Education and Reference

The job market evolves over time. This is just the way societies work; however, many of the key skills that workers need seem to be lacking in the up-and-coming workforce. Some of these are known as “soft skills” and others are simply capabilities that have seen a decline in practice. The business world has started to take note of this after seeing the trend growing for years. Some say that this is due to a generational shift in the way people interact, but here’s a list of some of the attributes that have been lacking in employees in recent years:

Communication

This is a blanket term, but it seems to apply in most situations. Businesses are complaining about workers’ increasing inability to communicate with clients and co-workers. A lack of proficiency in writing skills has been noted for a long time now. Companies have gone so far as to send their workforce back to school and accredited online colleges to simply learn how to draft a letter.

It’s always been important to have the ability to articulate your thoughts and to listen, but employees need to be able to express their needs and goals in order to build an dialogue with colleagues and customers. In business, being able to effectively and professionally express yourself is a key skill that seems to be missing in the workforce today.

Consistent Productivity

The results and productivity of a day’s work seems to vary greatly. One of the main factors noted by employees is a lack of praise for the work that they’ve done. Many in the business world argue that this is a generational feature that started for many people during childhood which they then managed to carry on through into today’s workforce. This seems to be an issue of over-rewarding that we’ve taken as a society that’s, over time, decreased the competitive edge of our workforce. It seems that every time a worker does something they expect the gears of business to halt and give them a slap on the back. It’s important to give credit where credit is due, but the ability of workers to keep a consistent approach to their job and productivity is important to keep a job and ensure the success of your employer. If they’re doing well, then you keep your job.

Taking Advice

Not every worker is perfect and everyone could use a little constructive criticism. Sometimes, well-placed and helpful advice can help a worker know when they need to alter their approach or practice. It seems that employers are worried today about telling their workforce anything. People seem to have a very hard time accepting criticism as a whole. No one likes to hear bad things about themselves, but it’s essential to be able to accept when someone has advice on how to do things differently.

Quality control is always an issue, and no matter what you do, there’s always room for improvement. Today’s workers aren’t somehow less than the previous generation. Sometimes it just takes tweaking and an ability to recognize when changes need to be made. Maybe these issues don’t apply to you or your colleagues, but there’s always things that the individual can do to improve their abilities. A good proactive approach to self-improvement is always a good thing, work related or not.

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It’s easy to say that education is the key to the future. It’s been an old saying for generations, but it’s now more of a reality than every before. It’s been a saying in America for generations, but unfortunately, it hasn’t been put in to practice, or at least to great affect. America has lagged behind in almost every category among developed nations, and its poor educational infrastructure has made it an easy target for developing countries to pull ahead. In the face of such insurmountable odds, it’s hard to understand why America isn’t taking a more aggressive stance on education. It’s not just the future of our children, but the also the future of our nation.

As millions of children drop out of school and enter a “service” oriented job market, it’s hard to watch as young adults try to compete in an increasingly competitive global market, especially when they don’t have the tools necessary to do so. What many Americans may not realize is that we’re in a transitional phase. The information age is on it’s way out and we’re rapidly entering, what some are calling, the Shift Age. We’re at a crucial point in human history where technology and humanity is reaching a great confluence.

It’s a multilayer issue when you try to describe what education means to our country. Many have found great hope in going to facilities of higher education, like the University of Phoenix, to better their lives and create more opportunities for their children. Yet, the fact remains that though many have done so, millions still are working without a way to better their economic situation. It’s not just the citizenry’s fault. College is expensive and there are few assistantship programs out there to help those who want to seek a form of higher education.

For the most part, America seems content to look to the past and remember the former glories of days past. Millions of people express anger and frustration that industry jobs are being sent overseas in increasing number but they don’t ask the most important question: why? It’s for one simple fact; it’s cheaper to build or produce something overseas. In the meantime, as we complain that the high paying jobs of the past are gone, we haven’t transitioned out economy and education system to reach it’s full potential. The next step for America is in the field of innovation and technological advancement. We have yet to realize this, and in the end, it’s going to hurt us.

We must reshape the educational landscape and become leaders of another kind. Though it’s ironic that we have one of the worst public education systems, we concurrently have the best universities in the world. There are multiple resources with online mba programs for Americans to regain a leadership role. Only now we have to focus on technology innovation rather than production and manual services. Only then will we have the tools to compete in today’s global economy.

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Last month, we talked about the energy wastes of most healthcare facilities and how a recently built Seattle-area hospital was designed with efficiency and patient comfort in mind. Now we move onto the topic of environmental wastes in American hospitals. The facts are not so inspiring this time around. They do, however, demand a call to action. This is especially the case considering that the latest legislative opportunity to fix the issue wasn’t taken advantage of.

The (Brief) History of Hospital Waste Management

For most of human civilization people have had to worry about the environmental impacts of hospitals. When people knew next to nothing about the dangers of infection and toxicity, biological hazards and medicinal contamination plagued countless patients throughout the centuries.

Flash forward to the American 20th century when hospitals became behemoth buildings and in some ways their own cities. Congress passed the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act to control the wily dumping of toxic agents into the environment. U.S. hospitals are now regularly monitored to make sure they follow the proper guidelines for disposal per their waste output and that their workers remain vigilant.

The Figures

Even with government regulations, hospitals still produce an enormous amount of both product and medical waste in their day-to-day healthcare responsibilities. In a given year, American hospitals are going to produce 84,000 tons of pharmaceutical waste. That includes vials, bottles, and countless amounts of plastics that are used to package and contain medicine and waste.

Experts say that a minimum of 250 million pounds of pharmaceuticals and contaminated packaging will be improperly disposed of by hospitals this year, despite EPA monitoring. Drugs originating from hospitals have been detected in the drinking water of 24 separate American municipalities.

Trace amounts of drugs have been found in 80% of American streams.

The Facts

People interested in radiography courses can be assured by the fact that the EPA constantly monitors hospitals, but they may be a little displeased with what such regulatory agencies are forced to spend most of their time focusing on. In just the past five years alone, over 240 hospitals have been cited by the EPA for improper waste disposal. 23 were eventually made to pay fines as high as $37,500 each.

It’s not just the medical waste either. 85% of a hospital’s waste could be non-hazardous paper, cardboard, metal shards, plastics, and glass. That equates to roughly 5,500 tons every single day.

When it comes to non-hazardous waste, the opportune time for change was when the government passed healthcare reform into law back in early 2010. However there was not even so much as a sentence in reference to how to handle the enormous amounts of typical administrative wastes in hospitals.

The Fix

Hospitals built for the future not only need to be constructed with low-energy design in mind, but with low-waste policies built into the structure itself.

The proper sized waste remover generator must be installed. Scrimping on this will only result in additional wastes being disposed of in violation of the law and in violation of nature.

Reliance on hard copy disbursement of information should be avoided by eliminating the space needed to store archives and records in the first place and making the hospital function entirely on informatics.

The aforementioned statistics of the impact of hospitals on the environment should be information plastered in every employee lounge and locker room. Employees must be conscious of the fact that they work in a mini-city, and that the input/output of energy and materials is just as macro in scope.

With the cost of healthcare only rising the truth is clear: hospitals can’t afford to not clean up their act. It’ll simply be a money issue. The costs of fines will be unbearable, and so will the costs of paper and other products that digitization of information can eradicate. Hospitals being built today must consider the certainty of this future if they plan to provide patients with care for the rest of the 21st century.

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After many years, the social widespread misconception that speaking English is the ultimate and only requirement to do well in today’s world is finally coming to an end. There has never been denying that it is a crucial tongue, not only for education or work but also for daily life in an increasing way, but can those who speak English as their mother tongue make do with only one language, even when it is English? The answer is no.

As regards education, the main universities of the world require that their applicants know a second language. It is implied that university students are knowledgeable even before entering school; most times, they had an educated background. Hence, speaking more than one language is not only a sign of education, but also one of interest in the world we live in, of being highly cultured.

As well as when applying for a school, when applying for a job, employers look for multilingual candidates rather than monolingual people. The reason for this is very easy to understand. Whatever product or service they are selling, they will want it to reach a large market. People take French lessons in Cambridge for this reason. French is the most commonly taught second language after English and it has official status in 14 countries. Yes, French is not only about France itself. To name a few, French is the official language of Bénin, Burkina Faso, Gabon, Luxembourg, Monaco and Guinea, and the unofficial language of Poland, Morocco, India, Edypt, Vietnam and Cambodia among others. Besides, it is one of the official languages of Belgium, Madagascar, Canada, Haiti, Switzerland, and many more. The importance of French is probably based on the main role the language plays in business, since it is also the official working language, along with English, of the United Nations, UNESCO, NATO, the European Community, the International Red Cross, the Union of International Associations, and many more.

Another romance language, Italian, is many times learnt when a person’s background is Italian, but once they are able to speak it, they learn that it ends up being more useful than they thought. That was the case of many people who took Italian lessons in London. Not only did the language add some beauty to their lives (it is considered to be the most beautiful sounding language in the world along with French) but also helped them understand their own language better and open their minds up. Each time you take up a language, the new one will result easier than the previous one, especially when they are related, as in the case of Italian and French.

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