WORK – Page 5

Without Human Help – Artisan Robots With AI Smarts Will Juggle Tasks, Choose Tools, Mix And Match Recipes And Even Order Materials

16Jun

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

WORK

Without Human Help – Artisan Robots With AI Smarts Will Juggle Tasks, Choose Tools, Mix And Match Recipes And Even Order Materials

Glenn S. Daehn, The Ohio State University Failure of a machine in a factory can shut it down. Lost production can cost millions of dollars per day. Component failures can devastate factories, power plants and battlefield equipment. To return to operation, skilled technicians use all the tools in their kit - machining, bending, welding and surface treating, making just the right part as quickly and as accurately as possible. But there’s a declining number of technicians with the right skills, and the quality of things made by hand is subject to the skills and mood of the artisan on the day the part is made. Both problems could soon be solved by artificially intelligent robotic technicians. These systems can take measurements; shape, cut or weld parts using varied tools; pass parts to spe...

As Employers Try To Bring Them Back To The Office – Employees Are Feeling Burned Over Broken Work-From-Home Promises And Corporate Culture ‘BS’

20May

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

VIDEO REELS, WORK

As Employers Try To Bring Them Back To The Office – Employees Are Feeling Burned Over Broken Work-From-Home Promises And Corporate Culture ‘BS’

As vaccinations and relaxed health guidelines make returning to the office a reality for more companies, there seems to be a disconnect between managers and their workers over remote work. A good example of this is a recent op-ed written by the CEO of a Washington, D.C., magazine that suggested workers could lose benefits like health care if they insist on continuing to work remotely as the COVID-19 pandemic recedes. The staff reacted by refusing to publish for a day. While the CEO later apologized, she isn’t alone in appearing to bungle the transition back to the office after over a year in which tens of millions of employees were forced to work from home. A recent survey of full-time corporate or government employees found that two-thirds say their employers either have not communicate...

Unless You Can Pick Up On Colleagues’ Nonverbal Cues – Zoom Work Relationships Are A Lot Harder To Build

4Apr

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

IN OTHER NEWS, WORK

Unless You Can Pick Up On Colleagues’ Nonverbal Cues – Zoom Work Relationships Are A Lot Harder To Build

The Research Brief is a short take about interesting academic work. The big idea Workers who communicate with their colleagues mainly through videoconferencing are far less effective at building relationships than when the communication is done face to face, according to a study we recently completed and just submitted for peer review. We also found two important ways employees can overcome the downside of video meetings. Workers in our study reported a sharp deterioration in their work relationships after more of their communications were done via videoconferencing during the pandemic, which our analysis suggested made the employees three times less effective at building relationships. Participants reported that it was harder to understand their coworkers’ nonverbal cues and to listen i...

Giving Us Rebel Nurses And Dancing Cops – TikTok Is Upending Workplace Social Media Policies

3Apr

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

SOCIAL MEDIA, VIDEO REELS, WORK

Giving Us Rebel Nurses And Dancing Cops – TikTok Is Upending Workplace Social Media Policies

As the Thanksgiving holiday was winding down, a medical center in Salem, Oregon, found itself in the middle of a frothing social media mess. A nurse named Ashley Grames posted a video on TikTok that went viral in which she mock-confessed to ignoring coronavirus health guidelines. The video – which Grames has since taken down, though it remains available on other feeds – is less than 15 seconds long. And if you’re not familiar with TikTok tropes, the video will seem very weird. The nurse is wearing scrubs and seemingly at a medical facility. She lip-syncs to a short audio clip from “The Grinch” and mocks her co-workers’ outrage at her decision to flout the state mask mandate outside of work. The nurse’s antics drew some unflattering attention to her employer, Salem Health, which suspended...

Low-wage service workers are facing new emotional hazards in the workplace during COVID-19

2Apr

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

WORK

Low-wage service workers are facing new emotional hazards in the workplace during COVID-19

The big idea Low-wage service workers increasingly are facing new physical and emotional hazards in the workplace as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, according to interviews with workers we conducted in April. We found that in addition to being afraid and anxious about their own health and possible exposure to COVID-19 while working, these employees said dealing with unpredictable customer emotions was taking an additional toll. The workers we spoke with reported that interactions with customers were becoming emotionally charged over issues such as mask requirements and other safety guidelines. Workers of color said they were experiencing increased racial harassment. Exposure to these emotional hazards was widespread among the workers we interviewed and was also spilling over into t...

Low-wage essential workers get less protection against coronavirus – and less information about how it spreads

4Apr

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

COVID-19, WORK

Low-wage essential workers get less protection against coronavirus – and less information about how it spreads

Low-wage essential workers are more likely to face dangerous working conditions and food insecurity than high-wage workers, even more so during the COVID-19 pandemic. Our research provides some of the first data on the safety of essential workers during the pandemic. Our findings suggest that COVID-19 is not the “great equalizer,” as Andrew Cuomo once called it. In fact, inequality is getting worse. We found that across income levels, roughly two-thirds of essential workers were unable to practice social distancing. Low-wage essential workers include grocery clerks, home health aides and delivery drivers, while high-wage workers include nurses, doctors and managers. However, low-wage workers were two to three times more likely than high-wage workers – workers earning over US$40/hour – ...

Finding endless video calls exhausting? You’re not alone

3Apr

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

WORK

Finding endless video calls exhausting? You’re not alone

With much of the world in lockdown, our time spent on video calls has risen rapidly. Video conferencing has expanded from being a tool for business meetings to something we use to socialise, worship, and even date on. There is no doubt that platforms like Zoom are very useful. But all this time spent on video calls has its problems. We rely on it connect with people, yet it can leave us feeling tired and empty. It has given us some semblance of normal life during lockdown, but it can make relationships seem unreal. This feeling has spurred talk of a new psychological affliction: “Zoom fatigue.” When we interact with another person through the screen, our brains have to work much harder. We miss many of the other cues we’d have during a real-life conversation like the smell of the room or...

Remote work amid the coronavirus pandemic: 3 solutions

3Apr

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

COVID-19, WORK

Remote work amid the coronavirus pandemic: 3 solutions

As part of the fight against COVID-19, Canada is urging “employees at all work sites … to work remotely whenever and wherever possible.” Although we might find comfort in thinking switching between office and remote work is mostly an IT problem, three decades of management research on telecommuting tells us that the real challenges are just starting. Thousands of teams across Canada are going through the difficult transition of redefining the way they function. How teams tackle these challenges will have profound consequences on their productivity and the well-being of their members. Below are three challenges teams will face, and practical recommendations on how to mitigate their effects. Redefining communication norms Office workers share a large amount of information in person — they ...

How high will unemployment go? During the Great Depression, 1 in 4 Americans were out of work

2Apr

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

Journalism, WORK

How high will unemployment go? During the Great Depression, 1 in 4 Americans were out of work

The U.S. unemployment rate climbed from a half-century low of 3.5% to 4.4% in March – and is expected to go a lot higher. But could the rate, as some predict, surpass the 25% joblessness the U.S. experienced at the peak of the Great Depression? CC BY-ND As a macroeconomist who has tracked the labor force for decades, I’ve been wondering about this myself. There are actually two figures the Bureau of Labor Statistics uses to estimate employment levels in the U.S. One is the unemployment rate, which comes from the Current Population Survey. The U.S. Census Bureau contacts about 60,000 randomly selected households every month to get an estimate of this rate. The other is an estimate of how many nonfarm jobs were lost or created in the month. The Bureau of Labor Statistics creates these fi...