A Framework for Large-Scale Automatic Fluency Assessment

Learning assessments are important to monitor the progress of students throughout the teaching process. In the digital era, many local and large-scale learning assessments are conducted through technological tools. In this view, a large-scale learning assessment can be designed to tackle one or multiple parts of the teaching process. Oral reading fluency assessments evaluate the ability to read reference texts. However, even though the use of applications to collect the reading of the students avoids logistics costs and speeds up the process, the evaluation of recordings has become a challenging task. Therefore, this work presents a computational solution for large-scale precision-critical fluency assessment. The goal is to build an approach based on automatic speech recognition (ASR) for the automatic evaluation of the oral reading fluency of children and reduce hiring costs as much as possible.

Impacto Financiero Y La Rotación De Personal En Las Áreas De Mercadeo Y Operaciones: Empresa Multinacional De Venta De Vacaciones Prepagadas En El Ecuador/Financial Impact and the Rotation of Personnel in the Marketing Areas and Operations: Multinational

El talento humano es determinado como el aporte más valioso en toda empresa, principalmente en las empresas de servicio, por lo que uno de los principales retos es potenciar al talento, buscando estrategias que identifiquen las necesidades y motivaciones que permita brindar agradado, desarrollo profesional y personal a los colaboradores. La ineficaz motivación y el poco compromiso que posee el personal genera un impacto en la rotación de personal lo que se verá reflejado a nivel financiero de la compañía; se ha identificado que la continua y excesiva rotación de personal es perjudicial para el cumplimiento de los objetivos empresariales, así como los costos que se genera en los procesos de reclutamiento, selección, inducción, capacitación, entre otros; y también al momento de la desvinculación. El principal objetivo del estudio es determinar el impacto financiero de la rotación de personal de las áreas de mercadeo y operaciones en una Empresa Multinacional de Venta de Vacaciones Prepagadas en el Ecuador. Ya que la incertidumbre, inestabilidad, genera alta rotación en especial a los nuevos postulantes, y los antiguos trabajadores que réquiem de estabilidad para el cumpliendo de sus objetivos profesionales. En la rotación de personal la organización debe incurrir en un conjunto de desembolso diarios obligatorios por Ley en la desvinculación del personal saliente demás de los requeridos para el reclutamiento y contratación de quienes cubrirán las vacantes presentadas. Human talent is considered the most valuable contribution in every company, mainly in service companies, so one of the challenges is to maximize the talent looking for strategies to identify needs and motivations that allow providing gratified, professional development, personal. Ineffective motivation and commitment that has little staff has an impact on the turnover which will be reflected in financial terms, has been identified as the continued and excessive staff turnover is detrimental to the fulfillment of business objectives, as the costs generated in the process of recruitment, selection, induction, training, among others; and also at the time of termination. The main objective of the study is to determine the financial impact of staff turnover in the areas of marketing and operations in a multinational company selling Prepaid Vacations in Ecuador. As uncertainty, instability, high turnover generated in particular to new applicants, and former employees who requiem stability for fulfilling their career goals. Turnover in the organization must incur a set of mandatory daily payout by law in the decoupling of outgoing personnel other than those required for the recruitment and hiring of those who fill the vacancies presented. Palabras Clave: Talento humano, rotación de personal, costos, reclutamiento y contratación. Keywords: human talent, turnover, recruiting and hiring costs.

Comparative study of costs and benefits of apprenticeship training in Austria and Switzerland shows schemes are effective in different environments

Purpose The purpose was to compare the net costs and post-apprenticeship benefits of providing apprenticeship training in Austria and Switzerland: two countries with many similarities but also critical institutional differences. Design/methodology/approach The authors looked at detailed workplace data about the costs and benefits of apprenticeship training, as well as hiring costs for skilled workers from the external labor market. The authors use nearest-neighbor matching models to compare Austrian and Swiss firms. Findings The main results showed an Austrian firm makes an average of €4,200 per year net investment per apprentice, whereas a comparable Swiss firm generates a net benefit of €3,400 in the same occupations. The differences in net costs could be explained, the authors said, by the different wage structures in the two countries. However, the situation was complicated by the fact that the relatively high apprentice wage in Austria contributed to the survival of firm-based apprenticeship training. Originality/value The authors said their results showed that countries expanding their apprenticeship systems should consider different national practices.

So similar and yet so different

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to compare a firm’s net cost and post-apprenticeship benefits of providing apprenticeship training in Austria and Switzerland: two countries with many similarities but some critical institutional differences. Design/methodology/approach The authors draw on detailed workplace data with information on the costs and benefits of apprenticeship training, as well as on hiring costs for skilled workers from the external labour market. The authors use nearest-neighbour matching models to compare Austrian firms with similar Swiss firms based on observable characteristics. Findings On average, a Swiss firm generates an annual net benefit of €3,400 from training an apprentice, whereas a firm in Austria incurs net costs of €4,200. The impetus for this difference is largely a higher relative apprentice pay in Austria. However, compared with Swiss firms, Austrian firms generate a higher post-training return by retaining a higher share of apprentices and savings on future hiring costs. Practical implications The authors demonstrate that apprenticeship systems can exist under different institutional environments. For countries currently in the process of establishing or expanding apprenticeship systems, the comparative analysis clearly shows that policymakers should consider more than just one country’s particular apprenticeship model. Originality/value The authors provide a first comparative analysis between two apprenticeship countries that empirically assesses a firm’s costs and benefits of training during an apprenticeship programme and also provides a monetary value of a particular type of post-training benefits that firms can generate by retaining former apprentices as skilled workers (i.e. savings in future hiring costs for skilled workers).

A theory on individual characteristics of successful coding challenge solvers

Background Assessing a software engineer’s ability to solve algorithmic programming tasks has been an essential part of technical interviews at some of the most successful technology companies for several years now. We do not know to what extent individual characteristics, such as personality or programming experience, predict the performance in such tasks. Decision makers’ unawareness of possible predictor variables has the potential to bias hiring decisions which can result in expensive false negatives as well as in the unintended exclusion of software engineers with actually desirable characteristics. Methods We conducted an exploratory quantitative study with 32 software engineering students to develop an empirical theory on which individual characteristics predict the performance in solving coding challenges. We developed our theory based on an established taxonomy framework by Gregor (2006). Results Our findings show that the better coding challenge solvers also have better exam grades and more programming experience. Furthermore, conscientious as well as sad software engineers performed worse in our study. We make the theory available in this paper for empirical testing. Discussion The theory raises awareness to the influence of individual characteristics on the outcome of technical interviews. Should the theory find empirical support in future studies, hiring costs could be reduced by selecting appropriate criteria for preselecting candidates for on-site interviews and potential bias in hiring decisions could be reduced by taking suitable measures.

Endogenous Disasters

Market economies are intrinsically unstable. The standard search model of equilibrium unemployment, once solved accurately with a globally nonlinear algorithm, gives rise endogenously to rare disasters. Intuitively, in the presence of cumulatively large negative shocks, inertial wages remain relatively high, and reduce profits. The marginal costs of hiring run into downward rigidity, which stems from the trading externality of the matching process, and fail to decline relative to profits. Inertial wages and rigid hiring costs combine to stifle job creation flows, depressing the economy into disasters. The disaster dynamics are robust to extensions to home production, capital accumulation, and recursive utility. (JEL E22, E23, E24, E32, J41, J63, N12)

Optimal Government Policies Related to Unemployment

This article studies the optimal government policies related to unemployment in a frictional labor market. To achieve the optimal allocation, we find that the government should not issue unemployment compensation or subsidies for hiring costs. Moreover, as both firms and households experience disastrous consequences related to the minimum wage, the government should not intervene in the labor market to influence the wage rate and should not set any minimum wage. What the government can do is to make appropriate expenditures on matching efficacy. Furthermore, considering heterogeneous labor abilities in the model does not change our main finding.

ENTREPRENEURSHIP AND THE INFORMAL ECONOMY: AN EMPIRICAL ANALYSIS

This paper presents an empirical study investigating the effect of entrepreneurship on the incidence of informal employment. It builds upon economic models exploring the determinants of informal economy by analyzing the role played by institutions and policies and their effect on the informal sector. Among policies examined are payroll and severance taxes, labor and product market regulations, unemployment benefits, firing and hiring costs, enforcement of financial contracts and financial costs. The empirical analysis is based on a panel data approach. The main result of the paper supports the view that the informal sector is an “unregulated micro-entrepreneurial sector.” The findings suggest that differences in the level of entrepreneurial activities across developing countries are associated with variance in the incidence of informal employment, and that entrepreneurship has a positive effect on the informal sector. The incidence of informal employment is strongly affected by the public perception of government performance, role, accountability and effectiveness, as well as labor market and business regulations.