Journal Article

Purpose - While the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in the workplace is on the rise, few understand how it will affect our jobs. Will it be a hindrance? A threat? Or the solution to the current productivity dilemma? As with any new, and largely untested, technology, AI brings both challenges and opportunities that we need to be conscious of. Design/methodology/approach - The current and potential future implementation of AI technologies at Schneider Electric is assessed. Findings - In HR, it is our responsibility to help navigate business leaders towards making the best business decision, often with the use of technology. AI, like analytics before it, has huge potential. Originality/value - What we know for sure, is that the development of human talent has become one of the top priorities for global CEOs. With severe talent shortages in the UK, finding the right candidates for the job and investing in their professional development and well-being to keep them for longer look like no-brainers.

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to point to some emerging workplace issues relating to the increasing collaboration between human and robot workers. As the number of human workers shrinks and that of robots increases, how will this change the dynamics of the workplace and human worker motivation? Design/methodology/approach - The approach of this paper is to examine recent academic, business and media writings on the subject of artificial intelligence and robotics in the workplace to identify gaps in our understanding of the new hybrid work environment. Findings - What the author has found is that although there are numerous voices expressing concerns about the replacement of human workers by robots, there has not as yet been a substantive study of the impact on human workers of sharing their work life with robots in this environment. Research limitations/implications - The findings in this paper are limited by the fact that they are drawn from a review of the secondary literature rather than from primary research and are therefore speculative and anecdotal. Practical implications - The practical implications of the findings are to suggest that it is time to establish a systematic and standardized method for analyzing and measuring the impact on human workers of operating in an environment increasingly populated by automated co-workers. Social implications - The author suspects that the social implications will be to suggest that as a human society we will need to establish psychologically and culturally valid means for coping with this new work environment, and the author believes some of the findings may well prove counter intuitive within the social context of work. Originality/value - The author does not believe there is any substantial work addressing the social, psychological or cultural implications of humans working besides robots on a daily basis.

Assessment of intervention competence and adherence to evidence-based practices (EBP) has gained substantial attention in recent years. A variety of methods for measuring procedural knowledge and adherence abound; yet many are resource-intensive, may not be feasible across educational and mental health service delivery systems, and are often associated with a specific treatment manual. This demonstration project assessed the feasibility of using clinical vignette methodology to examine EBP procedural knowledge. Learners across three different samples read a case vignette of a youth with either comorbid depression and disruptive behavior or anxiety and then wrote how they would apply a technique (problem solving or exposure) with that youth. Coding these open-ended responses using the Practice Element Response Form (PERForm) yielded excellent interrater reliabilities for problem solving (intraclass correlation coefficient [ICC] M = .80) and exposure (ICC M = .81). Trainees’ scores increased significantly from pre- to posttraining on the PERForm with medium to very large effect sizes. Results suggest that use of clinical vignette methodology such as that used by the PERForm may be an additional approach to evaluating EBP procedural knowledge that offers the benefits of feasibility, reliability, and sensitivity to training.

Using data from the Canadian Labour Force Survey for 2006 through 2012, I examine the effects of characteristics of Census Metropolitan Areas (CMAs) on the likelihood of recent and established immigrants and the Canadian born to be employed in precarious work. Using multi-level models, I find that employment in temporary jobs and multiple jobs by both recent and established immigrant males is affected by a CMA's median hourly earnings as well as the immigrant representation in a CMA. Also, cross-level interactions reveal recent male immigrants to be less likely to be employed in multiple jobs in CMA in which the median wage is higher.

In our society, the relationship between periphery and center is changing. Questions discussed under the conditions of outsiders and suspended social groups penetrate the center of society and systematically determine the social correlations. Inequality, poverty, social insecurity, and precariousness are equated with changes in social change when the risk of social exclusion is undermined by unskilled activities. This is, for example, very much the case in the German discussion so that outsider groups are defined in Germany, which have themselves maneuvered into a corresponding social situation through wrong biographical decisions. The French approach of Pierre Bourdieu, Robert Castel, and Luc Boltanski and Ève Chiapello differed decisively in this respect, since they reoriented social uncertainties and precariousness in a reorganization of the work structure. This article shows how precariousness is shifted to the center of society and how qualified work develops into unsafe and precarious working conditions within the framework of the reorganization in project activity.

We document the evolution of productivity in a steel mini mill with fixed capital, producing an unchanged product with Leontief technology working 24/7. Despite—almost—unchanged production conditions, output doubled within the sample period (12 years). We decompose the gains into downtime reductions, more rounds of production per time, and more output per run. After attributing productivity gains to investment and an incentive plan, we are left with a large unexplained component. Learning by experimentation, or tweaking, seems to be behind the continual and gradual process of productivity growth. The findings suggest that capacity is not well defined, even in batch-oriented manufacturing.

Purpose- The purpose of this paper is to examine UK higher level skills gaps. UK universities now have many students who were already learning at a higher level about, for, or through, their activities at work, and have decided to formalise this via a higher education (HE) programme; for these students learning mostly takes place away from the university and is sometimes categorised as “work‐based”. Due to the increasingly flexible and hybrid profile of all contemporary students it is more realistic to align those undertaking work‐based study with those choosing more traditional study routes, as all students need to enhance their workplace and life skills in order to better fit them for employment and life after university. There are blurred, not solid, boundaries between the differing kinds of students and between working and studying, and it is useful and productive to acknowledge this continuum. Design/methodology/approach- A researched overview of relevant policy, data and literature including a research project into higher level skills gaps. Practical implications- Employers cite the crucial nature of employability and subject‐based skills and the need for employees who understand how to learn, and furthermore how to build upon and maximise the usefulness of what they learn by making connections and solving problems. Originality/value- The paper shows how HE is shifting, due to demographics, an evolving world picture and a tough economic climate. Technological advances intensify globalisation causing rapid changes and greater competition for jobs and resources. The pressure on HE graduates is greater than ever before. The Government states that individuals require skills with a high economic value and to be prepared to undertake jobs in industries which do not exist yet; they must be changeable and adaptable to meet the challenges of the jobs market and willing to continuously develop themselves.

This paper summarizes recent evidence on what achievement tests measure; how achievement tests relate to other measures of “cognitive ability” like IQ and grades; the important skills that achievement tests miss or mismeasure, and how much these skills matter in life. Achievement tests miss, or perhaps more accurately, do not adequately capture, soft skills—personality traits, goals, motivations, and preferences that are valued in the labor market, in school, and in many other domains. The larger message of this paper is that soft skills predict success in life, that they causally produce that success, and that programs that enhance soft skills have an important place in an effective portfolio of public policies.

By encouraging staff to "execute and not think", companies expect high performance. What they increasingly get is obedience, low performance and an organisational inability to adapt fast enough. But there is a better way, one that is in tune with today's relentlessly changing marketplace. To stay relevant, professionals must develop greater learning agility through thinking and adapting for themselves. By providing an innovative environment which makes the learner think, reflect and challenge their own ways of working, they can find new and original answers that can be rapidly deployed to the business front line. Reflective practices work because they have been tuned by the people using them and through working collaboratively with their employers. To achieve organisation-wide impact, reflective practice should be incorporated at the heart of a learning system.