The availability of consumer apps continues to grow, particularly in the area of healthcare apps. Commonly referred to as mHealth apps, these apps assist consumers in self-management of overall wellness, disease prevention and disease management. Recognition of the importance of patients taking an active and informed role in their own healthcare has fueled this growth. The proliferation of smart phones and consumer interest in taking a more active role in their health, presents a significant opportunity to leverage mHealth apps in innovative ways. This is especially true as improvements are made in the connectivity aspects of mHealth apps both in how data is compiled and how it is connected back to healthcare providers. This report provides an update to the analysis of the mHealth app landscape published by the IMS Institute for Healthcare Informatics in 2013. The primary focus of this report is on the consumer or patient use of mHealth apps. The mHealth app availability and usage information is focused on apps available to the general public that support everyday healthcare management in conjunction with their healthcare provider. While the information is agnostic to geographic boundaries, this report is primarily focused on the U.S. healthcare system.

This paper identifies some of the challenges currently preventing Ontario from creating a highly skilled workforce and makes recommendations on what actions could be taken to help develop one. It recommends that to achieve this goal, businesses, and the government must work together. It makes recommendations in three areas: 1. Aim our students in the right direction, by providing accurate labour market information and ensuring students are properly supported so they can make informed decisions; 2. Strengthen our education and training programs, including workplace training to ensure our existing workforce has the skills required to succeed in the new economy; and, 3. Improve the foreign credential recognition framework, to help businesses make the best use of foreign trained professionals. The paper builds off of the CanadaWorks 2025 report the HRPA prepared with Deliotte, which laid out alternative future scenarios. The scenarios - The Lost Decade, Unsustainable Prosperity and The Northern Tiger - created fulsome pictures of the Canadian workplace and workforce with respect to the labour market, workplace productivity, changes to the employment contract, and the organization of work. By following the recommendations of this paper, we can ensure Ontario does not move towards the “lost decade” scenario. The recommendations laid out below are based upon a scan of various studies, as well as, actions taken by other jurisdictions, and the findings of a survey of 525 of the HRPA’s members, conducted online from April 18-26th, 2016. The paper has a special emphasis on what human resource professionals can do to help in these areas.

Millenials, specifically workers who were born between 1980 and 1995, are probably one of the most discussed and debated age groups. They are often said to be disloyal, highly self-interested, and, by some, even lazy. Yet, are these characterizations accurate, and should employers care? Ontario’s economy is changing at a rapid pace and is dramatically different than it was even a few short years ago. In today’s highly competitive global marketplace, talent is mobile and competition for workers between jurisdictions, as well as organizations, is fierce. A recent world-wide survey of CEOs by Price Waterhouse Cooper (PwC) highlighted that retention of Millennials is one of their largest issues. 1 Millennial workers are the future of all Canadian businesses. Today, Millennials represent the largest age cohort in the Canadian workplace 2, and are steadily moving past entry-level jobs, and into leadership roles. Studies in the United States show that Millennials are now the largest living generation, larger than even the Baby Boomers3, and that trend continues in Canada. According to Statistics Canada projections compiled by Environics Analytics, the Canadian Millennial population will grow past 11 million people, while the next largest generation, Baby Boomers, continues to decline.4 It is therefore critical for the human resource industry to understand Millennials – what defines them, how to attract them, retain them, and integrate them into our organizations. With this goal in mind the Human Resources Professionals Association (HRPA) has undertaken to help its Members understand the Millennial generation by exploring what Millennials look for from their employers and how they can be better transitioned into a new workplace. The recommendations made in this report are based on a literature review of primarily quantitative studies conducted on these issues, as well as a survey of 1,026 HRPA Members, which was conducted online from September 14, 2016 to September 28, 2016.

U.S. manufacturing experienced a precipitous and historically unprecedented decline in employment in the 2000s. Many economists and other analysts—pointing to decades of statistics showing that manufacturing real (inflation-adjusted) output growth has largely kept pace with private sector real output growth, that productivity growth has been much higher, and that the sector’s share of aggregate employment has been declining—argue that manufacturing’s job losses are largely the result of productivity growth (assumed to reflect automation) and are part of a long-term trend. Since the 1980s, however, the apparently robust growth in manufacturing real output and productivity have been driven by a relatively small industry—computer and electronic products, whose extraordinary performance reflects the way statistical agencies account for rapid product improvements in the industry. Without the computer industry, there is no prima facie evidence that productivity caused manufacturing’s relative and absolute employment decline. This paper discusses interpreting labor productivity statistics, which capture many factors besides automation, and cautions against using descriptive evidence to draw causal inferences. It also reviews the research literature to date, which finds that trade significantly contributed to the collapse of manufacturing employment in the 2000s but finds little evidence of a causal link to automation.

In this report we take a hard look at the organization of government. Why? To provide a compelling alternative to legacy structures — to something dramatically more flexible and responsive. Rigid hierarchies and tightly defined job descriptions may have suited the past. But today, citizen expectations are more pervasive and matching resources to suit mission more imperative.

The way we interact, the way we make decisions and the way we learn are all being shaped and influenced by the rapidly developing and increasingly accessible computing technology around us. Nowhere is this more prevalent than in the use and adoption of AI. The ever-expanding presence of AI in our daily lives evokes a complex emotional response, from fascination and curiosity to fear and anxiety. But are these concerns justified, given the vast array of positive use cases of AI that will define the future? For employees and customers, what are the benefits that can be harnessed from AI for their advantage and, quite possibly, for the wider world? For organizations, especially those in the midst of considering their own adoption of AI, the challenge lies in balancing risk and reward across both the workforce and the operations of the business.

A quick review of the most recent labor-market data tells the story. A broader measure of unemployment includes both workers who want full-time jobs but have to settle for part-time work and workers who are marginally attached to the labor force. Defined this way, the unemployment rate in November was 13.2%, more than four percentage points higher than it was at the beginning of the Great Recession. The economy is home to 1.3 million fewer jobs today than when the Great Recession began. The three-month moving average of employment gains is currently 193,000 jobs per month. At that rate, the Brookings Institution's Hamilton Project calculates that the jobs gap will not close until more than five years from now.

In January and February 2017, the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) conducted its annual survey of U.S. employers to gather information on more than 300 employee benefits. The survey asked human resource professionals if their organizations formally offered any of the listed benefits to their employees. This report examines the prevalence of benefits over the past five years to track trends and understand the benefits landscape in the current talent marketplace.

North Carolina confronts an enormous future jobs challenge as two big trends converge: (1) a technological revolution will eliminate or seriously reshape more than a million current jobs, and (2) our demography is shifting rapidly as we age, grow more diverse, and our workforce welcomes more women. According to a recent analysis at North Carolina State University, jobs in some 39 major current employment categories in the state are at least 70% likely to be eliminated within one generation as a result of automation. More than one million North Carolinians currently work in these jobs. (Note: Other analysis implies that an additional one million current North Carolina jobs may be lost during the same time frame to tech enabled offshoring; because detailed analysis is not yet available, however, we have not included this further disruptive factor in our modeling.) North Carolina’s demographic transition presents additional disruptive effects: the state must replace a large cohort of boomer retirees while ensuring the successful integration of a generation of new workers that includes more women and will become majority minority. To draw attention to these important challenges, the Institute for Emerging Issues’ new Future Work Disruption Index for North Carolina offers a comparative metric that helps define relative exposure to the disruptive impacts of technological and demographic changes for North Carolina’s counties and regional Prosperity Zones.