Suddenly Telework: Job Crafting as a Way to Promote Employee Well-Being?

COVID-19 confronted many people with an abrupt shift from their usual working environment to telework. This study explores which job characteristics are perceived as most crucial in this exceptional situation and how they differ from people’s previous working conditions. Additionally, we focus on job crafting as a response to this situation and how it is related to employees’ well-being. We conducted an online survey with N = 599 participants, of which 321 reported that they were telework newcomers. First, we asked participants to indicate the three most important advantages and disadvantages they see in telework. The subsequent questionnaire contained a comprehensive measure of working conditions before and during the pandemic, job crafting behaviors, and indicators of well-being. Based on the qualitative answers, we identified three major advantages and disadvantages. Quantitative results indicate perceived changes in all job characteristics for telework newcomers. Concerning working conditions and well-being, job crafting activities that aim to increase structural and social resources are important mediators. The findings underline the need to design appropriate telework conditions and encourage job crafting activities to foster occupational well-being.

CFD Simulation and Experimental Study on Coupled Motion Response of Ship with Tank in Beam Waves

Tank sloshing is widely present in many engineering fields, especially in the field of marine. Due to the trend of large-scale liquid cargo ships, it is of great significance to study the coupled motion response of ships with tanks in beam waves. In this study, the CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) method and experiments are used to study the response of a ship with/without a tank in beam waves. All the computations are performed by an in-house CFD solver, which is used to solve RANS (Reynold Average Navier-Stokes) equations coupled with six degrees-of-freedom solid-body motion equations. The Level Set Method is used to solve the free surface. Verification work on the grid number and time step size has been conducted. The simulation results agree with the experimental results well, which shows that the numerical method is accurate enough. In this paper, several different working conditions are set up, and the effects of the liquid height in the tank, the size of the tank and the wavelength ratio of the incident wave on the ship’s motion are studied. The results show the effect of tank sloshing on the ship’s motion in different working conditions.

How do working conditions affect the turnover intention of medical social workers in China?

Background The development of medical social work is an indispensable part of the Healthy China Strategy. However, the medical service field has the fewest social workers in all service fields in China. Creating favorable working conditions can reduce the turnover intention of social workers in the medical service field. So it is necessary to integrate the existing theoretical models to deeply analyze the multiple influencing paths of working conditions on the medical social workers’ turnover intention in the context of China. Methods The data we used came from the China Social Work Longitudinal Survey (CSWLS) conducted in 56 cities across the country in 2019. It adopted a multi-stage random sampling method and the sample of medical social workers was selected according to their current service field and the sample size finally entering the model was 382. We tested the relationships with the Structural Equation Model (SEM) by STATA 16.0. Results Job-related stress play the most significant role in explaining the formation mechanism of medical social workers’ turnover intention. On the one hand, job-related stress can reduce the job satisfaction of medical social workers, further increasing their turnover intention; on the other hand, job-related stress can increase job burnout of medical social workers, further reducing their job satisfaction and ultimately increasing the turnover intention. Job satisfaction plays a full mediating effect between the job burnout of medical social workers and their turnover intention. The social support and job autonomy provided by social work agencies have limited effects on decreasing the turnover intention of medical social workers. Conclusions The two paths of job-related stress affecting turnover intention successfully integrate the Job Demands-Resources Model and the Price-Mueller Turnover Model into the same theoretical framework providing a theoretical basis for reducing the turnover intention and behavior of social workers in the medical service field, improving the management level in the medical service system and promoting the overall healthy and sustainable development of medical social work in China.

Exploration of Estimated Emigration Trends of Polish Health Professionals

Background: Due to the significant staff shortages, emigration of health professionals is one of the key challenges for many healthcare systems. Objective: The aim of this article is to explore the estimated trends and directions of emigration among Polish health professionals. Methods: The emigration phenomenon of Polish health professionals is still under-researched and the number of studies in this field is limited. Thus, the authors have triangulated data using two methods: a data analysis of five national registers maintained by chambers of professionals (doctors, nurses, midwives, physiotherapists, pharmacists, and laboratory diagnosticians), and data analysis from the Regulated Profession Database in The EU Single Market. Results: According to the data from national registers, between 7–9% of practicing doctors and nurses have applied for certificates, which confirm their right to practice their profession in other European countries (most often the United Kingdom, Germany, Sweden, Spain, and Ireland). The relatively high number of such certificates applied for by physiotherapists is also worrying. Emigration among pharmacists and laboratory diagnosticians is rather marginal. Conclusions: Urgent implementation of an effective mechanism for monitoring emigration trends is necessary. Furthermore, it is not possible to retain qualified professionals without systemic improvement of working conditions within the Polish healthcare system.

Noise as a Criterion for Designating Sanitary Protection Zones of Traffic Arteries

The article is devoted to the study of a possibility of designating the boundaries of sanitary zones (distancing) for traffic arteries outside settlements within the right-of-way.The study was conducted regarding the current Russian laws, projects of possible changes in legislation and draft amendments. It offers definitions of the right-of-way and of sanitary zone and highlights topics that have not yet been regulated.At the same time, the research methods are of universal character and after introducing other regulatory parameters may be applied for similar research in other countries as well.Calculations and field studies allowed to find that within the railway right-of-way and with the existing train traffic intensity, equivalent continuous sound pressure level in aggregate does not exceed the established maximum permissible level of 80dBA for personnel performing their labour functions within the railway rightof-way.A growth in the Leq/LAeq on the right-of-way from 80,0 to 95,0 dBA may lead to an increase in the hazard class (subclass).An analysis of the actual results of a special assessment of working conditions at JSC Russian Railways showed in the vast majority of cases the acceptability of working conditions evaluated according to noise factor measured at the workplaces of employees working during full or part-time shift on the right-of-way. Hazardous working conditions at the level of some subclasses for certain professions (operator of track measurement, railway track worker) arise rather due to indicators of severity of the labour process.

Fusion Domain-Adaptation CNN Driven by Images and Vibration Signals for Fault Diagnosis of Gearbox Cross-Working Conditions

The vibration signal of gearboxes contains abundant fault information, which can be used for condition monitoring. However, vibration signal is ineffective for some non-structural failures. In order to resolve this dilemma, infrared thermal images are introduced to combine with vibration signals via fusion domain-adaptation convolutional neural network (FDACNN), which can diagnose both structural and non-structural failures under various working conditions. First, the measured raw signals are converted into frequency and squared envelope spectrum to characterize the health states of the gearbox. Second, the sequences of the frequency and squared envelope spectrum are arranged into two-dimensional format, which are combined with infrared thermal images to form fusion data. Finally, the adversarial network is introduced to realize the state recognition of structural and non-structural faults in the unlabeled target domain. An experiment of gearbox test rigs was used for effectiveness validation by measuring both vibration and infrared thermal images. The results suggest that the proposed FDACNN method performs best in cross-domain fault diagnosis of gearboxes via multi-source heterogeneous data compared with the other four methods.

Working Conditions and Health Among Italian Ageing Workers

In many European countries requirements for retirement have been tightened, causing an increase in work participation of older workers, in spite their potentially poorer health may limit their work ability. This study aimed at assessing the diffusion of health problems and exposure to unfavorable working conditions among ageing workers in two Italian surveys, as well as comparing them with those observed in the same surveys conducted before the 2011 Italian pension reform tightening the normal retirement age. The 2013 National Health Survey (NHS) and Labour Force Survey (LFS) were employed to assess the prevalence of poor perceived health, health conditions and functional limitations, and of exposure to physical, psychosocial and organization factors at work, among 60–64 years workers. Poisson regression models were used to estimate Prevalence Ratios of health outcomes and unfavorable working conditions in the two surveys, compared to data from the 2005 (NHS) and 2007 (LFS) corresponding surveys, respectively. Among both men and women, approximately one quarter had at least one physical disorder or functional limitations and 15% poor mental health. Exposure to different ergonomic factors (15–30%) and working during unsocial hours (19%) were particularly diffused. A significant increase in the prevalence of functional limitations and of working at night or during unsocial hours was found in 2013, compared to corresponding data from 2005 and 2007, respectively. Our results indicate that exposure to ergonomic and organizational hazards should be reduced among ageing workers, to avoid decreased work ability, health damage or early exit from the labour market.

Research on Key Factors of Sealing Performance of Combined Sealing Ring

In this study, the mechanical properties of a combined seal ring under different loads were numerically calculated using ANSYS. The effect of the working pressure and pre-compression ratio of a rubber O-ring on the contact stress of the combined seal ring was studied. The influence of the wear ring’s chamfer, thickness, and width on the contact stress and contact force of the combined seal ring was analyzed. Studies have shown that it is particularly important to select a compression ratio that is suitable for the working conditions. Under the same conditions of working pressure and compression ratio, upon increasing the wear ring chamfer, the contact pressure is decreased due to the decreasing contact bandwidth between the wear ring and the cylinder wall. This has little effect on the contact stress of the combined seal ring as well as the contact force, while the width of the wear ring is proportional to the latter.