Proposing a framework for specifying the appropriateness of pursuing a career regarding Employees’ healthiness and safeguard: A Case study of food manufacturing industry

BackgroundEmployee health is an essential issue for Human Resource Management (HRM). The employees' health level is undeniably correlated to the job position in which they work since it may harm their well-being, and they may not be capable of performing their duties properly. Prompt diagnosis and resolution of employees' physical complications are highly critical.MethodsMachine learning (ML) is the state-of-the-art method potentially utilized to make early predictions to safeguard employees' healthiness. The technical laborers within the food manufacturing company are included in this Research. The functional classification models, namely, Support Vector Machine (SVM), K-Nearest Neighbors (KNN), Logistic Regression (LR), Decision Tree, are exploited to predict the employees' wellness for their vocation. K-fold Cross-Validation (KCV) and Confusion Matrix were applied in this study, the former for estimating the model's functionality and the latter for forecasting accuracy.ResultsAfter implementing four models on the 231 employees, the accuracy was extracted out, SVM with 78%, KNN with 78%, Decision Tree with 80%, and the highest for LR algorithm with 84%.ConclusionsIn this Research, the LR algorithm was opted to paving the way for Human Resources Managers in order to utilize a functional system to predict the Suitability of factory workers concerning their healthiness. The Hearing condition was picked out as a leading factor in selecting employees for their job position. Consequently, it is significant to planning a hearing conservation program for employees, especially those exposed to excessive noise.Trial Registration: Retrospectively registered.

The association of workplace health education with smoking-related behaviour and unequal gains by job position in China: ABWMC programme findings

Background Although the Chinese government has introduced a series of regulations to promote tobacco-related health education in workplaces, their implementation has been far from satisfactory. The aim of the present study was to explore the association of company-level tobacco-related health education and employee smoking behaviour. Methods Data from the 2018 Asia Best Workplace Mainland China programme were used to address these aims. This was a cross-sectional study that included 14,195 employees from 79 companies in mainland China. Spearman correlation tests were used to examine unadjusted correlations between the study variables, and binary logistic regression was used for multivariable analysis. The dependent variables included smoking-related variables or health information-seeking behaviour. The explanatory variable was the company-level tobacco-related health education. Results Tobacco-related health education was associated with better smoking harm awareness (OR = 2.23; 95% CI = 1.94–2.56), lower second-hand smoke exposure (OR = 0.73; 95% CI = 0.66–0.81), better perception of the workplace environment (OR = 2.04; 95% CI = 1.84–2.26) and positive health information-seeking behaviour (OR = 2.07; 95% CI = 1.86–2.30). Job position interacted with health education, suggesting that the positive association of health education was lower for general employees than employees who held an administrative position. Conclusions Tobacco-related health education is not only associated with lower SHS exposure but also related to more positive environmental perceptions and health attitudes, and these effects are significant for higher-ranking employees. Policy makers should recognize and reduce these potential health disparities.

Features of the competition strategy devoted to the leading goals of subjects with a perfectionistic orientation towards others

The article presents the results of a study devoted to the establishment of the strategy of competition for achieving various goals in professional activity among working subjects with perfectionistic orientation towards others. The subject of the research is the strategy of competition devoted to the leading goals of subjects with different intensity of the perfectionistic orientation of the personality; the object is the perfectionistic orientation of the working subjects. The subject of the study was 142 employed workers (112 women, 30 men). The perfectionistic orientation is considered as a complex of motives and attitudes of the individual, which are steadily manifested in various types of activity in conscious striving for perfection based on high demands for others, perceived from others, as well as on the person itself, which can provide advantages in achieving competitive goals. It was found that of the strategy of competition of working subjects with perfectionistic orientation towards others include: social goals ("leadership", "higher job position", "praise and support of colleagues"), goals, associated with professional activity ("stability of work performance", "high quality of work performance") and themselves as subjects of the professional activity ("demonstration of an individual style of work performance"). Than the content of the components of the competition strategy to achieve them was established. Competition strategies for achieving the goals of "praise and support of colleagues", "demonstration of an individual style of work performance", "stability of work performance" are insufficiently formed, since they are supported by the content of only one component of the competition strategy or are characterized by the negative influence of the content of all its components. Competition strategies devoted to the goals of "leadership", "higher job position" and "high quality of work performance" are more stable and formed due to their reinforcement by the content of all components of their competition strategy. The data obtained by the authors on the content of competition strategies to achieve these goals allow us to detect motives, behavioral attitudes and actions towards competitors, as well as ideas about them that can ensure the success of subjects with high demands on others in activities related to teamwork. The novelty of the work lies in the study of the achievement of various goals of competition in their complex conditionality by the content of each of the components of the competition strategy of subjects with a perfectionist orientation, focused on others.

Envy-Free Allocation by Sperner’s Lemma Adapted to Rotation Shifts in a Company

This article discusses a theoretical construction based on the graph theory to rework the space of potential partitions in envy-free distribution. This work has the objective of applying Sperner’s lemma to the distribution of three rotating shifts for three workers who are to cover a 24 h job position in a company. As a novel feature, worker’s preferences have been modeled as functions of probability for the three shifts, according to salary offers for said shifts. Envy-free allocation was achieved, since each worker received their preferred shift without the need for negotiation between agents in conflict. Adaptation to the type of dynamic situations that arise with rotating shifts, as well as the consideration of probabilistic preferences by workers are some of the main novelties of this work.

The Association of Workplace Health Education on Smoking-Related Behaviour and Unequal Gains by Job Position in China: ABWMC Programme Findings

BackgroundAlthough the Chinese government has introduced a series of regulations to promote tobacco-related health education in workplaces, the implementation has been far from satisfactory. The aim of the present study was to explore the association of company level tobacco-related health education and employee’s smoking behavior.MethodsData from the 2018 Asia Best Workplace Mainland China programme were employed to address these aims. This was a cross-sectional study that included 14195 employees from 79 companies in mainland China. Spearman correlation tests were used to examine unadjusted correlation between the study variables, and binary logistic regression was used for multivariable analysis. The dependent variables included the smoking-related variables or health information-seeking behaviour. The explanatory variable is the company level tobacco-related health education.ResultsTobacco-related health education was associated with better smoking harm awareness, lower second-hand smoke exposure, better perceived workplace environment and positive health information-seeking behaviour. Job position interacted with health education, suggesting that positive association of health education were smaller for general employees than employees who held an administrative position.ConclusionsWe conclude that workplace tobacco-related health education was not only associated with tobacco control effects but also had spillover effects, which were significant for higher-ranking employees. Policy makers should recognize and reduce the potential health disparities.

QuantiFERON-TB Gold Plus Testing for the Detection of LTBI in Health Care Workers in the Kyrgyz Republic

Background: Health care workers (HCW) are at increased risk of TB infection due to their close contact with infected patients with active TB. The objectives of the study were (1) to assess the prevalence of LTBI among HCW in major TB hospitals of the Northern Kyrgyz Republic, and (2) to determine the association of LTBI with certain job positions, hospital units, or hospitals. Methods: HCWs from 4 TB hospitals in the Northern Kyrgyz Republic were tested with the interferon-gamma release assay (IGRA) Quantiferon-TB Gold plus (QFT) for the detection of an immune response to TB as marker of TB infection. Age was controlled for as a confounder. Univariate and multivariable analysis were performed using logistic regression to assess the association of the risk factors (age, job position, and hospital unit) with having a QTF positive result. Firth’s penalized-likelihood estimates were used for determining the odd’s of QFT positivity to account for the small-sample size. Pairwise comparisons using the Bonferroni correction (conservative) and comparisons without adjusting for multiple comparisons (unadjusted) were used to identify the categories where differences occurred.Results: QFT yielded valid results for 404 HCW, with 189 (47%) that had a positive test. In the National Tuberculosis Center, there was an increased odds to have a positive QFT test for the position of physician (OR=8.7, 95%, CI=1.2-60.5, p=0.03) and laboratory staff (OR=19.8, 95% CI=2.9-135.4, p<0.01) when administration staff was used as the baseline and controlling for age. No job position was found to have a significantly higher odds of positivity following a pairwise analysis controlling for multiple comparisons. Fifteen of the 49 HCW with follow-up tests converted from negative to positive at follow-up testing. Conclusions: This is the first report on prevalence and risk factors of LTBI for HCW in the Kyrgyz republic, and results indicate an increased risk for LTBI among physicians and laboratory personnel.

Fostering innovative behavior in the aviation industry: The role of perceived supervisor support and work group diversity

The research primarily seeks to understand how supervisor support can directly and indirectly enhance the service innovative behavior (SIB) of flight attendants via work engagement. Moreover, although there has been some research on the effect of group diversity on organizational performance, the results have not been consistent. Thus, this study addresses this gap by investigating how work group diversity can make variance in the relationship between work engagement and innovative behavior of flight attendants. The sample size of 242 flight attendants working at the central airport in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, has been taken for the study. To test hypotheses, structural equation modeling and bootstrapping were employed. This study provided an evidence for the positive nexus between perceived supervisor support and SIB. Additionally, the results shed light on a mediation mechanism of work engagement for the association between flight attendants’ perception of their supervisor and innovative behavior. Furthermore, tenure diversity and job position diversity in a work group were proved to play a moderating role in the relationship between work engagement and service innovative behavior. Specifically, flight attendants are more willing to exhibit innovative behaviors when working in a homogeneous group in terms of tenure and job position rather than in a heterogeneous group. The empirical results contributed to the diversity management literature and broadened the understanding of how to activate the service innovative behavior of employees. From a managerial perspective, managers should pay attention to the characteristics of employees when organizing teamwork. AcknowledgmentThe authors are grateful to the anonymous referees of the journal for their extremely useful suggestions for improving the quality of this paper.

Is There a Sampling Bias in Research on Work-Related Technostress? A Systematic Review of Occupational Exposure to Technostress and the Role of Socioeconomic Position

Technostress is a widespread model used to study negative effects of using information communication technologies at work. The aim of this review is to assess the role of socioeconomic position (SEP) in research on work-related technostress. We conducted systematic searches in multidisciplinary databases (PubMed, PubMed Central, Web of Science, Scopus, PsycInfo, PsycArticles) in June 2020 and independently screened 321 articles against eligibility criteria (working population, technostress exposure, health or work outcome, quantitative design). Of the 21 studies included in the narrative synthesis, three studies did not collect data on SEP, while 18 studies operationalised SEP as education (eight), job position (five), SEP itself (two) or both education as well as job position (three). Findings regarding differences by SEP are inconclusive, with evidence of high SEP reporting more frequent exposure to overall technostress. In a subsample of 11 studies reporting data on educational attainment, we compared the percentage of university graduates to World Bank national statistics and found that workers with high SEP are overrepresented in nine of 11 studies. The resulting socioeconomic sampling bias limits the scope of the technostress model to high SEP occupations. The lack of findings regarding differences by SEP in technostress can partly be attributed to limitations in study designs. Studies should aim to reduce the heterogeneity of technostress and SEP measures to improve external validity and generalisability across socioeconomic groups. Future research on technostress would benefit from developing context-sensitive SEP measures and quality appraisal tools that identify socioeconomic sampling biases by comparing data to national statistics.

Association of working hours, job position, and BMI with work-related musculoskeletal disorders among the physiotherapists of Gujarat—an observational study

Background Physiotherapists are prone to develop work-related musculoskeletal disorders (WMSDs). Region wise distribution and frequency of work disturbance have been studied in physiotherapists but exploration of the probable association of working hours, job position, and body mass index (BMI) with WMSDs is not adequately done in the Gujarat, India. Hence, the present study was undertaken to investigate these aspects among the physiotherapists of Gujarat. Results An online cross-sectional survey including 322 physiotherapists was conducted and the data was collected after gaining informed electronic consent. Present study showed no significant co-relation between job position (0.602), weekly working hours (0.930), and BMI (0.589) with WMSDs prevalence. The 1-year work disturbance and 1-week musculoskeletal difficulties were found to be due to low back-related complaints (35.09%, 33.85%). Conclusion It is inferred that high prevalence of WMSDs in physiotherapists may be due to one of various factors including job position, working hours, and BMI but they are not significantly correlated with WMSDs.