By Ted Smillie - Thursday, August 30th, 2018
Previous QESP Newsletter articles have looked at how Education can adapt to meet 21st century skills needs, using 21st Century tools and online resources. Now we are seeing more approaches to helping school kids get into the workforce. “Some students don’t have any meaningful contact with the workplace until their 20s. That’s too late” This […]
By Rob Nicholls, Senior lecturer in Business Law, UNSW - Thursday, August 30th, 2018
The European Commission imposed fines of more than €110 million (AU$170 million) on Asus, Denon & Marantz, Philips and Pioneer this month. These consumer electronics manufacturers had prevented online retailers from selling below the recommended retail price of their products, threatening to block supply if they did so.
By Harvard Business School - Monday, August 13th, 2018
Technologies and organizations should be redesigned to intermittently isolate people from each other’s work for best collective performance in solving complex problems.
By David Donaldson - Monday, August 6th, 2018
Projects that vanish, ministerial over-involvement and a lack of evaluation: a new report finds some major problems with the secretive aid initiative at DFAT.
Three years after its launch, a lack of transparency makes it difficult to evaluate how well InnovationXchange is faring — and even whether some funded projects are continuing at all.
By Ted Smillie - Monday, July 30th, 2018
This month brings some further thoughts on ICT jobs and productivity from a range of Public and Private Sector gurus. An 18 July 2018 report in The Mandarin The future of work: is it something completely different? gives the text of a speech by the Productivity Commission’s Deputy Chair, Karen Chester, to the Committee for […]
By Jarrod Haar, Professor of Human Resource Management, Auckland University of Technology - Wednesday, July 25th, 2018
Employees at a New Zealand company behind an innovative trial of a four-day working week have declared it a resounding success, with 78% saying they were better able to manage their work-life balance.
Perpetual Guardian, which manages trusts and wills, released their findings from the trial, which was prompted by research that suggests modern workers are only productive for about three hours in a working day.
By Simon Crook, Honorary Associate, School of Physics, University of Sydney - Wednesday, July 11th, 2018
Across Australia, we are facing a massive shortage of specialist mathematics and science teachers, particularly in physics and chemistry. With imminent retirements and poor retention rates, this problem will only get worse. It has already reached crisis point in some areas.
This week, during his opening address at the Australia Science Teachers’ Association annual conference, Minister for Education and Training Simon Birmingham announced the federal government plans to ensure every high school has access to specialist science and maths teachers. This was also announced just prior on Channel 9’s Today Show.
By David Donaldson - Friday, July 6th, 2018
Many organisations bring in open plan offices to increase collaboration between employees, but doing so could actually reduce staff interaction, research suggests.
A study of two American private sector workplaces found that moving from a traditional layout to an open office environment decreased face-to-face interaction between employees by around 70%.
By Ted Smillie - Wednesday, June 27th, 2018
We have had recent warnings that AI applications can cause a wide range of harms due to biased algorithms. Now it appears we are more exposed to developer misbehavior than to faulty algorithms. “It’s really sort of hilariously simple. If you’ve got a piece of text that you need to be aligned to the right, […]
By Shirley Jackson, PhD Candidate in Economic Sociology, University of Melbourne - Thursday, June 21st, 2018
While there is little consensus about the “future of work”, one thing is certain – young people are at the coalface. Young workers experience insufficient opportunities for work experience, a mismatch between work and education, a lack of career management skills and scant entry-level jobs, according to a report from the Foundation for Young Australians.
