Public Sector Employees’ Absenteeism to Be Tracked Using Software in Nova Scotia

Canadian province Nova Scotia is implementing a special campaign to track the rate of absenteeism among employees in the public sector. With this program, the government hopes to save money and gain insights into missed work hours.

According to Laura Lee, Public Service Commissioner, the province has to suffer losses of up to US$26 million because of absenteeism of employees in the public sector. Lee quoted this figure while filing a statement with the public accounts committee of the legislature. According to estimates, employees from the public sector miss 12.65 days on an average, annually. Similarly,

These figures do not take into account a majority of public sector employees in the education (school boards) and healthcare sector (district health authorities).

Consider this: the regional school board in Halifax spent nearly US$13.2 million for engaging substitute teachers in academic year 2013-14. Similarly, absenteeism at Capital Health translated into costs of a whopping US$21.65 million.

As part of this program to check absenteeism, the authorities will make use of pattern-tracking software. This will make it possible to monitor the absenteeism of employees and also track trends, ultimately allowing the identification of specific challenges that people have to deal with at work, or outside of it.

According to the rule book, employees in the public sector are entitled to 18 days of sick leave in a year. However, according to authorities, 12.65 days of missed work on account of sickness is high. These views are shared by MLA Tim Houston, who thinks that the issue of absenteeism should be just as relevant in the public sector as it is in the private public.

By 2020, Developing Economies to Account for One of Every Four Smartphones: GSMA

GSMA, the global body of mobile operators, projects that by 2020, two out of three mobile connections worldwide will be via a smartphone. The GSMA’s research wing, which conducted this study, forecasts that smartphone connections worldwide will see a three-fold growth until 2020. The study is titled ‘Smartphone forecasts and assumptions, 2007-2020’.

The three market leaders – China, United States, and Brazil – are trailed by India. The study puts the number of smartphone connections in India (as of June 2014) at 111 million. The study also observes that in the next six years, nearly four out of five smartphone-based mobile connections will belong to the developing world.

It was in 2011 that the developed world was overtaken by developing nations, as far as smartphones go. In 2014, this emergent market has assumed a greater share of the smartphone connections worldwide. The developing economies now account for two out of every three smartphones globally.

The report also brings into focus the increasingly dominant role played by Asia Pacific in the smartphones market. According to the estimates of this report, the nearly 50% of all smartphone connections worldwide can be traced back to Asia Pacific. This is despite the fact that the penetration of smartphones in this region is lower than 40%.

According to GSMA’s chief strategy officer Hyunmi Yang, a global wave of innovation has been sparked by the advent and increasing popularity of smartphones. The report ascribes this proliferation of smartphones to several factors, such as: the price erosion of smartphones’ average selling price (ASP), bundled smartphone offerings from operators, and demand for smartphones in the low-end category.