Employee financial wellness programs: Opportunities to promote financial inclusion?

ABSTRACT

Employee financial wellness programs (EFWPs) are a new practice that may promote financial inclusion by making it easier for workers with low- and moderate-incomes (LMI) to access financial services. We examine the strengths and limitations of workplace financial counseling, credit-building services, and small-dollar loans, and describe community collaboration to promote employee financial wellness. Findings suggest that these services are reaching a population that experiences financial exclusion, though evidence is mixed concerning how these services help workers with LMI resolve key financial challenges. Community collaboration focused on employee financial wellness presents opportunities to advocate for higher wages and better benefits.     

Evaluation of Multicriteria Decision Analysis Algorithms in Food Safety: A Case Study on Emerging Zoonoses Prioritization

Decision making in food safety is a complex process that involves several criteria of different nature like the expected reduction in the number of illnesses, the potential economic or health-related cost, or even the environmental impact of a given policy or intervention. Several multicriteria decision analysis (MCDA) algorithms are currently used, mostly individually, in food safety to rank different options in a multifactorial environment. However, the selection of the MCDA algorithm is a decision problem on its own because different methods calculate different rankings. The aim of this study was to compare the impact of different uncertainty sources on the rankings of MCDA problems in the context of food safety. For that purpose, a previously published data set on emerging zoonoses in the Netherlands was used to compare different MCDA algorithms: MMOORA, TOPSIS, VIKOR, WASPAS, and ELECTRE III. The rankings were calculated with and without considering uncertainty (using fuzzy sets), to assess the importance of this factor. The rankings obtained differed between algorithms, emphasizing that the selection of the MCDA method had a relevant impact in the rankings. Furthermore, considering uncertainty in the ranking had a high influence on the results. Both factors were more relevant than the weights associated with each criterion in this case study. A hierarchical clustering method was suggested to aggregate results obtained by the different algorithms. This complementary step seems to be a promising way to decrease extreme difference among algorithms and could provide a strong added value in the decision-making process.     

Counting inclusion with Chantal Mouffe: a radical democratic approach to intellectual disability research

As mandates for social inclusion of people with intellectual disabilities remain unfulfilled, many scholars question whether the concept of inclusion is to blame. Critics worry that quantitative measurements of inclusion miss what should count: a meaningful life gained from a sense of belonging. We argue that both concepts – inclusion and belonging – embody a communitarian ethos in which citizens mirror the values of their community. In contrast, Chantal Mouffe’s radical democratic approach to inclusion emphasizes the importance of difference and the inevitability of exclusion. Mouffe thus offers a way to broaden our approach to social inclusion in the twenty-first century.     

Australia's Changing Population Structure

The approach of equilibrium has been greeted with forebodings of labour shortages and of inability to populate growth centres or develop resources; further large scale immigration has been recommended and it is claimed that Australia can accommodate many times its present population. These forebodings are challenged. The population structure will become more normal and the workforce will continue to grow, its skills depending upon training and rewards. Growth centres are an alternative to further expansion of capital cities and imply fewer at risk of poverty and less risk to the environment.     

Structuring Commitments in Interrupted Careers: Career Breaks,Commitment and the Life Cycle in Teaching

Recent interest in work commitment has been within a unitary paradigm in both the sociological literature on women's commitment to work and in the human resource management literature on the need to generate commitment to work. The paper argues that the ‘commitment concept’ is a social construction with a multiplicity of meanings and that its usage is subjective, contradictory, temporal and frequently gendered. Debates focusing on the ‘masculine’ job model of commitment tend to provide only partial insights by an emphasis on the continuous, linear career and thereby neglect, or negate, the work commitment of women who take a career break. Drawing on a large study of professional teachers, the paper enables a comparison of commitment indicators between stages within a life history and between ‘returners’ and other respondents. The findings demonstrate how commitments change over time and indicate that the commitments of returners are the outcome of the interplay between ‘choices’ and the different structural conditions they encounter during their life cycle which may lead to ‘career curtailment’ or, in times of labour shortages, career opportunities.     

The role of demographic data in the operation of public policy: a case study of the job training partnership act

To work at the state and local levels, the Job Training Partnership Act (JTPA) requires specific kinds of demographic data. Unemployment figures, poverty information, occupational supply and demand data, wage structure, and many other types of data are used in planning and operating JTPA programs, and in modifying the performance standards by which the programs are evaluated. The decennial census provides some key data and thus some significant types of information become less timely as the decade progresses. Furthermore, the framers of the Act had little or no knowledge of the forms in which data are collected and thus definitions given in the Act do not always agree with definitions used in the demographic data which are available. The policymakers for future government benefit programs could learn from this mistake: before writing legislation which is so heavily dependent on demographic data, they should ascertain what types of data are available or can be generated for use in the program.