Workforce

About: Workforce is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 32140 publications have been published within this topic receiving 449850 citations. The topic is also known as: labour force & labor force.

Identifying Key Challenges Facing Healthcare Systems In Africa And Potential Solutions.

Abstract: Introduction Healthcare systems in Africa suffer from neglect and underfunding, leading to severe challenges across the six World Health Organization (WHO) pillars of healthcare delivery. We conducted this study to identify the principal challenges in the health sector in Africa and their solutions for evidence-based decisions, policy development and program prioritization. Methods The study was conducted as part of a recent African Epidemiological Association Meeting in Maputo, Mozambique with participants drawn from 11 African countries, Cuba, Portugal and the United Kingdom. Participants were divided into 10 groups, consisting of 7 to 10 persons each. Brainstorming approaches were used in a structured, modified nominal group process exercise to identify key challenges and strategies to mitigate healthcare service challenges in Africa. Identified challenges and solutions were prioritised by ranking 1-5, with 1 most important and 5 being least important. Results The first three challenges identified were inadequate human resources (34.29%), inadequate budgetary allocation to health (30%) and poor leadership and management (8.45%). The leading solutions suggested included training and capacity building for health workers (29.69%), increase budgetary allocation to health (20.31%) and advocacy for political support and commitment (12.31%). Conclusion The underdeveloped healthcare systems in Africa need radical solutions with innovative thought to break the current impasse in service delivery. For example, public-private initiatives should be sought, where multinational companies extracting resources from Africa might be encouraged to plough some of the profits back into healthcare for the communities providing the workforce for their commercial activities. Most problems and their solutions lie within human resources, budget allocation and management. These should be accorded the highest priority for better health outcomes.

Place(ment) matters: students' clinical experiences and their preferences for first employers.

Abstract: Background Although a significant volume of nursing research has focused on students’ experiences of clinical placements, to date, none has considered these experiences in the context of workforce recruitment and specifically how they may impact upon preferences for working for health care providers Methods In this context, the research used a place-sensitive geographical perspective and a combined questionnaire (n = 650), interview (n = 30) and focus group (n = 7) method to collect data on the complex range of clinical experiences which together impact upon the perceived attractiveness of different health care settings Findings The data identified a range of experiential factors associated with mentorship, ward management, learning opportunities and racism An important finding was that although students’ experiences are obtained at the micro ward level, even if they may not necessarily reflect what happens throughout the hospital, they potentially impact, both positively and negatively, upon their broader perceptions of the hospital and the likelihood of seeking work there Implications The study highlighted a variety of issues that should be addressed by both higher education institutions and hospitals so that they may be able to provide a more consistent and positive experience for students In the longer term, this may pay dividends through increased recruitment of new graduates

The Immigrant Experience: Changing Employment and Income Patterns in Sweden, 1970 - 1993.

Abstract: This thesis explores the changing patterns of employment and income assimilation among male immigrants to Sweden. In brief, the results of this work are that immigrants have been facing an increasingly difficult time integrating into the Swedish economy. This difficulty has not been caused by decreasing “quality” of the newer immigrant cohorts, as has often been the argument in the literature. Rather, the problems are a result of shifts in production and organization which led to shifting labor demand. The Swedish economy of 1993 demanded a totally different type of labor than it did in 1970, with increased emphasis on informal, country-specific skills. This shift in demand has had negative consequences for immigrants, with those who are culturally most similar to native Swedes performing much better than those with greater cultural distance. The thesis sets up a number of hypotheses regarding the role of informal, country-specific skills for the assimilation of immigrants into the Swedish economy. In general, it is hypothesized that increased reliance on technology in the workplace will serve to block immigrant access to well paid, or “suitable,” employment. This is because shifts towards computerization, at least in recent years, have also involved shifts away from traditional, hierarchical organizational structures, and more inter-personal communication and dependence. The thesis begins with a discussion of where immigrants have found employment over the past thirty years, and what type of employment was actually obtained. Here there is a discussion of the categories blue-collar, white-collar and self-employed at an aggregate level. Once this general mapping of the immigrant workforce is completed, the 1970 and 1990 censuses of the population are examined. Here, using OLS and logistic regressions, the fact that there has occurred a shift in income and employment performance between 1970 and 1990 is made evident. It is also fairly clear that this shift has not been to the benefit of immigrants. Since two cross-sections separated by twenty years do not give any dynamic understanding of the problem, a longitudinal database was also used. Here, event history models are brought into play, combining micro data with macro time-series representing the infusion of technology into the Swedish economy. Here we can clearly see that the increase in technology is correlated with a decline in the economic position of immigrants, and that this decline increases in magnitude as cultural distance from Sweden increases. The final two chapters then examine the extent to which the hypotheses were correct, and tie up the information into a package which describes the immigrant experience in the Swedish labor market over the past thirty years as one of deterioration and increasing difficulty. (Less)

Improving Attitudes Toward People With Disabilities: Experimenting With an Educational Intervention

Abstract: Individuals with disabilities comprise approximately 20% of the US population and constitute a significant minority group (Bush, 2001; National Organization on Disability (NOD), 2002) They are relatively underrepresented in the workforce, however, in spite of technological advances and changes in the physical environments of most businesses and public settings due to the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) in 1990 (Koss-Feder, 1999) Unemployment rates for people with disabilities, particularly people with severe disabilities, have remained stable at 70% for the past decade (Bush, 2001; Kennedy and Olney, 2001) Many advocates for the disabled, as well as individuals with disabilities themselves, believe that one of the primary obstacles to increased employment is the negative attitudes that employers and co-workers hold regarding people with disabilities (Chima, 1998; Kennedy and Olney, 2001; Koss-Feder, 1999) These attitudes, which often stem from negative stereotypes and a lack of accurate knowledge, prevent people with disabilities from getting hired, being employed in sufficiently challenging jobs, and advancing in their careers Although attitudes are often difficult to change, one of the most effective methods for doing so is to provide new information that challenges existing beliefs (Fishbein and Ajzen, 1975) With this in mind, the primary goal of this research was to test whether individual attitudes about the disabled could be changed by increasing knowledge about people with disabilities in the workplace through a brief educational intervention In so doing, we hoped to add to the growing academic literature in management on people with disabilities In the sections that follow, we provide a brief overview of the employment status of people with disabilities, followed by a short discussion of research on attitudes toward people with disabilities in the workplace We then describe the methods we employed to test our main research question and summarize the results of our study The article concludes with a discussion of our findings and the limitations of the present study, as well as a discussion of opportunities for future research Employment Status of People with Disabilities The ADA (1991) defines disability as a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits a person's ability to perform major life activities such as walking, reading, or performing self-care activities like bathing or eating The nature of the impairments can range from "invisible" disabilities such as heart disease or schizophrenia, to visible disabilities such as paraplegia or mental retardation The number of individuals in the US who have a disability is currently estimated to be around 54 million people (NOD, 2002) As life expectancies and advances in medical technology continue to increase, the number of people living with some kind of disabling condition will also rise, increasing both the numbers and significance of this group In contrast with their prevalence in the general population, people with disabilities are relatively underrepresented in the American workforce According to recent research, only 28% of people with disabilities who were of working age were employed, compared to 76% of people without disabilities (LaPlante et al, 1996) Similarly, a 1998 NOD study confirmed that only 32% of people with disabilities were working part- or fulltime, compared to 81% of the non-disabled population Of the people with disabilities who were not working, more than two-thirds said they would rather be working than unemployed (NOD, 2002) The financial ramifications of unemployment and underemployment of people with disabilities is addressed by economist Douglas Kruse, who notes: If only 1 million more people with disabilities worked, there would be as much as a $212 billion annual increase in earned income; a $12 billion annual decrease in means-tested cash income payments; a $286 million annual decrease in the use of food stamps; a $1 …

Privatization, Liberalization, Wages and Employment: Theory and Evidence for the UK

Abstract: Most agency-based privatization models are of the owner/manager relation and ignore the labour market. Yet in the 1980s there were profound changes in public sector and privatized firms to wages and employment. We develop a bargaining model of the manager/workforce relation, that explains employment and wages when firms are privatized, government objectives become more commercial and markets are liberalised. Using data on 14 UK companies, 1972-1988, that were publicly owned in 1972 we find: (a) employment fell following the change to more commercial objectives; (b) wages were only slightly affected by this, but fell if the firm lost market power.