Nursing home administrators’ perspectives on a study feedback report : a cross sectional survey

Background
This project is part of the Translating Research in Elder Care (TREC) program of research, a multi-level and longitudinal research program being conducted in 36 nursing homes in three Canadian Prairie Provinces. The overall goal of TREC is to improve the quality of care for older persons living in nursing homes and the quality of work life for care providers. The purpose of this paper is to report on development and evaluation of facility annual reports (FARs) from facility administrators’ perspectives on the usefulness, meaningfulness, and understandability of selected data from the TREC survey.
Methods
A cross sectional survey design was used in this study. The feedback reports were developed in collaboration with participating facility administrators. FARs presented results in four contextual areas: workplace culture, feedback processes, job satisfaction, and staff burnout. Six weeks after FARs were mailed to each administrator, we conducted structured telephone interviews with administrators to elicit their evaluation of the FARs. Administrators were also asked if they had taken any actions as a result of the FAR. Descriptive and inferential statistics, as well as content analysis for open-ended questions, were used to summarize findings.
Results
Thirty-one facility administrators (representing thirty-two facilities) participated in the interviews. Six administrators had taken action and 18 were planning on taking action as a result of FARs. The majority found the four contextual areas addressed in FAR to be useful, meaningful, and understandable. They liked the comparisons made between data from years one and two and between their facility and other TREC study sites in their province. Twenty-two indicated that they would like to receive information on additional areas such as aggressive behaviours of residents and information sharing. Twenty-four administrators indicated that FARs contained enough information, while eight found FARs ‘too short’. Administrators who reported that the FAR contained enough information were more likely to take action within their facilities than administrators who reported that they needed more information.
Conclusions
Although the FAR was brief, the presentation of the four contextual areas was relevant to the majority of administrators and prompted them to plan or to take action within their facility.

The influence of job, team and organizational level resources on employee well-being, engagement, commitment and extra-role performance : test of a model

Purpose – Worker well-being continues to be fundamental to the study of work and a primary consideration for how organizations can achieve competitive advantage and sustainable and ethical work practices (Cartwright and Holmes; Harter, Schmidt and Keyes; Wright and Cropanzano). The science and practice of employee engagement, a key indicator of employee well-being, continues to evolve with ongoing incremental refinements to existing models and measures. This study aims to elaborate the Job Demands-Resources model of work engagement (Bakker and Demerouti) by examining how organizational, team and job level factors interrelate to influence engagement and well-being and downstream outcome variables such as affective commitment and extra-role behaviour.

Design/methodology/approach – Structural equations modelling of survey data obtained from 3,437 employees of a large multi-national mining company was used to test the important direct and indirect influence of organizational focused resources (a culture of fairness and support), team focused resources (team climate) and job level resources (career development, autonomy, supervisor support, and role clarity) on employee well-being, engagement, extra-role behaviour and organizational commitment.

Findings – The fit of the proposed measurement and structural models met criterion levels and the structural model accounted for sizable proportions of the variance in engagement/wellbeing (66 percent), extra-role-behaviour (52 percent) and commitment (69 percent).

Research limitations/implications – Study limitations (e.g. cross-sectional research design) and future opportunities are outlined.

Originality/value – The study demonstrates important extensions to the Job Demands-Resources model and provides researchers and practitioners with a simple but powerful motivational framework, a suite of measures, and a map of their inter-relationships which can be used to help understand, develop and manage employee well-being and engagement and their outcomes.

Age discrimination in the evaluation of job applicants

This study investigated the nature of age discrimination against older job applicants. One hundred fifty-six participants (102 students; 54 organization based) evaluated a hypothetical job applicant's (aged 33–66 years) work-related competences and likelihood of being hired. Applicant age affected hiring decisions for both samples where there was a preference for hiring applicants aged 42–48 years. Applicants at both the older and younger ends of the continuum were less likely to be hired, with the oldest applicants (over 54 years) being the least likely to be hired. Although the applicants' age negatively affected evaluations of their trainability and sociability, the effect of applicant age on hiring evaluations was not mediated by these work-related competencies, suggesting that age discrimination occurs via direct bias against older workers.

Subjective job task analyses for physically demanding occupations : what is best practice?

Workers in physically demanding occupations (PDOs) are frequently subjected to physical selection tests. To avoid legal ramifications, workplaces must be able to show that any personnel selection procedures reflect the inherent requirements of the job. A job task analysis (JTA) is fundamental in determining the work tasks required for employees. To date, there are no published instructions guiding PDO researchers on how to conduct job task analyses. Job task analysis research for non-PDOs offers some insight into the expected reliability and validity of data obtained on the most prevalent task domains in job analysis (importance, frequency, time spent and difficulty). This review critiques such research, and the existing published material on JTA of PDOs, and provides recommendations for future research and practice.

Sticking around : why and how some social workers stay in the profession

Although much is known about why social workers leave the profession, much less is known about what enables some social workers to remain working in highly stressful situations for many years and retain a passion for their work. Based on in-depth interviews with six Australian social workers with at least 10 years practice experience, factors associated with retention included self-awareness, a sense of perspective, having a strong professional identity, a sense of humour, the ability to recognise and respond to the emotional impact of the work, clear separation of work and home, and a mental interlude of some intermediate activity between leaving work and arriving home. Whereas previous research has depicted job change as a sign of burnout, for participants in this study changing jobs was regarded as a preventive measure which enabled them to continue in social work.

Dedicated emergency theatres improve service delivery and surgeons' job satisfaction

Background
There are well-described benefits to separating emergency and elective surgery. Geelong Hospital lacked the resources to implement a separate acute surgical unit, but instituted daily dedicated emergency general surgery operating sessions, managed by an on-site consultant. This study aims to assess the impact of this on service delivery and surgeons' job satisfaction.
Methods
From 1 February 2011, daily half-day operating lists were allocated for general surgical emergencies. Patients treated on these lists were studied prospectively until 31 December 2011. Theatre waiting times and hospital stay were compared with the previous year. A quality-of-life questionnaire was administered to participating surgeons before the project commenced and after 6 months.
Results
A total of 966 patients underwent surgery during an emergency general surgery admission in the control period, and 984 underwent surgery during the study period. The median time from arrival in the emergency department (ED) to surgery was reduced from 19 (18–21) h in the control group to 18 (17–19) h in the study group (P = 0.033). The time from booking surgery to operation was reduced from 4.8 (4.3–5.4) h to 3.9 (3.5–4.3) h (P < 0.0001). For patients undergoing emergency laparotomy, the time from booking to surgery was reduced from 3.1 (2.2–4.1) to 2.4 (1.8–2.9) h, and hospital stay was reduced from 13 (11–15) to 10 (9–12) days (P = 0.0089). The surgeons' responses to the questionnaires showed improvement in job satisfaction (P < 0.0001).
Conclusion
This intervention has improved service delivery for emergency surgery patients, and improved the participating surgeons' job satisfaction.

Solving a multiobjective job shop scheduling problem using Pareto Archived Cuckoo Search

This paper investigates a new approach for solving the multiobjective job shop scheduling problem, namely the Cuckoo Search ( CS) approach. The requirement is to schedule jobs on a single machine so that the total material waste is minimised as well as the total tardiness time. The material waste is quantified in terms of saving factors to show the reduction in material that can be achieved when producing two jobs with the same materials in sequence. The estimated saving factor is used to calculate a cost savings for each job based on its material type. A formulation of multiobjective optimisation problems is adopted to generate the set of schedules that maximise the overall cost savings and minimise the total tardiness time. where all trade-offs are considered for the two conflicting objectives. A Pareto Archived Multiobjective Cuckoo Search (PAMOCS) is developed to find the set ofnondominated Pareto optimal solutions. The solution accuracy of PAMOCS is shown by comparing the closeness of the obtained solutions to the true Pareto front generated by the complete enumeration methad. Results shaw that CS is a very effective and promising technique to solve job shop scheduling problems.

The contribution of job and partner satisfaction to the homeostatic defense of subjective wellbeing

Two studies investigate subjective wellbeing (SWB) homeostasis. The first investigates the contribution of job satisfaction (JS) and partner satisfaction (PS) to the homeostatic defense of SWB. The extant model of homeostasis does not include either variable. The second study investigates the relationship between Homeostatically Protected Mood (HPMood) and other factors involved in the homeostatic model. It has been proposed that HPMood is the basic, biologically determined, positive mood that saturates SWB and other related variables, and forms the basis of the SWB set-point. Thus, if HPMood is an individual difference and it perfuses other homeostatic variables, then HPMood should be responsible for much of the shared variance between such variables. Two comparative samples are involved. One is a group of 171 Hong Kong Chinese recruited through convenience sampling. The other is a group of 343 Australians recruited via a general population survey. Results indicate that both JS and PS predict significant variance in Global Life Satisfaction beyond the existing factors in the homeostatic model. It is also found that, after controlling for the effect of HPMood, the strength of correlations between SWB and other homeostatic variables is significantly diminished. The implications of these findings are discussed.

Job satisfaction and 'welfare-to-work' : is any job a good job for Australian mothers?

This exploratory study sought to assess the job satisfaction of employed Australian single mothers who had mandatory employment participation requirements. In particular, we sought to identify the characteristics of the job and the individual that were closely associated with participant’s job satisfaction. Self‑report data on job satisfaction, employment characteristics and parenting stress were collected from 155 employed single mothers. Participant job satisfaction was compared to female Australian population norms and linear regression analyses determined the job‑related and individual predictors of single mothers’ job satisfaction. Findings from this exploratory study revealed that single mothers involved in a mandatory welfare‑to‑work program experienced significantly lower job satisfaction than the Australian female population. The individual variable, parental distress, negatively predicted each of the six job satisfaction domains while being employed on a casual basis was inversely associated with three domains (job security, work hours and overall job satisfaction). The Australian government purported that making the transition from welfare to work would improve wellbeing for program participants, under the assumption that ‘any job’s a good job’. However, the relatively low levels of job satisfaction experienced by single mothers in the current study provide little support for this assumption.

Polyandry in a marine turtle : females make the best of a bad job

The female perspective on reproductive strategies remains one of the most active areas of debate in biology. Even though a single mating is often sufficient to satisfy the fertilization needs of most females and the act of further mating incurs costs, multiple paternity within broods or clutches is a common observation in nature. Direct or indirect advantage to females is the most popular explanation. However, the ubiquity of this explanation is being challenged by an increasing number of cases for which benefits are not evident. For the first time, we test possible fitness correlates of multiple paternity in a marine turtle, an organism that has long attracted attention in this area of research. Contrary to the wide-spread assumption that multiple mating by female marine turtles confers fitness benefits, none were apparent. In this study, the environment played a far stronger role in determining the success of clutches than whether paternity had been single or multiple. A more likely explanation for observations of multiply sired clutches in marine turtles is that these are successful outcomes of male coercion, where females have conceded to superfluous matings as a compromise. Thus, multiple matings by female marine turtles may be a form of damage control as females attempt to make the best of a bad job in response to male harassment.

GLOA : a new job scheduling algorithm for grid computing

The purpose of grid computing is to produce a virtual supercomputer by using free resources available through widespread networks such as the Internet. This resource distribution, changes in resource availability, and an unreliable communication infrastructure pose a major challenge for efficient resource allocation. Because of the geographical spread of resources and their distributed management, grid scheduling is considered to be a NP-complete problem. It has been shown that evolutionary algorithms offer good performance for grid scheduling. This article uses a new evaluation (distributed) algorithm inspired by the effect of leaders in social groups, the group leaders' optimization algorithm (GLOA), to solve the problem of scheduling independent tasks in a grid computing system. Simulation results comparing GLOA with several other evaluation algorithms show that GLOA produces shorter makespans.

The influence of organisational commitment, job involvement and utility perceptions on trainees’ motivation to improve work through learning

Workplace training is a key strategy often used by organisations to optimise performance. Further, trainee motivation is a key determinant of the degree to which the material learned in a training programme will be transferred to the workplace, enhancing the performance of the trainee. This study investigates the relationship between several components of the Revised Human Resource Development (HRD) Evaluation and Research Model. This model provides a framework for diagnosing and understanding the causal influences of HRD intervention outcomes on training effectiveness. Data were obtained from an online questionnaire completed by 105 employees of various organisations. Findings revealed that affective organisational commitment, job involvement and utility perceptions are predictors of motivation to learn and transfer learning. An interaction effect was found, with increased affective organisational commitment predicting greater motivation to learn when training was of lower perceived utility. These findings suggest that the design and delivery of training should emphasise the relevance and utility of the programme in order to encourage greater trainee motivation and maximise return on investment. Additionally, implementing strategies aimed at promoting organisational commitment would appear beneficial.