for chimerism analysis. Methods A panel of 49 polymorphisms on 20 chromosomes, comprising 37 SNPs on 18 chromosomes and 12 InDels on 10 chromosomes, was assembled. Initial amplification for the panel was reduced to 2 multiplexed PCRs with 5 ng of sample DNA per reaction. Total time for library preparation is 6 h, followed by a 7 h sequencing run on the MiSeq platform, with 1 h for chimerism analysis. Hands-on technologist time consists of just 3 of the 14 h time frame. Preliminary evaluation involved 4 sets of artificial mixtures of DNA from 2 unrelated individuals, with mixtures ranging from 10% to 0.1%, see Table. Results On average, 30 informative markers were identified between unrelated individuals. NGS achieved 0.5% sensitivity in all 4 sets of mixtures. The table shows the experimental values and standard deviation, SD, compared with the expected ratios among informative the polymorphisms. Informative InDel polymorphisms showed no false positive artifacts in unmixed specimens. Conclusions The results show that NGS technology provides informative, accurate and sensitive detection of a minority species in mixed specimens. With the 6 h library preparation and 7 h sequencing run, NGS offers rapid turnaround for result reporting. Additional testing is underway to assess the NGS technology in low cell count specimens and in mixtures of 3 or more unrelated individuals, intended to simulate retransplant and double cord donor transplant. Download : Download high-res image (233KB) Download : Download full-size image

Role of Supervisor’s Communication in Employee Engagement & Employee Wellbeing

Communication is the base to the smooth functioning of organizations and which plays a vital role in maintaining and developing organizations. The growth of an organization is seen through workplace efficiency which is dependent on employee wellbeing. Employee wellbeing affects how employees think and feel about their job and organization in turn which would positively or negatively influence their attitude and performance. Supervisor’s communication can greatly influence the employee’s workplace efficiency. This paper focuses on analyzing the role of supervisor’s communication in employee wellbeing and employee engagement. It identifies the main factors that affect employee wellbeing in the organization. It is evident from the research that organizations need to focus on improving the supervisor’s communication which will enhance employee wellbeing and employee engagement and result into positive attitude and improved performance on the job.

Self-reported symptoms of uninvestigated dypepsia among University staff in Ilorin, Nigeria

Objectives: Dyspepsia is a common gastrointestinal (GI) symptom which impacts negatively on quality of life, workplace efficiency and overall productivity. Many studies on dyspepsia in our environment are hospital based, but being a complaint frequently treated first by self-medication before presentation to the hospital, such studies may underestimate its prevalence. The objective of the study was to determine the prevalence of the dyspepsia and its associated factors among administrative staff of the College of Health Sciences, University of Ilorin, Nigeria.Methods: This was a cross-sectional study. Pretested structured, close-ended, interviewer-administered questionnaires were administered to 53 administrative staff selected across the different units by stratified random sampling. The questionnaire obtained information about subject's experiences of dyspeptic symptoms and presence of associated factors such as family history, non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDS), tobacco and alcohol use, and presence of diabetes mellitus (DM).Results: The prevalence of uninvestigated dyspepsia among the respondents was 37.5%. Age was significantly predictive of the occurrence of dyspepsia among the subjects Odds Ratio- 1.46, 95% Confidence Interval (1.042-2.045) P=0.03. Use of NSAIDS, presence of DM, family history and tobacco use were not predictive of occurrence of dyspepsia.Conclusion: The prevalence of dyspepsia is high among respondents in the study.Keywords: Dyspepsia, prevalence, university, Nigeria

Work Related Conflict Revolved via Mediation

The main method of analyzing conflict management focuses heavily on managerial interests of workplace efficiency and productivity. In this paper, the author provides an expertise view point analysis which orients business conflict resolution toward people rather than productivity. The paper provides a practical and meaningful way of dealing with conflict in a manner that acknowledges that specific cases may demand particularized decision-making focusing on individual perspectives. The paper draws on the equity theory to show how employees who perceive a system as fair and just can increase production and thus a positive perception of organizational behavior. Implications for future research could examine the relationship between organizational justice and the more global concepts of rule and level-headedness.

English in the international workplace in Russia

ABSTRACTThe study examines language practices in Russian offices of two international companies. We surveyed and interviewed employees about corporate language policies, their rationale of language choice in different contexts, and ideological underpinnings for the use of English in the workplace. Following Blommaert (2010), both offices are theorized as polycentric communicative spaces where English represents the global interactive regime stemming from the global corporate center. The Russian language orients at the local center and embodies the local interactive regime. Language mixing in the form of professional jargon is linked to the workplace efficiency center. It facilitates communication between colleagues and serves as a marker of the Russian professional identity in the English lingua franca workplace.

Use of videoconferencing to enhance care and improve health-care efficiency.

Multidisciplinary team meetings have proven benefits in reducing waiting times for diagnosis and treatment, but they increase pressure on clinicians and require new measures to improve workplace efficiency. Using videoconferencing in the multidisciplinary team meeting can enhance and improve health-care efficiency.

Assessment of Ergonomic Decencies; at Work Dentists

Background: To evaluate work place efficiency and prevalence of musculoskeletal problems in practicing local dentists. Materials and methods: This multicenter cross sectional study was conducted in duration of one year, a total of 66 dentists, who met the inclusion and exclusion criteria participated in this study. The Data collection was obtained by means of a structured questionnaire to evaluate ergonomics. The variables evaluated were: presence of pain, affected zones, gender, small breaks between work. Results: After statistical analysis it was state that higher numbers of practicing dentists were suffering from musculoskeletal problems of some kind. Conclusion: It is important to increase the awareness regarding the term ergonomics so dentists can be release from doing work in an awkward posture and can provide high quality service without threatening their professional careers.

The Methods for Increasing of the Efficiency in the Intelligent Assembly Cell

Efficiency of industrial production lines is crucial as it results in an improved production and utilization of available resources. Industry companies are constantly looking for new ways to improve workplace efficiency. Manufacturing industry trends to employ more flexible assembly cells with changes in programs and configurations for robots, and to achieve a high manufacturing efficiency. The various problems inherent in current mechanized product assembly are outlined, and potential organizational, technological, and engineering measures aimed at increasing the efficiency of product assembly are examined. Future developments in automated assembly are predicted. In order to improve the effectiveness of the cell, it is important to recognize measure and reduce losses in the assembly cell. The most effective method is to analyze the OEE (Overall Equipment Effectiveness) of the cell. It is developed design of assembly system under the project an intelligent assembly cell at the Institute of Production Systems and Applied Mechanics where after process running and debugging, based on the process analysis was evaluated, it is necessary to increase the efficiency of the cell. Deployment of monitoring, visualization and simulation are predicted defects that reduce overall system effectiveness. The project is aiming to develop an efficient intelligent manufacturing system integrating real time data collection, simulation, optimization and synthesis.

Organizational Leadership And Subordinate Effect In Utahs Certified Public Accounting Profession

Using the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (Bass and Avolio 2004), we test the correlation of transformational, transactional, and passive-avoidant leadership styles to subordinate perceptions of workplace efficiency, effectiveness, and satisfaction. Results, from a convenience sample of 103 accounting professionals in 11 CPA firms in Utah, show that transformational leadership has the largest positive correlation. Transactional leadership is less positively correlated. The passive-avoidant style is negatively correlated. Recommendations for implementing transformational leadership are provided.

Utilizing Everyday Technology to Increase Workplace Efficiency

The purpose of the project was to create a working calculator to provide requested data in seconds. This poster provides guidance in creating an enteral nutrition(EN) calculator tailored to the clinician's hospital.

Working conditions, health and productivity among dentists in Swedish public dental care – a prospective study during a 5-year period of rationalisation

In recent decades, comprehensive rationalisations have been implemented in public dentistry in Sweden. How rationalisations affect working conditions, health and production from a long-term perspective has been poorly investigated. This study aims to analyse changes and associations in dentists' working conditions, health and productivity during a 5-year period. In 2003 and 2008, 65 dentists responded to questionnaires measuring work conditions and health. Treatment times for patients and productivity were tracked in electronic registers. Paired t-tests showed that the number of treated adult patients per dentist increased, and perceived physical working conditions improved while perceived work control and leadership deteriorated. Structural equation modelling showed that physical factors were important for health and productivity. When assessing risks in the work environment, there is a need to understand the interaction of effects on working conditions and health due to rationalisations so as to increase the sustainability of production systems. Practioner Summary: Dentistry in Sweden has undergone considerable change. Questionnaire surveys with dentists, undertaken in 2003 and 2008, found that the present rationalisations resulted in improved perceived physical working conditions. Aspects of the psychosocial working environment had deteriorated, however. This is a concern as health and workability are important for workplace efficiency.

Six Sigma: Just More of the Same?

This article tells how Six Sigma builds on a progression of earlier approaches to increasing workplace efficiencies and improving product quality. The article explores the productivity improving contributions of Adam Smith, Frederick Taylor, W. Edwards Deming, the Systems school, and Michael Hammer, showing that Six Sigma ends up combining the strengths of these contributions. It offers an alternative approach focused more on the non-quantifiable elements, an approach that might be the next step in the progression.

"The End of Collaboration": Industrial Relations' Re-engagement of the Labor Question and Progressive Labor Policy Activism

This roundtable is a frank state-of-the-field discussion by leading scholars of industrial relations. Whereas the decline of organized labor has likely helped push labor history into new arenas of inquiry, the near-collapse of collective bargaining represents a more existential threat to the discipline of industrial relations. In the event, as four experts attest, the “mother field” or industrial relations – labor economics is now looking to its labor history offspring as one source of re-inspiration. Following Michael Hillard's introductory overview, Thomas A. Kochan, Rosemary Batt, and Richard McIntyre set the current crisis in the context of the dispersion of both the institutional economics of the long New Deal era as well as the class-collaborative “Japanese” or “Saturn Motors” models of workplace efficiency that (briefly) succeeded them. A more combative policy agenda together with a Marxist-inspired theoretical critique—both looking to connect with labor history scholarship—has most recently come to the fore.

Guest Editors’ Page

Technology is revolutionizing the field of visual impairment and blindness, just as it is revolutionizing every other field of endeavor. This JVIB Special Issue on Technology is a rare opportunity to step back and reflect on how pervasively technology is changing education, employment, research, and society, and to look forward to what this means for the community of people dedicated to improving the lives of individuals with visual impairments. George Kerscher, the visionary leader in e-book technology interviewed in the Speaker's Corner in this issue, notes that the time when technology training was optional has passed. Young or old, low vision or blind, with additional disabilities or not, everyone in our modern society needs to use technology daily and effectively to access information. Dr. Kerscher makes a strong case that we cannot afford to neglect technology in education and rehabilitation for people who are visually impaired. Dr. Kerscher's personal example of getting in front of technology change is a signal one. Instead of waiting for the e-book revolution to happen and then spending a decade catching up, as has been traditional in the accessible technology field, he jumped into the fray and wrestled the standard format for Talking Books for people who are blind or print disabled into one that is now the primary commercial e-book standard. In a time where Amazon.com, a Seattle-based multinational electronic commerce company, sells more e-books than print books, thanks to leaders like Dr. Kerscher and the field's advocacy groups, we are getting close to a day when standard e-books work as well for blind people as they do for sighted people. With braille notetakers able to store thousands of e-books in accessible form, blind people have never had access to as many braille books as they do today. Innovation and reform initiatives demand that we change and transform practices and services using technology. This shift will have profound implications for students and adults with visual impairments. In the United States, we are about to abandon the traditional textbook with the advance of e-book technology coinciding with the advent of Common Core State Standards in mathematics and English language arts. Where and when students learn will change, and teachers will need to work with the technology the student has in his or her pocket. We are on the brink of a revolution in special education research: New technology will make it possible to collect data on tens of thousands of students in a cost-effective way. We will be able to conduct research about what really works for people with visual impairments at an unprecedented scale, which might change what we know and do about the best ways to teach and support. For a year, we have considered the key ideas for the field in the area of technology. They vary and change, but certain broad themes seem constant, such as human rights, autonomy, affordability, literacy, accessibility, equality, and sustainability. These themes emerge from complex issues that intertwine in many ways to affect the independence and quality of life for people with visual impairments. Technology can greatly advance these important themes, but it can also create major barriers. The World Wide Web, for example, is becoming the primary location for communication, education, and workplace efficiency, with access through electronic tools that are portable. However, this trend has dramatically impacted issues of accessibility for many people with disabilities, which affects autonomy, literacy, and communication at a human rights level. As a field, we need to ensure that these fundamental changes in society's use of technology lead to solutions for all people. And although technology trends provide the opportunity for greater accessibility, they can also increase the challenge of affordability for technology solutions for people with visual impairments. …

Measuring Harbor Management, Stevedoring and Warehousing Performance of Taiwanese Container Ports Using the Multi-activity Network DEA Model

This paper presents an alternative approach to evaluating the overall efficiency and performance of Taiwanese container ports. Specifically, a parallel activity with series structure concept in the form of data envelopment analysis (MNDEA) is used to construct a model that applies to three different activities: harbor management, stevedoring and warehousing operations. We will further divide each activity into two process types, production processes and services processes. We will also adopt a Delphi survey approach and use the Analytic Network Process (ANP) to identify these processes’influence dependence and their degree of importance for the MNDEA model setting. An empirical application demonstrates the performance of Taiwanese container ports by using MNDEA with window analysis techniques via the directional distance functionThe results demonstrate that the application is effective in indicating and/or suggesting resource-adjustments, while considering which undesirable output levels and shared inputs were involved. The results also present directions for possible improvements in workplace efficiency.

The Developmental Role of SMEs in the Arab Countries

Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) have become one of the key instruments to face economic and social problems and achieve development objectives in most industrial and developing countries. SME contributions to employment creation, productivity improvement, and income generation are underutilized in the Arab countries at a time when economic transformation is shifting the onus for productivity from the public sector to the private sector. Population growth and economic restructuring in many Arab countries make the creation of substantial new employment opportunities a necessity. To do so, Arab enterprises must favorably face increased competition in both local and export market through improvements in product quality and work place efficiency. Sheer survival in theses business conditions forces both large companies and SMEs to restructure themselves in order to meet the global competition. Statistics show that SMEs represent 90% of total companies in the vast majority of economies worldwide and provide 40-80% of total job opportunities in addition to contributing largely to GDPs of many countries. The aim of this research is to study the developmental role of SMEs in the Arab countries