Income of workforce is linked to their height

Income of workforce is linked to their height

HRK News Bureau | New Delhi | Thursday, 16 August 2018

According to a World Bank report, two‐thirds of India’s current workforce was stunted in childhood and that's affecting their income.

171 million children under the age of five were stunted in the year 2014. According to the World Bank, this phenomenon, wherein children are excessively short for their age, is affecting their income levels.

Stunting in childhood is worrisome because it is associated with adverse outcomes throughout the life cycle. The undernourishment and disease that cause stunting impair brain development, leading to lower cognitive and socio-emotional skills, lower levels of educational attainment, and hence, lower incomes.

According to a World Bank report, two‐thirds of India’s current workforce was stunted in childhood.

Data reveals that on an average, an additional centimeter in height translates into 1.7 per cent higher wages in the labour market.

The rationale is that, had the stunted members of the current workforce not been stunted in childhood and attained regular height, they would not have suffered impaired cognitive development in their early years, nor would they have received less education.
Their income today would have been higher by a percentage that reflects the education penalty associated with childhood stunting, the returns to education, the adult height penalty to childhood stunting, the returns to height, the cognitive skills penalty to childhood stunting, and the returns to cognitive skills.

The average reduction of wages due to stunting for South Asia was 10 per cent, while that for North America was two per cent. The Middle East and North Africa do better, with a reduction of four per cent, compared to Europe and Central Asia with a reduction of five per cent.

© 2016 HR Katha

Source:(16/08/2018).

93% of employees would trust orders from a robot, finds a study

93% of employees would trust orders from a robot, finds a study

HRK News Bureau | New Delhi | Monday, 02 July 2018 

Six per cent of HR professionals are actively deploying AI and 24 per cent of employees are currently using some form of AI at work.

In a changing world, where technology is increasingly pervading human life, a study reveals that people don’t hesitate to take instructions from robots at work. The study was conducted by Oracle and Future Workplace, a research firm preparing leaders for disruptions in recruitment, development and employee engagement. The research involving 1,320 HR leaders and employees in the US, revealed that even as people are ready to embrace artificial intelligence (AI) at work, and understand that the benefits go far beyond automating manual processes, organisations are still lagging behind when it comes to embracing AI. This will result in reduced productivity, skillset obsolescence and job loss.

The study titled, ‘AI at Work’, also identified a large gap between the way people are using AI at home and at work. According to the study, 70 per cent of people are using some form of AI in their personal life, while only six per cent of HR professionals are actively deploying AI and 24 per cent of employees are currently using some form of AI at work. The study tried to find the obstacles preventing AI adoption and the business consequences of not embracing AI even when people are ready to embrace AI at work (93 per cent were found to trust orders from a robot). Majority of the respondents agreed that AI will have a positive impact on their organisations. When asked about the biggest benefit of AI, HR leaders and employees both felt it was increased productivity.

According to the study, most employees believe that AI will improve operational efficiencies (59 per cent), enable faster decision making (50 per cent), significantly reduce cost (45 per cent), enhance customer experiences (40 per cent) and improve the employee experience (37 per cent). Leaders in the HR industry believe AI will positively impact learning and development (27 per cent), performance management (26 per cent), compensation/payroll (18 per cent) and recruitment and employee benefits (13 per cent).

Given the fact that AI has huge potential to improve business performance, HR leaders and employees believe that organisations are not doing enough to prepare the workforce for AI. Respondents also identified a number of other barriers holding back AI in the enterprise.

Almost (90 per cent) of HR leaders are worried about adjusting to the rapid adoption of AI as part of their job and find it might make matters worse, as most are not currently empowered to address an emerging AI skill gap in their organisation. While more than half of the employees (51 per cent) are concerned they will not be able to adjust to the rapid adoption of AI and 71 per cent believe AI skills and knowledge will be important in the next three years, 72 per cent of HR leaders noted that their organisation does not provide any form of AI training programme. In addition to the skill gap, HR leaders and employees identified cost (74 per cent), failure of technology (69 per cent) and security risks (56 per cent) as the other major barriers to AI adoption in the enterprise.

Despite concerns of people regarding AI entering the workplace, the study found the opposite to be true with HR leaders and employees (79 per cent of HR leaders; 60 per cent of employees) believing that failure to adopt AI will have negative consequences for their own careers, colleagues and the organisation on the whole.

From an organisational standpoint, respondents believe embracing AI will have the most positive impact on directors and C-Suite executives. By failing to empower leadership teams with AI, organisations could lose competitive advantage.

© 2016 HR Katha
Source: (02/07/2018).

Happy employees contribute to better profits, says global report

Happy employees contribute to better profits, says global report

HRK News Bureau | New Delhi | Wednesday, 27 June 2018

The financial returns are higher for companies taking care of their employees, reveals a report by Globoforce WorkHuman and IBM Smarter Workforce.

Companies that score high on employee experience have better financial results as well. This reiterates the fact that employee happiness is a must for organisational success.

The newly published report, The Financial Impact of a Positive Employee Experience, by IBM Smarter Workforce Institute and the Globoforce WorkHuman establishes that employee experience is positively associated with employee work performance, discretionary effort, and turnover intention.

A key finding of this report is that organisations that score in the top 25 per cent of ‘employee experience’, report nearly triple the return on assets and more than twice the return on sales when compared to companies in the bottom quartile.

For this report, psychologists and experts in HR consulting from Globoforce and IBM surveyed 22,000 employees from across the globe, belonging to a cross-section of industries in thousands of organisations.
The investigation also resulted in the creation of the Employee Experience Index (EEI), which measures employee satisfaction under five headings— belonging, purpose, achievement, happiness and vigour.


Companies, which managed to score highly on EEI, reported returns that significantly outpace those of companies that didn’t perform well. The report is quick to stress that cashing in on this fiscal boost does not need to be a costly affair. It highlighted that improving employee experience is not resource-intensive but really more about making some key changes that will create a more ‘human’ workplace.

Globoforce and IBM stated that a human workplace is one characterised by allowing work–life balance, providing opportunities for feedback and growth, fostering positive co-worker relationships, enabling meaningful work, and empowering workers so that they feel they have a voice.
The study suggests that senior leadership and managers play crucial roles in creating many of those opportunities and ultimately ensure a positive and supportive work environment.

However, the study reveals that a majority - more than 70 per cent – of HR practitioners think that senior leadership could be doing more to improve employees’ experiences at work.

Organisation also need to improve on on two key parameters - work-life balance and better recognition for employees. According to the report, less than a quarter (22 percent) of hr practitioners say that  say their organisations do enough to provide opportunities to recharge, and less than half (49 percent) say there is sufficient recognition of the good work that employees do.

The report also stresses on recognising the humanity of employees and treating them as such.

Previously, this report released the rankings of international countries in which employees reported the highest levels of employee experience.
In the current report, this index has been married with analyses of some of the key metrics of fiscal success for a company.

Return on assets (ROA) and return on sales (ROS) are two of the most commonly used measures of profitability. ROA is the ratio of net income to assets and is used to determine how profitable a company is relative to its total assets. A high ROA indicates that a company is earning more money on less investment, which is obviously ideal.

Source: (27/06/2018).

Research Says If You Make This Much Per Year, You'll Be Happy. Anything More Actually Lowers Your Happiness

Research Says If You Make This Much Per Year, You'll Be Happy. Anything More Actually Lowers Your Happiness

By:

Marcel Schwantes

Does earning more money make you happier? According to recent research, certain income levels do make people happier, but there's a twist in the findings (more on that below).
The study, conducted by researchers at Purdue University on more than 1.7 million people as part of the Gallup World Poll found that, in every region of the world, people with higher incomes are indeed happier.
For the U.S., it's no different. A person making $120,000 or $200,000 is likely to report more happiness with their lives than the person pulling in $40,000.

A twist: Life satisfaction stops after you make a certain amount

The research found the optimal income for life satisfaction in North America is $105,000 per year. If your income exceeds that amount, it has been found that whatever you make beyond that level is not associated with greater life satisfaction. In fact, it reduces life satisfaction.
This $105,000 income cutoff is what's called the "satiation point." A person pulling in $250,000 is no happier or satisfied with his or her life than a person making $110,000.
This study had global ramifications: In many other regions of the world, when incomes rise above the cutoff level for that particular country, life satisfaction gets lower. In Australia and New Zealand, for example, the satiation point is $125,000; and in Latin America and the Caribbean, it's $35,000. (This chart shows the satiation point for different areas of the world in U.S. dollars.)

A similar study conducted in 2010 by Nobel prize-winning economist Angus Deaton and psychologist Daniel Kahneman found the satiation point for individuals in the U.S. then was approximately $75,000 (adjusted to around $84,000 in 2016 dollars, according to this Quartz report).

Conclusion

To recap, the optimal salary for attaining life satisfaction in North America is individual income of $105,000. Once this threshold is reached, further increases in income are actually associated with reduced happiness. (Note: The research also finds that a range of $65,000 to $95,000 is needed for emotional well-being in the U.S. "Emotional well-being" in this case refers to a person's day-to-day feelings such as happiness, sadness, excitement, or anger.)

This new survey, however, has found its share of critics who question its accuracy. Dan Sacks, an economist at Indiana University who studies the relationship between income and subjective well-being, isn't convinced of the results. He tells Quartz that the research "relies on flawed survey questions."

He references previous research that suggests that just because people say they make a certain amount of money in self-reported polls, it doesn't mean they actually do. 

There's also the probability of people answering poll questions about their happiness differently on different days. Someone having a bad day at work one day will have answered the same question differently on a better day. "This measurement error," states the Quartz report, "makes it difficult for researchers to assess the income-happiness relationship with great accuracy."
That leaves room for a lot of questions and doubts. What's your take? Are you more or less satisfied with your life with an income higher than $105,000 per year? 

Source Courtesy: https://www.inc.com/marcel-schwantes/research-just-found-this-is-how-much-you-need-to-make-per-year-to-have-life-satisfaction.html