Workforce Obsolescence

Workforce Obsolescence The loss of critical skills, i.e., the disappearance of non-replaceable workforce, is a problem faced by many product sectors tasked with supporting critical systems. This problem is common for organizations that must manage the DMSMS-type obsolescence problems for hardware, software and materials discussed in the other chapters of this book. For some products, the loss of worker skills and experience can be mitigated by simply adjusting hiring rates and instituting training of younger workers, however, in other sectors experience can be very difficult to replace. This chapter focuses on the loss of critical skills that are either non-replaceable or take prohibitively long times to reconstitute. 13.1 Defining Workforce Obsolescence Mismatches between the skills possessed by the workforce and the skills needed by employers create a number of issues that complicate the long-term manufacturing and sustainment of systems. These mismatches have been classified into the following three general categories: skills obsolescence, skill shortage, and critical skills loss. Skills obsolescence (also referred to as human capital obsolescence) describes situations in which workers lack the skills needed to either become employed or remain employed, (De Grip and Van Loo, 2002). This often includes the segment of the workforce that have skills, but those skills are obsolete requiring retraining of the worker. Where obsolete skills refer to skills that are no longer needed. Skill shortage describes situations where there are insufficient available skill competences to fill the needs of an organization, e.g., (Green et al., 1998). Skills shortage articulates the need to identify, train and retain the workforce to fill current and expected future skill needs. Skills shortage has many causes including the speed of technology advancement, e.g., (Duan et al., 2002), training and education gaps (Skinner et al., 2004), and can also be the result of an organizations inability or failure to protect its core skill competencies over long periods of time or during economic downturns (Melymuka, 2002). Critical skills loss is relevant to this book and is the focus of this chapter. Critical skills loss refers to the loss of skills that either cannot be replaced or require a prohibitively long time to reconstitute, (Sandborn and Prabhakar, 2015). In this case reconstitution of the skills may require many years if possible at all. Critical skills loss is a special case of organizational forgetting, i.e., the loss of knowledge gained through learning-by-doing. Organizational forgetting can be caused by labor turnover, periods of inactivity, and/or failure of an organization to institutionalize tacit knowledge (Brsanko et al., 2010). Critical skills loss is a permanent and involuntary form of organizational forgetting that may be unrecoverable. Critical skills loss (in the context of legacy system support) is the result of long-term (20+ years) of workforce attrition where highly-skilled workers retire without a sufficient number of younger workers to learn their skills and take their p lace.[1] Critical skills loss is not necessarily the result of poor planning or lack of foresight (and although activity is light, it is not nonexistent); rather it is an inevitable outcome of the organizations dependence on a highly-specialized highly-critical skill set for which there is small, but non-zero, demand, (Sandborn and Prabhakar, 2015). It should be stressed that critical skills loss is a long-term phenomenon it occurs gradually over 20+ years, i.e., over the span of several generations of management coupled with mergers, acquisitions, and product line changes, critical skills often diffuse and eventually disappear. In the context of this book, the salient issue that defines workforce obsolescence for legacy mission-, infrastructure-, and safety-critical systems is critical skills loss. 13.2 How Critical Skills Loss Impacts Systems and Where it Comes From Critical skills loss is rarely a problem in high-volume low-skill manufacturing applications, e.g., assembly-line workers. For these applications, an appropriate workforce nearly always exists or can be readily constructed through training programs. However, managing human skills obsolescence is becoming a significant problem for organizations tasked with supporting legacy systems. These support organizations need to be able to understand, forecast and manage a highly-specialized workforce with potentially irreplaceable skill sets. The system support and management challenges created by the loss of critical human skills have been reported in many industry sectors including: healthcare (Waldman, 2004), nuclear power (Nuclear Workforce Planning, 2008), aerospace (Testimony of Elliot Pulham, 2002), and other enterprises(Leibold and Voelpel, 2002). In the IT industry, the shortage of mainframe application programmers experienced in legacy applications is very problematic, (Goodridge and McGee, 2002) and (Hilson, 2001); in this case the necessary skills are no longer being taught because demand has dropped and younger workers interests are elsewhere. The loss of critical skills is most troublesome for organizations that must provide long-term support for legacy systems. For example, for defense systems, the loss of critical skills is potentially devastating: Even a 1-year delay in funding for CVN-76 [aircraft carrier] will result in the loss of critical skills which will take up to 5 years to reconstitute through ne w hires and training. A longer delay could cause a permanent loss in the skills necessary to maintain our carrier force. (Congressional Record, 1994). The causes of critical skills loss include: education and training declines (e.g., universities no longer educate engineers in the programming languages that are used in many legacy systems, (Shead, 2013); younger workers may perceive that certain occupations are in decline, e.g., nuclear power (Nuclear Workforce Planning, 2008) and are therefore discouraged from entering them; similarly younger workers may perceive certain occupations as not cutting-edge and therefore not enter them (Ahrens et al., 1995) (Adolph, 1996); younger workers may leave jobs supporting legacy systems to pursue other positions that appear to be more lucrative and exciting (Figure 13-2 in Section 13.3.3 shows an exit age distribution for a legacy control system); the shrinkage of feeder occupations, e.g., historically the U.S. Navy has provided highly-skilled workers to the nuclear power industry (Nuclear Workforce Planning, 2008); older workers protecting their jobs by not passing knowledge along to younger workers, e.g., (AndolÃ…Â ¡ek, 2011); and fundamental differences between young and old workers regarding job perceptions (i.e., social and cultural influences) (Goodridge and McGee, 2002). 13.3 Quantifying the Impact of Critical Skills Loss Critical skills loss impacts the sustainment of mission-, infrastructure- and safety-critical systems. As the human capital that possesses the skills to support a system shrinks, the time that the system is down (non-operational) when the system requires support will increase. Downtime increases lead to increased business interrupt time, which results in a loss of revenue for manufacturing systems. Increases in downtime in the transportation, defense and service industries decreases system availability, which can lead to a loss of revenue, safety compromises, property damage, and loss of life (e.g., emergency vehicle unavailability). In this section, we briefly review the applicability of some existing models to quantifying the impact of critical skills loss and then describe one modeling approach that estimates the financial impact of the problem. 13.3.1 Existing Approaches Nearly all of the existing modeling and quantitative treatments address the problem of skills obsolescence, which is a different problem than the critical skills loss problem addressed in this chapter. Most skills obsolescence treatments assume that workers skills become outdated or are otherwise no longer useful, possibly as a result of automation and other advances in technology. These works focus on the mitigation of skill decay in a workforce over time. The only existing work applicable to critical skills loss focuses on knowledge preservation, i.e., the capture of non-replenishable knowledge, (Joe and Yoong, 2004) (Hailey and Hailey). Some applicable work has also been done on retirement wave planning (Friel, 2002); however, this work focuses on head count rather than skill content. The modeling performed by Bohlander and Snell (2010) addresses a situation that is similar to critical skills loss, however, worker attrition and the costs associated the unavailability of the workers is not considered. In Bordoloi (1999), a model for different skill level workers that enter and exit a company is developed; the model takes into account the rate at which the company gains and loses workers. However, the model in(Bordoloi, 1999) does not estimate workers experience as a function of time and therefore does not determine the impact of critical skills loss on supporting systems. In the planning model developed by Huang et al.(2009) the goal is the determination of an ideal hiring rate using differing worker skill levels. While this model uses workforce simulation and determines the ideal hiring rate, the model does not take into account the costs incurred by the unavailability of workers. The basis for most workforce planning models is the physical sum of people employed, (Holt, 2011). However, the model developed by Holt, however, does not consider the aging of individual workers over time. There are models that have some applicability to critical skills loss in the maintenance workforce planning literature, e.g., (Koochaki et al., 2013) (Martorell et al., 2010) (Ait-Kaki, et al. 2011) and (Ahire et al., 2000). These models focus on optimizing maintenance scheduling and resource allocation. Maintenance policies have the goal of maximizing plant or process line availability while concurrently minimizing cost through the timely presence (and appropriate skill set) of maintenance workers. Koochaki et al., 2013) points out that maintenance workers are usually highly skilled and therefore difficult to recruit and that the efficient and effective use of a scarce maintenance workforce is very important. The model in (Koochaki et al., 2013) addresses the impact of limited ma intenance workers (i.e., maintenance resource constraints) on the grouping of maintenance activities while comparing age-based replacement and condition-based maintenance (CBM). In (Ahire et al., 2000), the makespan (which is the total length of the schedule) is minimized for a groups of preventive maintenance tasks constrained by workforce availability. Other papers treat the influence of CBM on maintenance scheduling and workforce planning, for examples see (Koochaki et al., 2013) and the references contained therein. In general these references focus on the determination of the optimum size maintenance workforce. 13.3.2 Modeling Human Skills Loss A detailed model for the loss of non-replinishable maintenance resources has been developed in (Sandborn and Prabhakar, 2015) and (Sandborn and Williams, 2016). The technical development of the model is briefly summarized here, see (Sandborn and Prabhakar, 2015) and (Sandborn and Williams, 2016) for more detail. The model uses historical workforce data to forecast the size and experience of the workforce pool as a function of time. The workforce experience pool is then used to determine the cost of supporting (sustaining) a system as a function of time. The model was created to address the questions: what will todays skills pool look like in the future? and what impact will the future skills pool have on the organizations ability to continue to support the system? A key assumption in this model is that sufficient experience exists today to adequately support the system, and we wish to forecast the future workforce skills pools experience relative to todays skills pool. The model has four primary inputs: a current age distribution (fC), a hiring age distribution (fH), an exit age distribution (fL) and the hiring rate (H). Assuming a stationary analysis, the distribution of exit ages (fL) and the distribution of hiring ages (fH) and are constant. This does not mean that the same number of people are hired each year, but rather that the hired peoples ages are always distributed equivalently. The same assumption is made for fL. The distribution of current ages (fC) is used as an initial condition. To assess workforce pool size and experience over time, we must project the experience of the workers in the pool into the future. This projection starts with the initial conditions in the pool and accounts for age related loss and subsequent hiring. The level of experience within the skills pool changes over time and can be determined from: 1) the new hires added to the skills pool; 2) the attrition (loss) rate of skilled workers; and 3) the varying skill levels of the workers in the pool and how those skill levels (experience) increase as workers remain in the pool. The net frequency of people in the pool of age a during year i relative to year 0 is given by, (13-1) where, i is the number of years from the start of the analysis, a is age, and Hi is the fraction of new hires per year (fraction of the pool size at the start of the analysis period i = 0). The first term in the brackets in Equation 13-1 is the current workforce pool size (relative to year 0), the second term in the brackets in Equation 13-1 is the number of new hires (relative to year 0), and the multiplier accounts for the retention rate. Note, Equation 13-1 assumes that the hiring rate, Hi is the same for all ages, a. The initial condition for the model is that the fraction of people of age a relative to year 0 in year 0 is given by,. The cumulative net frequency of people in the skills pool, NNET, in year i is determined by summing Ni(a) over all the ages (y = youngest to r = retirement), (13-2) Calculating the size of the workforce pool (head count) over time is necessary but not sufficient to capture an organizations future ability to support a system because workers have different levels of experience. Because of the varying experience, not all workers provide an equivalent level of value to the support of the system. In this model, experience is defined as the length of time that a worker has spent in a particular position. The cumulative experience in the workforce pool in year i, Ei, is calculated using, (13-3) where, RE and IE map age to the experience measured in years (RE and IE are determined using a parametric model from actual data). Note, while experience has the units of time, Ei, which is used in this model, represents the cumulative experience relative to the initial condition. The time to perform maintenance in year i is found from the cumulative experience using, (13-4) where, is the time to perform a maintenance activity with a skills pool having E0 experience at i = 0. In Equation 13-4 the time required to perform maintenance increases as experience decreases due to the following factors: 1) less-experienced workers require more time to perform maintenance (learning curve effects), and/or 2) if the pool of workers capable of performing the required maintenance task shrinks, appropriate workers may not be available at every site and may have to travel from a different location, which takes time. The most significant impact of the loss of critical human skills for legacy systems is the ability to perform system support (corrective maintenance) in a timely manner. Corrective maintenance costs consist of: spare parts, labor, downtime, overhead, consumables/handling, and equipment/facilities. When a corrective maintenance event occurs, the cost of performing the required maintenance action is, (13-5) where is the fraction of the maintenance events of severity level j that result in a business interrupt, is the cost of replacement parts (if replacement parts are needed) in year i,is the cost of labor (per unit time) in year i (with appropriate overhead applied), and is the cost of business interrupt (per unit time) in year i. , and are assumed to be discounted using an appropriate discount rate. 13.3.3 Example System Support Case Study A detailed case study was previously published in (Sandborn and Prabhakar, 2015) and (Sandborn and Williams, 2016). In this section we only provide a few highlights from that case study. The case study considered the support of a legacy control system for a chemical product manufacturing company (the system was originally developed and deployed in the 1970s) and has over 2000 instances (plants) installed and currently operating and supported worldwide. In this case, because the process line availability is very important, unscheduled downtime cannot be tolerated. The model overviewed in Section 13.3.2 requires three distribution inputs: the current age distribution (fC), the distribution of hiring age (fH) and the distribution of exit age (fL). Two of these distribution inputs are readily available from organizations field data: the hiring age (fH) and a current age distribution (fC), Figure 13-1. The current age distribution (in Figure 13-1b) has a mode of 55 years, which is very close to the early retirement age in the organization, thereby demonstrating the issue that this chapter is focused on. The exit age distribution (fL) shown in Figure 13-2 for this case study was synthesized using the distributions for fH(a) and fC(a) in Figure 13-1 along with the assumption of a stationary process. Figure 13-2 is a bathtub curve. It indicates that workers either exit early or exit late (but few exit between ages 45 and 60. The younger workers exit because they are changing jobs within the company. The company modeled in this case study, has had difficulty retaining young workers (engineers) to support the legacy system. The younger engineers have a tendency to relocate to other job opportunities within the company that they perceive as having better long-term career prospects. Above age 60 the workers are retiring. Figure 13-2 supports the critical skills loss observation made in Section 13.2 that younger workers leave legacy system support jobs (presumably for other positions). The number of workers (pool size) is shown in Figures 13-1 and 13-2, but the experience contained within the pool is not reflected in these distributions. To get from pool size to the workforce pool experience, the mapping from age to applicable experience is needed. The parameters for the mapping function in Equation 13-3 were generated from the years of experience (on the control system) and the years of service to the company. The net pool size (number of workers) over time as a fraction of the pool size in 2010, NNET, is shown in Figure 13-3a. Figure 13-3b shows the experience relative to 2010, and Figure 13-3c shows the average age of the workers in the pool. The results in Figure 13-3 assume no hiring, H = 0. Figures 13-3a and 13-3b indicate that although a 10% drop in head count occurs in the first 6 years, the experience remains approximately constant (existing workers are gaining enough on-the-job experience to offset the drop in head count). After 2016, the experience drops as the oldest and most experienced workers leave and are not being sufficiently replenished. Assuming that the lost skills are replenishable (they are not for the real company treated in this case study), we can estimate what the future hiring rate, Hi, would have to be to preserve the initial level of experience, E0, in the skills pool. Equation 13-1 is used to determine the annual hiring rate, Hi, that is required to replenish the cumulative experience lost as a result of attrition and retirement. Figure 13-4 shows results for hiring rate, Hi, relative to the initial pool size P0as a function of the number of years from the start of the analysis. Figure 13-4 shows that no hiring is required in the first five years (we are not allowing hiring to drop below 0, a hiring rate below 0 would reflect a layoff situation). A hiring rate of over 6% is required starting in 2017 for 9 years and then settles to 2-5% for all the years thereafter. When H is greater than zero in (4), the hiring rate is applied to the entire hiring age distribution, fH. The required hiring rate solved for in Figure 13-4 accounts for both the time required for new workers to learn the skills necessary to support the system and the exit age distribution in Figure 13-1. Figure 13-5 shows the annual cost of supporting the legacy control system through year 2040 (all 2000+ instances of the system are costed here). The cost modeling is performed using a stochastic discrete-event simulator that samples time-to-failure distributions for the components of the control system to obtain maintenance events (determining the maintenance event dates and the components that need replacement). Subsystem-specific (and severity category specific[2]) failure distributions are sampled to obtain failure dates for the system. At each maintenance event, maintenance resources are drawn and a cost is estimated using Equation 13-5. Most of the maintenance events do not result in business interrupt time because they only impact one of the two parallel control systems and = 0, however, a small fraction (the most severe events) result in dual control system failures where > 0. The risk of dual failures and the resulting business interrupt is captured by the differing severit y categories. The specific data associated with the system count, the subsystem/severity category reliabilities, and the cost of business interrupt time is proprietary to the customer and therefore not included here. For this case study, was determined to be 0.54, meaning that when the number of people in the pool drops below 54% of the number that are in the pool initially (in 2010), the extra maintenance time penalty (modeled by (15)) is applied. Figure 13-5 shows two support cost results. The results demonstrate that there is minimal effect of skills loss prior to 2030. In year 2028 existing lifetime buys of spares parts (hardware) start to run out resulting in the cost step between 2028 and 2030. We obtain the lower curve in Figure 13-5 when there is no skills loss, Ei/E0 = 1 for all i in Equation 13-4. In this case there is still an annual cost increase caused by part obsolescence that is mitigated via lifetime buys of parts (these buys commit significant capital to the pre-purchase of spare parts and long-term holding costs). The higher cost curve in Figure 13-5 is the case where no replenishment of lost skills is possible (H = 0), this is close to reality for the company considered in this case study. 13.4 Discussion Workforce planning means ensuring that you have the right number of people, with the right skills sets, in the right jobs, at the right time. This chapter presents a model that enables workforce planning in cases where the workforce is non-replenishable. The model developed estimates both the number of skilled employees (workforce pool size) and the cumulative experience in the workforce pool. This information is used to determine the resources available to maintain a system as a function of time. Cumulative experience dictates the time (and the resultant cost) required for workers to perform the maintenance activities necessary to support the system. Because of the prohibitively large cost of legacy system replacement, these systems are rarely replaced unless a catastrophic failure occurs or their support costs become impractical. The model can potentially be used by companies to support the development of business cases for system replacement, see (Sandborn and Prabhakar, 2015). Numerous important assumptions were made in the development of the model. In the solution presented here, we assume that years on the job is the only way workers can gain experience. We have not accounted for methods that could be used to accelerate the rate at which workers become more experienced, e.g., capturing older workers knowledge in knowledge bases [29,30] could accelerate experience. We have performed a discrete-time analysis because the input data that was available to us only exists annually. A continuous-time solution could also be developed, but one must be careful to match the model to the form of the input data. There are several indirect consequences of the loss of critical skills that we have not addressed, and which would be challenging to quantify in terms of cost. The workers that are maintaining systems (particularly engineers) are likely to be performing other beneficial tasks in addition to corrective maintenance. Besides corrective maintenance, they may also perform: preventative maintenance, projects intended to upgrade the reliability and/or performance of the system, and knowledge transfer activities. As workforce resources decrease, it is reasonable to assume that all tasks, except corrective maintenance, would decrease. Even if sufficient resources remain available for corrective maintenance tasks, an inability to perform the other tasks that the engineers might do results in a loss of: maintenance efficiency improvements, system reliability improvements that could decrease future maintenance requirements, and system performance. Further, if the job satisfaction amongst the eng ineers that are forced to only perform maintenance decreases then their retention may be negatively impacted. There are other factors that may modify the case study presented herein. These factors include location (culture certainly impacts the likelihood that highly-skilled workers remain in system support jobs), gender, the product sector, etc. These effects could be analyzed with the presented in this chapter model if sufficient data existed. [1] For many types of legacy systems, 5 or more years of on-the-job experience may be required to become competent. [2] The level of maintenance required (which dictates the maintenance resources required) and the degree of business interrupt associated with the maintenance event are governed by the severity categories. See From (Sandborn and Williams, 2016) for details.

Should the Drinking Age be Lowered? Essay -- Law, Sociology

Although exceptions to every generality exist, alcohol is usually present in most gathering where adults are also in attendance. If one really examines the idea, alcohol is usually at every social event even if adults are not. At this point it would probably be important to know who actually is considered to be an adult. From country to country the answer varies but in the United States of America anyone of the age of eighteen is liable and treated just like adults of any age. Consequently, one could say that the previous statement is technically, in the majority of circumstances, incorrect in that when alcohol is around so are adults. When mentioned in such a way, nothing seems to be out of place except that in the United States the legal alcohol consumption age is twenty-one. There are not many sides one may take when contemplating this alcohol consumption law, one is either for it or against it. Many believe that if the drinking age is lowered it should rightfully be lowered to eighteen. These individuals have a number of reasons to support their ideology. John McCardell Jr. is one of those individuals and actually developed a complete organization in 2006 known as Choose Responsibility that promotes his philosophy (Cloud). McCardell Jr. is the head of Middlebury College and believes eighteen to twenty year olds should be eligible to consume alcoholic beverages as long as they are licensed (Cloud). To receive this license one must first complete a course that is around forty-two hours long and consists of the explanations of the chemistry, history, psychology, and sociology of alcohol that may include AA, alcoholics anonymous, meetings (Cloud). McCardell Jr., along with others, also believes that if one is considered an a... ...at can be done to minimize all the problems alcohol provides; I think the first step in assimilating a similar attitude is by education and through example from older adults to young adults. Maybe McCardell’s forty-two hour course of everything one should know to fully understand the results of consuming alcohol would be beneficial for the general public. With that being said the age should still remain twenty-one and adults should not be one-hundred percent intolerable towards teens that might have slipped some alcohol by, after all who has not broken a rule here and there? I believe if a little ignorance is given to the provocation it will disappear. Works Cited Cloud, John. "Should the Drinking Age Be Lowered?" Time.com. Time US, 06 June 2008. Web. 05 Feb. 2012. Scrivo, Karen Lee. "Drinking on Campus." CQ Researcher 20 Mar. 1998: 241-64. Web. 5 Feb. 2012.

Charles Dickens :: GCSE English Literature Coursework

Charles "David Copperfield" Dickens (1812 - 1870) Charles John Huffam1 Dickens was born 7 February 1812, second child of John and Elizabeth Dickens. The family would eventually number seven children, plus a son who died in infancy, and since neither parent seemed able to economize, things were generally very hard financially for the family. Charles attended school for a time in Kent, where the happiest days of his childhood were spent, but when the family moved to London in 1822, Charles was simply never re-enrolled in school, and was left to wander London largely unattended2. When the oldest child, Fanny, was sent to the Royal Academy of Music for training as a pianist, Charles, then 12, was deemed old enough to work to help pay the family expenses. So, for six months, he worked in a factory pasting labels onto containers of shoe polish. While there, John Dickens was thrown into debtor's prison, and released a few months later under the Insolvency Act3. It was a feud between John Dickens and the factory owner that eventually got Charles out of the factory and back in school, though Elizabeth tried her best to make him go back, which Charles never quite forgave her for. The factory experience will show up again and again in Charles' novels, and it also left him with something of a phobia about being dirty. In 1827, Charles left school again, more voluntarily this time, and took work as a law clerk, and then a parliamentary reporter. Though he also toyed with the idea of taking the stage (he loved amateur theatricals all his life), he eventually starts writing sketches for two of the London newspapers4, publishing them under the name 'Boz'. In 1835, now quite well-established in his sketch-writing, Charles proposed to Catherine Hogarth, daughter of George Hogarth, who had been advisor to Sir Walter Scott. They married in April of 18365, and the sweet-tempered Catherine generally allowed Charles to take charge of everything, including even the eventual naming of their children. That same year, Charles's began writing The Pickwick Papers, and suddenly he was famous. Imitations of Pickwick appeared everywhere. The now firmly upper-middle-class Charles still has many family problems, however. His father is still in debt more often than not, even going so far as to try to borrow money using his son's name, and Charles ends up paying most of John's debts.

Novel Object Recognition Test

The novel object recognition (NOR) test was used to determine working and spatial memory. In this study 75cm Ãâ€" 50cm Ãâ€" 30cm transparent box was used. Three days prior to the habituation sessions, the rats were exposed to the box to familiarize with the environment. On the test day, they were exposed to identical objects to acclimatize with for 5min thereafter, the rats were then returned into their home cage with food and water. Thirty minutes later, the probe test was conducted, each rat was placed inside the box with one of the object replaced by a novel one for 5 min. It is important that (a) the objects have a â€Å"neutral† shape in terms of its significance to the animal, (b) be devoid of any marked characteristics, such as odor and movement, for instance (Li et al., 2011). The total time spent exploring the two objects was recorded. â€Å"Object exploration† is defined as directing the nose and vibrissae to the object at a distance of less than 2 cm, as if â€Å"smelling† it with caution, while bumping, turning around or sitting upon the object were not considered. Discrimination ratio, which is the difference in exploration time, expressed as the ratio of total exploration time with both objects in the choice phase (this ratio allows to adjust for individual or group differences in the total amount of exploration time) was calculated as percentage memory index as shown below:Time spent with new object X 100Memory index (%) = Total time spent with both old and new object (Ogundele et al., 2014).Morris Water MazeThe Morris water maze (MWM) is another apparatus designed to examine the memory impairment in rodents, thus it is highly specific for hippocampal function. This study was carried out as earlier described by Barnhart et al (2015). Each trial began by placing the rat on the platform for 20 s in a bid to allow orientation to extramaze cues found around the apparatus. After orientation, rats were gently lowered into the pool by facing the wall at one of 3 positions (i.e., each at the center of the wall of a different quadrant not housing the platform). After the rat was released into the pool, the observer had to retreat away from the pool to a constant position within the room, such that he served as an additional distal visual cue. Maximum swim time was set at 60 s. Any rat that locates the platform before 60 s was removed from the pool immediately, while the rats that are unable to locate the platform after 60 s of swimming were gently guided to the platform and allowed to re-orient to the distal visual cues for an additional 20 s before being eventually removed from the pool. After removal from the pool, each rat was manually dried with a terrycloth towel and placed in a plastic cage with wood shavings for at least 5 min before returning to the home cage. Each rat was trained twice a day for 2 days with an inter-trial interval of approximately 30 min. Training was conducted at roughly the same time every day in bid to minimize variability in performance due to time of day (Morris, 1984). To examine spatial reference memory, a probe test was administered 24 h after the last training session. During the probe test, the platform was removed from the pool and the rat was allowed to swim freely for 1 min. The rationale of this task was to determine number of time the initial location of the platform was crossed/visited.

Organisational Change Essay

Organizational change is also known as organizational transformation and it may involves organisational change in mission, introducing new technology, restructuring operations, introducing new programmes, mergers, re-engineering and having new major collaborations. (Bridges 1991) Organizational changes are aimed at achieving some set organizational goals and objectives which need to be a attained within a given period of time. In many cases changes in the organizational are provoked by some outside forces which includes taking care of new markets, substantial cut in finding, need for increase in services and productivity among others. There are many approaches that managers uses to introduce change in the organization, some are planned, explicit and structured while others are more unfolding, implicit and organic. Managers goes for the approaches that will be supported by all the employees and those that will enable the organization to maximize the profit margin as they achieve the set goals and objectives within the set time frame. Some approaches works from the future to the present where by the managers uses the organization’s vision to plan all the organizational activities aiming at achieving the vision while other approaches works from the present to the future which may include pointing out the currents needs of the target clients and then making the necessary changes towards achieving those needs. This is the best approach since the clients and other stakeholders are the backbone of any organization and they determine the success of the any business (Easterby 1999). Identifying their needs should be a continuous exercise which should be followed by implementing the necessary changes which will facilitate in satisfying their needs hence building a good and strong customer relationship which will lead to increased sales hence increasing the Organizational profitability (Dent 1999).  Aegon UK  is a member of the AEGON Group which is among the world’s largest life insurance and pension company. The company is the owner of different life insurance, pensions, adviser and management businesses in the UK (Folger 1999). The company has 27,000 employees and a total of over 25 million customers worldwide with it’s main markets being in Netherlands and the United States. Factors That Lead To Change One of the major hindrance for decision making is a clear understanding of the working environment where the decisions made will be operated. (Brewster 2004) Proper understanding of the working environment improves the decision making and it minimizes uncertainty. In the UK where life expectancy has risen in the past few years, people are expected to retire for a longer period of time hence the need to think ahead and save for retirement, an idea that many people find difficult to comprehend. (Kotter 1979) Many people do not properly plan about their retirement hence they suffer during the old age since they do not be have enough money for survival and on the other hand the government is also emphasizing on reduced dependency on the state in old age. This resulted to many insurance companies coming up with new cheap pension schemes who also emphasized on employee pension (Hultman 1995). The Industry Aegon operates in the life insurance and pension industry which for the past few years had a poor reputation. Some organisations in the industry has been blamed of mis-selling where by they do not give the customers quality products that satisfy their needs. (Johnston e 2004) The Financial Services Authority (FSA) introduced some regulations in the industry which were aimed at avoiding such situations from happening again in the future. The industry has been faced with intense competition where by AEGON is competing with other organisations that are well known in the UK and they specialise in selling directly to the customers (Kirkman 2000). The company normally distributes it’s services and products to customers through financial advisers. For AEGON to remain competitive it had to take care of all the problems that the industry was facing. Reasons For Change Historically AEGON had been very successful and profitable but some times back the government introduced some regulations that reduced the organisation’s profitability. Comparing the company with it’s competitors, AEGON was not well known though it had very good services and products and it also had good relationship with the distributors. (Strebel 1996) For consumers to have the confidence of investing in a long term product, they have to know more about the organisation they are planning to invest with by learning more about the brands that are being offered by the organisation and by understanding the value of each brand. As AEGON offered different brands it was hard for the financial advisers and the consumers to identify and understand the different depth and breadth of the brands. Facilitators of Change AEGON company appointed a new (CEO) Chief Executive Officer who entered into the office with new strategies for the company and the first thing that he implemented was to bring AEGON into a discovery phase which would help him in achieving the goals he had for AEGON. The CEO’s goal was to develop the best long term savings and protection business in the UK while the discovery phase was aimed at finding ways of achieving those goals. (Kegan 2001) Another aspect that needed consideration was the company’s brands and how they could be audited. The company was examined both internally and externally to find it’s position in the market. The process of auditing was aimed at giving more information about the company which assisted AEGON in making more informed decisions which were needed to start the process of change. Creating a New Culture Culture refers to the attitude and the personality of an organization and it is also involves the shared values, behavior and beliefs of the employees and other stakeholders (Morgan 1997). It acts as a key part in the change process since it dictates the way in which the organisation and the stakeholders solve problems and makes decision. By developing a new culture, AEGON was able to provide services and products that were required in the market hence they were able to remain competitive. A Behavior Framework In order to support the new culture, AEGON came up with a behavior framework which was aimed at strengthening the brand values. It was designed in such a way that it could influence how all the employees in the organisation could work and make decisions where by the behavior emphasized the values of AEGON. (Coetsee 1999) The company also introduced a Management Development Programme which emphasised on eight main behaviors which are, think customer, embrace change, encourage excellence, act with integrity, decisive actions, work together, learn and grow and finally relate and communicate (Piderit 2000). Implementing The Change The organisation has emphasised on the customer’s needs which determines the decisions, behaviour and it also informs actions. The senior mangers keeps the customer’s needs at the heart of all the operations in AEGON while the other managers and professionals innovates with the needs of the customers in mind so that they come up with products and services that can satisfy the needs of the customers. AEGON brand have been extensively promoted alongside Scottish Equitable or other brands are traded under it. Association with AEGON is stronger where by the Scottish Equitable is currently AEGON Scottish Equitable which reflects the local knowledge and the global power. Currently all the brands has a new look that is common, different and refreshing. Impacts Of The Changes Implementing change in AEGON affected it both externally and internally. Internally the changes influenced how the people behaved and communicated while the organisational operations has been focused on satisfying the needs of the customers. Great emphasis has been on making information clearer so that the customers can be in a position to understand the company well so that they can do business with them. The company has intensively done external promotional campaigns and it has managed to launch new innovative products aimed at satisfying the customer’s needs. This changes has worked very well for AEGON since the company has been able to maximise it’s profit. Currently AGEON brand is in a position that it influences the financial services in the industry. Challenges The main challenge that AEGON is facing is that the competition is growing at a very fast rate in an increasingly difficult market. This has forced the government to implement some regulations to govern the industry. To fight competition, AEGON should maintain two way communication channel which should be open and they should emphasis on getting feedback from all the stakeholders. This feedback is very important since the stakeholders can inform the organisation where they might be going wrong and can even give some recommendations which can work very well for the company hence being ahead of the competitors which leads to maximising the profit margins of the company. The stakeholders can also help the company in identifying the needs of the customers hence enabling the company to provide what is needed in the market . Also when there is open communication between the management and the employees it is normally very easy to prevent conflicts since the employees will be free to air their grivances hence cultivating a culture of good working relationships in AEGON which will even motivate the workers to work even harder thus enabling the company to realize the set goals and objectives within the set time frame. Conclusion Organisational change is continuous and the process of change is like a journey which will be faced by external factors that can affect the operations of the organisation. AEGON respond to the external factors was by clarifying, simplifying and strengthening it’s brand in the UK. As the organisation changes, it’s culture and pattern of behavior develops which is a cycle which requires the business to use the knowledge it has to learn from the experiences. This has enabled AEGON to move towards achieving its goals through realizing its full potential while they remain competitive in the market. Taking care of the needs of the customers increases the sales of the company since many customers will be interested in the products or services that are being provided by the company hence increasing sales which in turn increases the profit margin of the company.

Sachin – the God of Cricket

Sachin Tendulkar is perhaps the best thing to happen to not just INDIA and INDIAN Cricket, but the sport in general. He is easily the most worshipped Cricketer across the globe. More than 34,000 runs scored on all kinds of home and away turfs at an unbelievable 48. 74 is testimony enough of the astounding consistency he has shown during the breath-taking 23-year International Career. He is pretty obviously the most prolific run-getter of all times. Technically too, He is the most complete batsman of modern era. Be it hooks, pulls, cuts, punches, drives, sweeps, slogs or lofts, He can play it all. Be it spin, swing or pace, He can tackle it all with seamless audacity and grace. Sachin Tendulkar is probably the greatest exponent of the game. While scoring the astonishing number of runs He has, Tendulkar has invented millions of ways of piercing the field and coaxing the ball towards the patrolled rope; at times using the bat like a sword used to slash enemies; and at times carefully using it like a surgeon’s knife used to pierce the deepest of tissues. Adaptation, accumulation and consolidation have seemed synonymous with Sachin Tendulkar, evidence of which is the big-hundreds He scored against Australia, South Africa and New Zealand after 2009, when He was in His late-30s, in a format presumed to be a youngster’s paradise. Apart from the staggering achievements and brilliant technique, what puts Tendulkar in a league of His own is the kind of impact and influence He has had on modern-day Cricket. Time and again, He has demolished and pulverized top-notch bowling attacks into instant submissions; something no one else has managed to do so effortlessly and so consistently. What elevates Tendulkar’s greatness is the fact that He has achieved all these records and laurels while constantly being under tremendous pressure from a billion people and while being under constant scrutiny of the national media. The greatness lies in the fact that Tendulkar has still never crumbled under this constant pressure and has on most of the occasions stood up, lead the pack and delivered. The humility and modesty He has displayed during the enthralling journey has ensured that He is not just followed and loved, but worshipped by the Nation from the bottom of the heart. Fames, riches, mansions, fast-cars, limelight and anything else that comes His way as a perk for being the greatest Cricketer He is seem to have left Him absolutely unfazed. His moorings have always remained on firm ground and remain so till date. Sachin Tendulkar has spell-bound the nation like no one else. There might be a couple of personalities whose exploits in their respective professions have enthralled the nation, but even they have not been able to sustain it for as long as Tendulkar has. He is diminutive, yet the tallest INDIAN alive.

Pearson Custom Business Resources Essay

Carrefour is global brand whose market edge is ideal. The supermarket chain is revered across the world. It is keeping this in mind that such a brand should always seek to have and maintain this success; key aspect would be to ensure that all their potential customers are reached wherever they are in the globe. One of the ways to ensure this is achieved would be the indulgence of information systems or information technology. Carrefour prides itself in provision of quality products at convenient prices. (Caneja, n.p.)Company overview Carrefour is known to be among the leading supermarket chains in the globe. The supermarket chain is believed to have emanated from France. They have about eleven thousand outlets across the globe; these outlets serve about two billion customers worldwide. This business operates under a number of banners; there are supermarkets, hypermarkets as well as some stores that operate as cash and carry outlets. (Caneja, n.p.) Products offered by Carrefour Company and its target market Carrefour is a business that thrives mostly on the sale of consumer products. The items are the common ones used from day to day within households. Products by this outlet are set at prices that are within the range of the common citizen. At times they also offer their goods at good discounted rates which is a welcome relief to many. Carrefour targets the emerging markets that are found within Asia as well as the Latin American region. (Caneja, n.p.)The two regions offer a prudent growth and untapped area where the large populations favor the retail business set up. Asia offers an exposure to about almost one and a half billion people cumulatively while Latin America offers almost half a billion. Such untapped areas are worth the consideration for expansion; but for now they seem to be working on consolidating their existing market share before venturing out to these areas. (Caneja, n.p.) Marketing plan Carrefour is working on improving their information systems and the corresponding infrastructure. Employees especially those who are coming into contact with the customers directly seem to be the probable individuals to kick off the exercise. Improving and polishing up customer relations is another aspect that has to be worked on. Systems would have to be set out that favor the real-time and constant communication between employees and management when it comes to service delivery to customers. (Salmons, p.125)Technology is also employed when it comes to the monitoring of operations that go around the firm. For effective service delivery; their systems around the globe would have to be re-evaluated with the sole purpose of phasing out redundant ones to be replaced by functional technology. Example of Bluetooth beacons which may be set up on shopping carts is one way; this would help them in making out shopping tendencies of customers. (Swedberg, p.17)The data collected would be of use when creating future business strategies. Milestones achieved by Carrefour In 2014 Carrefour did manage post revenue collections of about one and two billion dollars; with net profit of about two billion dollars. The total asset base rose to about sixty one billion dollars. However revenues decreased by about five percent but profitability rose by close to six percent. Around the same period the retail chain had about ten thousand two hundred stores globally. This number cuts across various types of stores; about four types. (Fortune, n.p.)The financial plan Carrefour would have to post about fifteen billion dollars in sales monthly; in order to post about one hundred and eighty billion dollars as overall collection. Such revenue collection would translate into about a net profit margin of about two and half billion dollars; this would eventually be a step past the grey area they were in 2014. (Salmons, 127)For this to be achieved ICT usage and diversification within the firm would have to be enhanced. Customer relations management and well calculated expansion regime is crucial. Personnel would have to be trained and drilled in line with the future aspiration of the company. (Salmons, p.137) References BIBLIOGRAPHY Caneja, Ana-Diaz. Pearson Custom Business Resources. London: Pearson Plc , 2011. Salmons, Janet. â€Å"Global e-business and collaboration.† Salmons, Janet. Handbook of Research on Electronic Collaboration and Organizational Synergy. Hershey, Pennsylvania : IGI Global , 2012. 122-142. Swedberg, Claire. â€Å"Carrefour To Use Bluetooth Beacons to Track Carts, Baskets .† RFID Journal (2014): 17-18. Fortune,. ‘Global 500’. N.p., 2015. Web. 27 Jan. 2015. Source document