An appetite for learning : increasing employee demand for skills development

Raising the demand for skills amongst individuals in the workforce is critical if the UK is to meet its 2020 Ambition. This edition of Praxis highlights a number of policy interventions that the evidence suggests can work, and proposes a policy framework for describing and understanding these. The paper aims to stimulate wider debate about the policy interventions most likely to address the barriers to learning faced by the UK workforce. To this end the UK Commission welcomes readers' responses to the following questions, prompted by this paper

A new substrate for sampling deep river macroinvertebrates

We compared macroinvertebrate communities colonising multiplate samplers constructed from perspex or tempered hardboard (wood) with an alternative artificial substrate constructed from folded coconut fibre matting (coir) enclosed in nylon netting. Substrates were incubated for 62 days over January to March 2007 at six sites over 240 km along the Waikato River. The three substrates supported similar numbers of invertebrate taxa (27 - 29 taxa), but coir samples contained 71% of total invertebrate numbers from all substrates combined, compared with <17% for each type of multiplate sampler. Coir faunas were heavily dominated by the hydrobiid snail Potamopyrgus (84 % of numbers), and this taxon along with the amphipod Paracalliope comprised 58 - 66 % of invertebrates on both types of multiplate samplers. Analysis of a Bray-Curtis matrix suggested statistically significant differences in percent community composition between coir samplers and each type of multiplate sampler over the late summer study period. Densities per cm3 of Oligochaeta, Mollusca, and "other worms" (Platyhelminthes, Rhabdocoela, Nemertea and Hirudinea combined) were significantly higher in coir samples than one or both of the multiplate samplers. Results suggest coir samplers may provide a useful supplement to multiplate samplers for deep river invertebrate studies by collecting a different range of taxa, including those favouring cover and characteristic of depositional environments

Customer satisfaction, training and TQM: a comparative study of Western and Thai hotels

Managers within the hospitality industry make frequent reference to TQM principles. The extent to which these principles are applied effectively within the human resource management area of hospitality however remains under-researched. By applying TQM principles, this paper focusses on the relationship between customer service and training drawing upon comparative data from Western and Thai hotels. The paper also examines the perceptions of staff towards of hotels' guest-orientation and the provision of quality guest services. The researchers found that guest assessments of the performance of hotel frontline staff depend on their services function (e.g., front-office, housekeeping). The service quality skills needed by frontline staff were also found to differ in the case of Western and Thai hotels. Such differences merit proper consideration on the part of managers within the major hotel chains. The various findings may assist hospitality managers to determine appropriate strategies for the enhancement of guest services particularly in cross-cultural settings

Physicians’ Experiences and Opinions Regarding Strategies to Improve Care for Minority Patients

Objective: To assess the views and experiences of a select group of physicians interested in minority health issues regarding promising strategies to improve minority care. Methods: Physicians were asked to respond to a 17-item survey assessing the level of agreement, frequency of implementation of and interest in learning more about 7 promising strategies for alleviating disparities. Results: Most physicians (75-95%) agreed that the 7 proposed strategies could be useful to improve the quality of care provided to minority patients, but only 40-66% of physicians had implemented the strategies sometimes or often in their practices. Between 22 and 29% of physicians were interested in learning more about 6 of the 7 strategies, preferably by CME, seminars and newsletters. Conclusion: Physicians concerned with minority health issues agree that commonly suggested strategies for eliminating racial and ethnic disparities in health care could be useful, but have difficulty implementing such approaches