Service staff attitudes, organisational practices and performance drivers

We provide conceptual and empirical insights elucidating how organizational practices influence service staff attitudes and behaviors and how the latter set affects organizational performance drivers. Our analyses suggest that service organizations can enhance their performance by putting in place strategies and practices that strengthen the service-oriented behaviors of their employees and reduce their intentions to leave the organization. Improved performance is accomplished through both the delivery of high quality services (enhancing organizational effectiveness) and the maintenance of frontline staff(increasing organizational efficiency). Specifically, service-oriented business strategies in the form of organizational-level service orientation and practices in the form of training directly influence the manifest service-oriented behaviors of staff. Training also indirectly affects the intention of frontline staff to leave the organization; it increases job satisfaction, which, in turn has an impact on affective commitment. Both affective and instrumental commitment were hypothesized to reduce the intentions of frontline staff to leave the organization, however only affective commitment had a significant effect.

Required hours of practice for learner drivers : a comparison between two Australian jurisdictions

Problem: This study considers whether requiring learner drivers to complete a set number of hours while on a learner licence affects the amount of hours of supervised practice that they undertake. It compares the amount of practice that learners in Queensland and New South Wales report undertaking. At the time the study was conducted, learner drivers in New South Wales were required to complete 50 hours of supervised practice while those from Queensland were not. Method: Participants were approached outside driver licensing centres after they had just completed their practical driving test to obtain their provisional (intermediate) licence. Those agreeing to participate were interviewed over the phone later and asked a range of questions to obtain information including socio-demographic details and amount of supervised practice completed. Results: There was a significant difference in the amount of practice that learners reported undertaking. Participants from New South Wales reported completing a significantly greater amount of practice (M = 73.3 hours, sd = 29.12 hours) on their learner licence than those from Queensland (M = 64.1 hours, sd = 51.05 hours). However, the distribution of hours of practice among the Queensland participants was bimodal in nature. Participants from Queensland reported either completing much less or much more practice than the New South Wales average. Summary: While it appears that the requirement that learner drivers complete a set number of hours may increase the average amount of hours of practice obtained, it may also serve to discourage drivers from obtaining additional practice, over and above the required hours. Impact on Industry: The results of this study suggest that the implications of requiring learner drivers to complete a set number of hours of supervised practice are complex. In some cases, policy makers may inadvertently limit the amount of hours learners obtain to the mandated amount rather than encouraging them to obtain as much practice as possible.

Submission to Travelsafe : vehicle impoundment for drink drivers

This submission has been prepared in response to the Parliamentary Travelsafe Committee's Inquiry into vehicle impoundment for drink drivers to address research relevant to the committee’s investigation into whether: • Drink drivers in Queensland continue to drive illegally after being apprehended by police or disqualified from driving by the courts; • The incidence of repeat drink driving undermines the effectiveness of existing penalties for drink driving offences; and • Vehicle impoundment and/or ignition key confiscation are cost-effective deterrents that will reduce drink driving recidivism, relating to other existing or potential methods of managing offenders.

Impact of cognitive load and frustration on drivers��� speech [Abstract]

Secondary tasks such as cell phone calls or interaction with automated speech dialog systems (SDSs) increase the driver’s cognitive load as well as the probability of driving errors. This study analyzes speech production variations due to cognitive load and emotional state of drivers in real driving conditions. Speech samples were acquired from 24 female and 17 male subjects (approximately 8.5 h of data) while talking to a co-driver and communicating with two automated call centers, with emotional states (neutral, negative) and the number of necessary SDS query repetitions also labeled. A consistent shift in a number of speech production parameters (pitch, first format center frequency, spectral center of gravity, spectral energy spread, and duration of voiced segments) was observed when comparing SDS interaction against co-driver interaction; further increases were observed when considering negative emotion segments and the number of requested SDS query repetitions. A mel frequency cepstral coefficient based Gaussian mixture classifier trained on 10 male and 10 female sessions provided 91% accuracy in the open test set task of distinguishing co-driver interactions from SDS interactions, suggesting—together with the acoustic analysis—that it is possible to monitor the level of driver distraction directly from their speech.

Maintaining nutrition in aged care residents with a train-the-trainer intervention and nutrition coordinator

Objective: To investigate the impact of a train-the-trainer program on the nutritional status of older people in residential care. ----- Design: Prospective, randomized controlled study. Setting: Eight nursing homes in Southeast Queensland, Australia. ----- Participants: A total of 352 residents participated - 245 were female (69.6%). The mean age was 84.2 years and the majority (79.4%) were classified as high dependency. ----- Intervention: Residents from four nursing homes were randomly selected for a nutrition education program coordinated by Nutrition Coordinators. Residents from the other four nursing homes (control) received usual care. ----- Measurements: The Subjective Global Assessment was used to determine prevalence of malnutrition at baseline and six months post intervention. The Resident Classification Scale measured functional dependency. Prescribed diet, fluids, oral hygiene status and allied health referrals were obtained by chart audit. ----- Results: Approximately half the residents were well nourished with 49.4% moderately or severely malnourished. Residents in the intervention group were more likely to maintain or improve their nutritional status compared with the control group who were more likely to experience a deterioration (P=0.027). The odds of the control group being malnourished post test was 1.6 times more likely compared with the intervention group but this did not reach statistical significance (P=0.1). ----- Conclusion: The results of the study encourage the implementation of a Nutrition Coordinator program to maintain nutritional status of aged care residents. Nevertheless, malnutrition rates continue to be unacceptably high. In a rapidly aging society, the aged care sector needs to confront malnutrition and provide better resources for staff to take measures against this problem.

Head and eye movements and lane keeping in drivers with hemianopia and quadrantanopia compared to controls

Purpose: To compare the eye and head movements and lane-keeping of drivers with hemianopia and quadrantanopia with that of age-matched controls when driving under real world conditions. Methods: Participants included 22 hemianopes and 8 quadrantanopes (M age 53 yrs) and 30 persons with normal visual fields (M age 52 yrs) who were ≥ 6 months from the brain injury date and either a current driver or aiming to resume driving. All participants drove an instrumented dual-brake vehicle along a 14-mile route in traffic that included non-interstate city driving and interstate driving. Driving performance was scored using a standardised assessment system by two “backseat” raters and the Vigil Vanguard system which provides objective measures of speed, braking and acceleration, cornering, and video-based footage from which eye and head movements and lane-keeping can be derived. Results: As compared to drivers with normal visual fields, drivers with hemianopia or quadrantanopia on average were significantly more likely to drive slower, to exhibit less excessive cornering forces or acceleration, and to execute more shoulder movements off the seat. Those hemianopic and quadrantanopic drivers rated as safe to drive by the backseat evaluator made significantly more excursive eye movements, exhibited more stable lane positioning, less sudden braking events and drove at higher speeds than those rated as unsafe, while there was no difference between safe and unsafe drivers in head movements. Conclusions: Persons with hemianopic and quadrantanopic field defects rated as safe to drive have different driving characteristics compared to those rated as unsafe when assessed using objective measures of driving performance.

High Court changes position on standard of care of learner drivers

Since the High Court decision of Cook v Cook (1986) 162 CLR 376, a person who voluntarily undertakes to instruct a learner driver of a motor vehicle is owed a lower standard of care than that owed to other road users. The standard of care was still expressed to be objective; however, it took into account the inexperience of the learner driver. Therefore, a person instructing a learner driver was owed a duty of care the standard being that of a reasonable learner driver. This ‘special relationship’ was said to exist because of the passenger’s knowledge of the driver’s inexperience and lack of skill. On 28 August 2008 the High Court handed down its decision in Imbree v McNeilly [2008] HCA 40, overruling Cook v Cook.

Training and development for transitional employment in mature-aged manual workers

The purpose of the current article was to explore perceptions of transitional employment and training and development amongst blue collar workers employed in technical, trade, operations or physical and labour-intensive occupations within the local government system.

Analysis and detection of cognitive load and frustration in drivers' speech

Non-driving related cognitive load and variations of emotional state may impact a driver’s capability to control a vehicle and introduces driving errors. Availability of reliable cognitive load and emotion detection in drivers would benefit the design of active safety systems and other intelligent in-vehicle interfaces. In this study, speech produced by 68 subjects while driving in urban areas is analyzed. A particular focus is on speech production differences in two secondary cognitive tasks, interactions with a co-driver and calls to automated spoken dialog systems (SDS), and two emotional states during the SDS interactions - neutral/negative. A number of speech parameters are found to vary across the cognitive/emotion classes. Suitability of selected cepstral- and production-based features for automatic cognitive task/emotion classification is investigated. A fusion of GMM/SVM classifiers yields an accuracy of 94.3% in cognitive task and 81.3% in emotion classification.

Temporal-based support vector machines for facial expression recognition

When classifying a signal, ideally we want our classifier to trigger a large response when it encounters a positive example and have little to no response for all other examples. Unfortunately in practice this does not occur with responses fluctuating, often causing false alarms. There exists a myriad of reasons why this is the case, most notably not incorporating the dynamics of the signal into the classification. In facial expression recognition, this has been highlighted as one major research question. In this paper we present a novel technique which incorporates the dynamics of the signal which can produce a strong response when the peak expression is found and essentially suppresses all other responses as much as possible. We conducted preliminary experiments on the extended Cohn-Kanade (CK+) database which shows its benefits. The ability to automatically and accurately recognize facial expressions of drivers is highly relevant to the automobile. For example, the early recognition of “surprise” could indicate that an accident is about to occur; and various safeguards could immediately be deployed to avoid or minimize injury and damage. In this paper, we conducted initial experiments on the extended Cohn-Kanade (CK+) database which shows its benefits.

Development of a Systematic Approach to Assessing Quality within Australian Residential Aged Care Facilities: The Clinical Care Indicators Tool

Recent years have seen the introduction of formalised accreditation processes in both community and residential aged care, but these only partially address quality assessment within this sector. Residential aged care in Australia does not yet have a standardised system of resident assessment related to clinical, rather than administrative, outcomes. This paper describes the development of a quality assessment tool aimed at addressing this gap. Utilising previous research and the results of nominal groups with experts in the field, the 21-item Clinical Care Indicators (CCI) Tool for residential aged care was developed and trialled nationally. The CCI Tool was found to be simple to use and an effective means of collecting data on the state of resident health and care, with potential benefits for resident care planning and continuous quality improvement within facilities and organisations. The CCI Tool was further refined through a small intervention study to assess its utility as a quality improvement instrument and to investigate its relationship with resident quality of life. The current version covers 23 clinical indicators, takes about 30 minutes to complete and is viewed favourably by nursing staff who use it. Current work focuses on psychometric analysis and benchmarking, which should enable the CCI Tool to make a positive contribution to the measurement of quality in aged care in Australia.

An examination of the factors that influence drivers��� willingness to use hand-held mobile phones

Hand-held mobile phone use while driving is illegal throughout Australia yet many drivers persist with this behaviour. This study aims to understand the internal, driver-related and external, situational-related factors influencing drivers��� willingness to use a hand-held mobile phone while driving. Sampling 160 university students, this study utilised the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) to examine a range of belief-based constructs. Additionally, drivers��� personality traits of neuroticism and extroversion were measured with the Neuroticism Extroversion Openness-Five Factor Inventory (NEO-FFI). In relation to the external, situational-related factors, four different driving-related scenarios, which were intended to evoke differing levels of drivers��� reported stress, were devised for the study and manipulated drivers��� time urgency (low versus high) and passenger presence (alone versus with friends). In these scenarios, drivers��� willingness to use a mobile phone in general was measured. Hierarchical regression analyses across the four different driving scenarios found that, overall, the TPB components significantly accounted for drivers��� willingness to use a mobile phone above and beyond the demographic variables. Subjective norms, however, was only a significant predictor of drivers��� willingness in situations where the drivers were driving alone. Generally, neuroticism and extroversion did not significantly predict drivers��� willingness above and beyond the TPB and demographic variables. Overall, the findings broaden our understanding of the internal and external factors influencing drivers��� willingness to use a hand-held mobile phone while driving despite the illegality of this behaviour. The findings may have important practical implications in terms of better informing road safety campaigns targeting drivers��� mobile phone use which, in turn, may contribute to a reduction in the extent that mobile phone use contributes to road crashes.