State of the Art in Risk Analysis of Workforce Criticality Influencing Disaster Preparedness for Interdependent Systems

The objective of this article is to discuss a needed paradigm shift in disaster risk analysis to emphasize the role of the workforce in managing the recovery of interdependent infrastructure and economic systems. Much of the work that has been done on disaster risk analysis has focused primarily on preparedness and recovery strategies for disrupted infrastructure systems. The reliability of systems such as transportation, electric power, and telecommunications is crucial in sustaining business processes, supply chains, and regional livelihoods, as well as ensuring the availability of vital services in the aftermath of disasters. There has been a growing momentum in recognizing workforce criticality in the aftermath of disasters; nevertheless, significant gaps still remain in modeling, assessing, and managing workforce disruptions and their associated ripple effects to other interdependent systems. The workforce plays a pivotal role in ensuring that a disrupted region continues to function and subsequently recover from the adverse effects of disasters. With this in mind, this article presents a review of recent studies that have underscored the criticality of workforce sectors in formulating synergistic preparedness and recovery policies for interdependent infrastructure and regional economic systems.     

Turning Doctoral Students into Faculty in Gerontological Social Work: The AGESW Experience

ABSTRACT

Developing faculty interested in aging may help social work meet the needs of our growing aging population. However, doctoral students need a variety of supports to complete PhDs and become gerontological social work faculty. This study explored one program’s role in supporting the development of social work doctoral students to faculty in gerontology. An e-mail invitation was sent to all former participants (2010–2016 cohorts) of the Association for Gerontology Education in Social Work (AGESW) Pre-Dissertation Fellows Program (PDFP). The 38-question online survey consisted of Likert-type scales, multiple answers, and one open-ended question per section about the program’s impacts on their academic career development in teaching, research, mentoring, and support. Forty-five respondents, representing all six cohorts, completed the survey. More than half reported that the PDFP contributed to their ability to publish their research (64.4%, n = 29), grow their professional network (86.7%, n = 39, and teach (55.5%, n = 25). Doctoral programs provided different experiences than the PDFP, including mentoring, methodological training, professional development, networking, and peer support. Results suggest the PDFP provides content recipients value that supplements instruction received in their institutions. The program’s ability to connect students to each other and to national leaders enhances their career development and socialization into academic roles.     

Linking Electronic Medical Records Use to Physicians’ Performance: A Contextual Analysis

Electronic Medical Records (EMR) studies have broadly tested EMR use and outcomes, producing mixed and inconclusive results. This study carefully considers the healthcare delivery context and examines relevant mediating variables. We consider key characteristics of: (i) interdependence in healthcare delivery processes, (ii) physician autonomy, and (iii) the trend of hospital employment of physicians, and draw on theoretical perspectives in coordination, shared values, and agency to explain how the use of EMR can improve physicians’ performance. In order to examine the effects of physician employment on work practices in the hospital, we collected 583 data points from 302 hospitals in 47 states in the USA to test two models: one for employed and another for nonemployed physicians. Results show that information sharing and shared values among healthcare delivery professionals fully mediate the relationship between EMR use and physicians’ performance. Next, physician employment determines which mediating variable constitutes the pathway from EMR use to physicians’ performance. Finally, we highlight the impact of shared values between the hospital and physicians in enhancing information sharing and physicians’ performance, extending studies of these behaviors among network partners in industrial settings. Overall, our study shows that EMR use should be complemented by processual (information sharing), social (shared values), and structural (physician employment) mechanisms to yield positive effects on physicians’ performance.     

NDIS Self‐Management Approaches: Opportunities for choice and control or an Uber‐style wild west?

This article examines the emerging challenges and opportunities presented by self‐management options in Australia's National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS). We examine the three different ways in which NDIS participants can opt to self‐manage their funding and services, including direct employment and emerging Uber‐style online platforms, and explore the potential implications of these options for NDIS participants, service providers and the disability support workforce. In particular, we focus on these options in relation to the transition to a marketised services landscape being developed alongside the NDIS, and examine both the risks and opportunities for each stakeholder group. Through this analysis, we identify implications for policy and practice, in particular around regulatory mechanisms and the role of government within this emerging market economy and transforming service landscape.     

The Value of Weather Information for E‐Commerce Operations

To be efficient, logistics operations in e‐commerce require warehousing and transportation resources to be aligned with sales. Customer orders must be fulfilled with short lead times to ensure high customer satisfaction, and the costly under‐utilization of workers must be avoided. To approach this ideal, forecasting order quantities with high accuracy is essential. Many drivers of online sales, including seasonality, special promotions and public holidays, are well known, and they have been frequently incorporated into forecasting approaches. However, the impact of weather on e‐commerce operations has not been rigorously analyzed. In this study, we integrate weather data into the sales forecasting of the largest European online fashion retailer. We find that sunshine, temperature, and rain have a significant impact on daily sales, particularly in the summer, on weekends, and on days with extreme weather. Using weather forecasts, we have significantly improved sales forecast accuracy. We find that including weather data in the sales forecast model can lead to fewer sales forecast errors, reducing them by, on average, 8.6% to 12.2% and up to 50.6% on summer weekends. In turn, the improvement in sales forecast accuracy has a measurable impact on logistics and warehousing operations. We quantify the value of incorporating weather forecasts in the planning process for the order fulfillment center workforce and show how their incorporation can be leveraged to reduce costs and increase performance. With a perfect information planning scenario, excess costs can be reduced by 11.6% compared with the cost reduction attainable with a baseline model that ignores weather information in workforce planning.     

Movers and Stayers in Care Management in Adult Services

Professional biographies of care managers in the mid-ninetiesand, seven years on, their profiles and career choice are thefocus of this article. The work draws on two linked studiesbased on adult services in two social services departments.The profile of those who stayed in post and those who movedon raises issues for the social work profession, for managersand for policy makers. Those who stayed constitute an experiencedworkforce of middle-aged, predominantly female practitionerswith mixed views about the changing nature of the work. Thosewho moved include a group of females who became managers bydefault. The work raises issues concerning work pressures, genderprofiles within an ageing workforce, and succession planning.The findings link to more extensive workforce studies and contributetowards debates concerning the occupational identity and thefuture of qualified practitioners within a human services landscapewhich is constantly being reshaped within a culture of new managerialism.     

Workforce Issues in Residential Care Facilities in Rural China

This study examined contemporary frontline workforce issues related to residential care for elders in rural China. Residential facilities in rural China are in transition from exclusively providing shelter to childless elders to providing long-term care for frail elders. These facilities are also under pressure to improve the quality of services that they provide. The study is based on in-depth interviews with administrators and field observations of facilities. The study focused on the following issues related to the workforce: recruitment and retention, training, work environment, workforce organization, regulations, compensation, and career ladders. The implications of resident characteristics for demands on the work force were examined. The study found that lack of skilled personnel is one of the major reasons that the overwhelming majority of facilities deny admission to frail and demented elders. Improving workers’ skill is critical if these facilities are to meet the increasing demand for institutional long-term care needs.     

Intelligent Procedures for Intra‐Day Updating of Call Center Agent Schedules

For nearly all call centers, agent schedules are typically created several days or weeks before the time that agents report to work. After schedules are created, call center resource managers receive additional information that can affect forecasted workload and resource availability. In particular, there is significant evidence, both among practitioners and in the research literature, suggesting that actual call arrival volumes early in a scheduling period (typically an individual day or week) can provide valuable information about the call arrival pattern later in the same scheduling period. In this paper, we develop a flexible and powerful heuristic framework for managers to make intra‐day resource adjustment decisions that take into account updated call forecasts, updated agent requirements, existing agent schedules, agents' schedule flexibility, and associated incremental labor costs. We demonstrate the value of this methodology in managing the trade‐off between labor costs and service levels to best meet variable rates of demand for service, using data from an actual call center.