Reducing Occupational Stress in Air Traffic Control

Reducing Occupational Stress in Air Traffic Control Recommendations and Conclusions Introduction In this chapter, the researcher has formulated a set of recommendations based on data found in the finding and analysis chapter in line with the objectives of the dissertation to help in reducing occupational stress in air traffic control. Improving job planning and reliability of the work systems According to Glovanni Coasta (1995), from the past technical means to present support, under full radar coverage of air space, is the key factor which allows a â€Å"jump in quality†, not just in terms of work competence, but likewise in terms of stress levels, by decreasing cognitive, memory and communicative loads along with uncertainty and unforeseeability of the situations. The more technological passage to function under â€Å"multi-radar† assistance permits an additional rise in levels of reliability and safety as well as a reduction in stress levels. These improvements allow for well planning of air traffic and, subsequently, a more balanced workload among individual ATCs. These improvements may also subsequently reduce the possibility or the seriousness of many unforeseen situations, by allowing for more reliable information and more time for solving problems and making decisions, while eliminating many stressful and risky traffic peaks. Reduction of working times and arrangement of working teams and rest pauses in relation to the workload The mental strength required maintaining the maximum level of attention and vigilance, as well as to securely and efficiently facing the duty in terms of cognitive and memory load that can differ usually in relation to air traffic concentration and connected problems. Therefore, to guarantee the best level of performance efficiency avoiding excessive mental stress and fatigue, particular attention has to be paid to arranging duty periods. Duty periods: The length of the duty period should not exceed ten hours (extendable to 12 hours in special circumstances), and should be adjusted according to the workload; An interval of no less than 12 hours should be scheduled between the conclusion of one period of duty and the commencement of the next period of duty; Overtime should be an exception. Breaks during operational duty: No operational duty shall exceed a period of two hours without there being taken, during or at the end of that period, a break or total break not less than 30 minutes; During periods of high traffic density, the possibility of having more frequent short breaks (ten minutes) should be provided; A sufficiently long break for meals should be allowed, providing adequate canteen facilities to assure hot and good quality meals. Arrangement of shift schedules according to psycho-physiological and social criteria Shift work, in particular night work, is a stress factor for the ATCs due to its negative effects on various aspects of their lives. This stress can be eliminated by adopting a rapidly-rotating shift system, changing work shifts every one or two days instead of every week. Moreover, reducing the number of consecutive night shifts as much as possible and having a day’s rest after the night-shift period. This prevents accumulation of sleep deficit and fatigue, and allows a quicker recovery. Delaying the beginning of the morning shift (e.g. at 07:00 or later) to allow a normal amount of sleep. Preferring the forward rotation (e.g. morning-afternoon-night) to the backward one (e.g. afternoon-morning-night) to allow a longer period of rest between shifts). Adjusting the length of shifts according to the physical and mental workload that is day shifts should be shorter, whereas night shifts could be longer if the workload is reduced and there are sleeping facilities. Improving the work environment Lighting Taking into consideration that the ATCs task is performed almost exclusively in front of a visual display unit, particular attention should be paid to providing lighting conditions which favor an optimal visual performance. Inside the towers, the opposite is the problem. It is necessary to avoid excessive illumination levels due to external bright light using both anti-reflection glass and curtains; it is also important to have the possibility of positioning and shielding the visual display units to avoid indirect glare due to bright reflections on the screen. Noise The main sources of noise are represented by conversations, manual operations (e.g. manipulations of strip supports) and office machines (printers, telephones, photocopiers, etc.). Therefore particular attention has to be paid in order to stop background noise from exceeding 45-50 dB by installing quieter office machinery, arranging work sectors in order to have better sound protection from each other, and installing more insulating headsets and more sensitive microphones. Arranging workplaces according to ergonomic criteria Workstation design It is also important to arrange the layout of the workplace in order to avoid glare caused by excessive brightness contrasts between different objects and surfaces; it causes discomfort and hampers the comprehension of the information. The displays should be shaded and the surfaces matte, avoiding the use of reflective materials and bright colors on table-tops and consoles. Data displays containing flight information should preferably be located beside the radar screen. Sitting postures A prolonged, constrained sitting posture causes muscular-skeletal discomfort and pain, particularly at the level of the neck, the shoulders and the lumbar tract. In order to avoid or alleviate such disturbances, it is important to use suitable chairs which allow a comfortable sitting posture while working, as well as useful muscle relaxation while on stand-by or resting in front of the screen. Individual ways of coping with stress First of all, people should avoid ineffective ways of coping, which can have an apparent short term positive effect but, in the long run, can cause further problems in health and well-being. We refer in particular to smoking. Increasing smoking (for smokers) is sometimes seen as a way of obtaining a sense of relief and calmness. Of course, apart from short-term relief, there are many adverse effects both on performance efficiency, due to interference with the upper nervous system activities, and on health, due to increased risk of lung tumors and chronic bronchitis from smoking. Secondly, maintaining good physical fitness and emotionally stable psychic conditions are the best aids in fighting and overcoming stress. To stay in satisfactory condition, people should pay particular attention to physical exercise, eating habits, sleeping patterns, relaxation techniques and leisure activities. Relaxation techniques are becoming more and more popular among people who feel to be under stress. Massage, yoga, meditation and autogenous training are all useful exercises which help to control restlessness, anxiety, muscular tension, inability to concentrate, insomnia and other symptoms of stress. Training The aim of training is at teaching occupational and particular coping strategies in order to improve the capacity of event appraisal and problem solving, so that ATCs learn how to cope with emotional effects of stressful events and improve the capacity of control. Air traffic controllers should be trained to develop action-oriented and problem-focused coping abilities. Positive acceptance and reappraisal of stress situations, active coping, seeking to social support for instrumental and emotional reasons must be strengthened, while inclination towards restraint coping, behavioural and mental disengagement should be restricted. Conclusion Air traffic controllers are the working groups having to deal with very stressful and tough job and are widely recognized as an occupational group which has to cope with a highly demanding job that involves a complex series of tasks, requiring high levels of knowledge and expertise, combined with high levels of responsibility. According to this research, it can be seen that most of air traffic controllers rate the level of stress as extreme. Moreover, this level of stress is caused due to several factors such as duration of break that the controllers have, the shift hours they usually worked and the workload. Stress can be due to conflict arising from workplace and private life also. According to survey, 63% of air traffic controllers have conflict arising from workplace and private life. 50% of controllers agreed that stress is caused due to their nature of the job and responsibilities. Air traffic controllers must be trained to have high stress resistance and must be able to take best decision in difficult condition and on behalf of the pilot. Training should be given in order to improve the capacity of event appraisal and problem solving, so that ATCs learn how to cope with emotional effects of stressful events and improve the capacity of control. Moreover, it is important to have a stress management system in place in the work place to help controllers deal with suffering a loss of separation incident or accident. Reference: Professor Glovanni Coasta (1995). Occupational stress and prevention in air traffic control. Institute of Occupational Medicine: University of Verona.

How well does BA protect its employees? Essay

Employees from BA’s prospective are an investment and for BA to get a return on this investment they have to protect it. In this section I am going to evaluate how well BA protects its employees I will use evidence from BA sources to back up each of my points. How does BA protect its employees? Bas takes the safety of its employees very well I know this because in the BA report they say â€Å"The safety and security of our customers and employees in the air and on the ground is a paramount to British Airways and at the heart of our business.† This statement suggests that the safety of BA’s customers is the most important part of their business. it also says that the protection of customers and employees is what the business runs around. BA protects its employees in a number of different ways, for example if an employee is working in an office in front of a computer BA will then make sure that the employee gets regular brakes so that the employees eyes do not get damaged too badly. This is one way that BA protects its employees. BA also protects its employees by reducing the risk of them injuring themselves. They do this by putting up hazard signs that show the employees to be careful. An example of this is wet floor signs these signs show employees that the floor is wet and slippery which instructs them to be more careful. Another way that BA protects its employees is by introducing stress management policies. This is because stress is a major factor that may affect an employee’s health. BA has tried to reduce the amount of stress within the business by introducing a â€Å"stress management policy†. Examples of the policies that BA uses to reduce stress is management training, employee involvement programmes etc†¦ It is one of BA’s top priorities to protect their employees if they don’t then this will mean that the employees will start to get de-motivated and not come to work this will therefore create a decrease in the production of work from the employees as they will not be in most of the times. BA protects its employees very well this can be seen in the graph below which shows the amount of days taken off by employees. In this graph you can see that BA has got quite a low amount of people taking days off related to illnesses at work. This therefore shows us that the employees are happy working at BA. BA also says: â€Å"We have a target of reducing the number of days taken of due to work related injuries by 30 % by 2010† The statement above suggests that BA are working on reducing the amount of work related injuries this shows us that BA are very concerned about the safety of their employees. BA spends 120million pounds on the security of their employees this shows us that they are very concerned about the safety of their employees. We can see that this is paying off as less people are taking days off this is shown in the graph above. The table above shows that BA has reduced the amount of injuries within the business therefore showing that BA’s 120 million pounds security investment has been put to good use. It also shows that BA wants to keep on decreasing the amount of injuries that have happened to employees. In the table above you can also see that the working day’s lost per 100,000 people is 4300 days this is a very low amount therefore showing that BA has protected there employees very well as they are coming into work very regularly. An example of a BA employee getting injured is when a cabin crew employee fell from the doorway of a 737 plane. The employee suffered 3 fractured vertebrae. When BA heard of this they then acted on it and tried to reduce the chances of this occurring again. The table above shows that the amount of injuries to employees inside BA has been reducing constantly for the last three years, but there is stillroom for improvement in the serious injury section where the results show it has risen by an extraordinary amount. How do the trade unions implement national and local working conditions? The trade unions within BA have a very big influence on the decisions made by BA, if BA make a decision that the trade unions do not like then they will cause a strike to occur and give BA a bad reputation. An example of where this occurred was the strike that occurred at Gate Gourmet this was because the trade unions felt that the working conditions where too bad. When this strike occurred it meant that BA had to cancel flights this meant a loss in profit and bad publicity, which caused a downfall for the business. BA would not want to get into situations like this. The trade unions can implement the working conditions by arranging strikes like this. These strikes cause the business to think about keeping the working conditions up and to think about the employees before they take any actions. The trade unions do not have to strike to implement anything, this is because the trade unions can negotiate with the managers of the department and discuss what the working conditions are like. by doing this the trade unions can work with the business to get better working conditions for the employees, this way the managers and the employees are happy without resolving to conflict. Overall the trade unions are a big factor that influences the decisions that the business makes. The main way that they implement the working conditions is by working with the business to tell them the conditions that they want. They may also complain if the conditions that are promised by BA are not met.

Main Challenge in International Staffing

ADRIEN KARCHER EIM4 UB1 International Human Resources Management 2nd Assignment  : Describe the main challenges in International Staffing. Ever since the globalization began, companies became more aware of the competitive environments they operate in. It is obvious that a competitive advantage such as technology, resources and quality can be imitated. It’s the peoples that a company employs that makes the difference. Making the right selection and most efficient use of it will surely provide the advantage needed.In this assignment, we will define in a first part the four main approaches to staffing within International Human Resource Management and what are the advantages and disadvantages of each approach to international management. In a second part we will speak about recruitment and selection of the staff in foreign subsidiaries. Heenan and Perlmutter identified approaches to manage foreign subsidiaries which are, ethnocentric, polycentric, geocentric and regiocentric.In this part we will examine the connection between this approaches and staffing practices as well as the advantages and disadvantages of this differents approaches. The first approach is called ethnocentric. Employees from headquarters base it on the occupation of a key position. It is assumed that expatriates can manage subsidiaries more efficiently. This is because expatriates are more informed about the company's goals and objectives, strategies compared to the local managers. This method is used when expanding globally and there is need of good communication, cooperation and control of activities.Consequently, PCNs are assigned to top management positions who implement strategic decisions coming from headquarters. Hence, the selection of expatriates will depend on the technical knowledge required or the type of international expansion a company is planning. The ethnocentric approach provides the parent company with more control, which is vital when expanding to a new country. The refore, expatriates are seen as more able than host country nationals. The polycentric approach will opt for HCNs manager in their subsidiary even if PCNs occupy key positions at orporate headquarters. It’s a multinational approach, there is continuity in management of foreign subsidiaries, language barriers can be eliminated and for MNEs still less expensive to hire locals than expatriates. All this elements represent advantages of this approach. But, there are disadvantages for firms and local employees, which have restricted career opportunity outside the subsidiary. With the geocentric approach, MNEs try to find the best people for key positions regardless of nationality. The mix of PCNs, TCNs and HCNs maintains the international team.That’s why HR department play an important role in the international staffing however taking into account staff availability, time and cost constraints, host government requirements and ineffective HRM policies. It’s a Global a pproach in which one each part makes a unique contribution with its unique competence. So now, let see the regiocentric approach which is similar than the geocentric approach but much more nationally focused, the staff may move outside their countries but within the particular geographic region.It’s on the way between ethnocentric or polycentric approach to a geocentric approach. Challenges for MNEs are to work with all of these different characteristics and find the most appropriate approach according to their policy. They have to take in consideration, the context specificities, the company specificities and the local unit specificities as well as IHRM practices. All these factors affect staffing choices, which represent a real challenge in international staffing.Recruitment and selection of staff for international assignments is a considerable challenge because it’s an important and crucial factor of the international expansion for MNEs. They need to find the right people to make position and particularly key managers. In fact, a selection error can lead to an expatriate contract failure and correspond to a return to home before the period of assignment is completed, then it could have long-term negative consequences in term of subsidiary performance.Several factors have to be taken into account in the failure of international assignment: the inability for expatriates to adjust to the foreign culture, the family concerns, career concerns, security concerns, the length of assignment etc. They represent a critical IHRM issues in international staffing, so the challenge is to find the right people which are consistent with all the factors of expatriate selection.Selection criteria are family requirements, technical ability, the cultural requirements, the language and the MNEs requirements. Mendenhall and Ouddou have proposed a four-dimensional approach that attempts to link specific behavioural tendencies to overseas performance. We see these day s appear another constraint for companies : the dual-career couples who are now considered as a barrier to staff mobility and it’s why the MNEs techniques are now utilized to surmount this constraint.To conclude, and according all the facts defined in this assignment, Recruitment and selection of staff still criticals because the future employees have to gather the maximum of criteria which correspond to the MNEs standards and expectations particularly in international assignments. The International staffing is a complex process in which many criteria have to be taken into consideration in order to achieve the best international assignments in the way to insure a sustaining international business operations for MNEs.

How to Search for Files and Folders With Delphi

When looking for files, it is often useful and necessary to search through subfolders. Here, see how to use Delphis strength to create a simple, but powerful, find-all-matching-files project. File/Folder Mask Search  Project The following project not only lets you search for files through subfolders, but it also lets you easily determine file attributes, such as Name, Size, Modification Date, etc. so  you can see when to invoke the File Properties Dialog from the Windows Explorer. In particular, it demonstrates how to recursively search through subfolders and assemble a list of files that match a certain file mask. The technique of recursion is defined as a routine that calls itself in the middle of its code. In order to understand the code in the project, we have to familiarize ourselves with the next three methods defined in the SysUtils unit: FindFirst, FindNext, and FindClose. FindFirst FindFirst is the initialization call to start a detailed file search procedure using Windows API calls. The search looks for files that match the Path specifier. The Path usually includes wildcard characters (* and ?). Attr parameter contains combinations of file attributes to control the search. The file attribute constants recognized in Attr are: faAnyFile (any file), faDirectory (directories), faReadOnly (read only files), faHidden (hidden files), faArchive (archive files), faSysFile (system files) and faVolumeID (volume ID files). If FindFirst finds one or more matching files it returns 0 (or an error code for failure, usually 18) and fills in the Rec with information about the first matching file. In order to continue the search, we have to use the same TSearcRec record and pass it to the FindNext function. When the search is completed the FindClose procedure must be called to free internal Windows resources. The TSearchRec is a record defined as: When the first file is found the Rec parameter is filled, and the following fields (values) can be used by your project.. Attr, the files attributes as described above.. Name holds a string that represents a file name, without path information. Size in bytes of the file found.. Time stores the files modification date and time as a file date.. FindData contains additional information such as the file creation time, last access time, and both the long and short file names. FindNext The FindNext function is the second step in the detailed file search procedure. You have to pass the same search record (Rec) that has been created by the call to FindFirst. The return value from FindNext is zero for success or an error code for any error. FindClose This procedure is the required termination call for a FindFirst/FindNext. Recursive File Mask Matching Searching in Delphi This is the Searching for files project as it appears at run time. The most important components on the form are two edit boxes, one list box, a checkbox and a button. Edit boxes are used to specify the path you want to search in and a file mask. Found files are displayed in the List box and if the checkbox is checked then all subfolders are scanned for matching files. Below is the small code snippet from the project, just to show that searching for files with Delphi is as easy as can be: