Questões de Concurso

                        How much should your boss know about you?

                                                              By José Luis Penarredonda, 26 March 2018 

      We’re all being graded every day. The expensive plane tickets I bought recently have already popped up in my credit score. The fact that I've stopped jogging every morning has been noted by my fitness app - and, if it were connected with an insurance company, this change might push up my premiums. [...]. And, yes, my desirability and efficiency as a worker is also up for evaluation and can be given a number.

      HR departments are crunching increasing volumes of data to measure employees in a more granular way. From software that records every keystroke, or the ‘smart’ coffee machines that will only give you a hot drink if you tap it with your work ID badge there are more opportunities than ever for bosses to measure behaviour. Some analysts think this industry could be worth more than $1 billion by 2022.

      One big aim of data collection is to make “predictions about how long an'employee will stay, and it may influence hiring, firing, or retention of people" [...].

      One problem with this approach is that it’s blind to some of the non-quantifiable aspects of work. Some of the subtler things I do in order to be a better writer, for instance, are not quantifiable: having a drink with someone who tells me a great story, or imagining a piece on my commute. None of these things would show up in my ‘job score'. “A lot of the qualitative aspects of work are being written out,” says Moore, “because if you can’t measure them, they don't exist”.

The dilemma of data

      There are several good business reasons to collect data on employees - from doing better risk management to examining if social behaviours in the workplace can lead to gender discrimination. “Companies fundamentally don't understand how people interact and collaborate at work,” says Ben Waber, president and CEO of Humanyze, an American company which gathers and analyses data about the workplace. He says that he can show them.

      Humanyze gathers data from two sources. The first is the metadata from employees’ communications: their email, phone or corporate messaging service [...]. The second area is data gathered from gadgets like Bluetooth infrared sensors which detect how many people are working in one particular part of an office and how they move around. They also use 'supercharged' ID badges that, as Waber says, are beefed up with "microphones which don't record what you say, but do voice-processing in real time.” This allows measurement of the proportion of time you speak, or how often people interrupt you.

      After six weeks of research, the employer gets a 'big picture’ of the problem it wants to solve, based on the analysed data. If the aim, for instance, is to boost sales, they can analyse what their best salespeople do that others don’t.

     Waber sees it as “a lens of very large work issues, like diversity, inclusion, workload assessment, workspace planning, or regulatory risk”. His business case is that these tools will help companies save millions of dollars and even years of time [...].

                                                                           (Abridged from http://www.bbc.com)

IMO Action Plan to address marine plastic litter from ships

  IMO?s Marine Environment Protection Committee (MEPC) in 2018 adopted the International Maritime Organisation (IMO) Action Plan to address marine plastic litter from ships, which aims to enhance existing regulations and introduce new supporting measures to reduce marine plastic litter from ships.

What is marine litter? 

  Plastic materials in all shapes and sizes are omnipresent in our seas and oceans. They break down extremely slowly in the marine environment, taking in excess of 400 years. Marine litter originates from many sources and causes a wide spectrum of environmental, economic, safety, health and cultural impacts. For example, marine litter can cause harm to sea life if ingested or even death if a marine mammal becomes entangled in litter.

  Marine litter has been defined by UN Environment (United Nations Environment) as “any persistent, manufactured or processed solid material discarded, disposed of or abandoned in the marine and coastal environment. Marine litter consists of items that have been made or used by people and deliberately discarded into the sea or rivers or on beaches; brought indirectly to the sea with rivers, sewage, storm water or winds; accidentally lost, including material lost at sea in bad weather (fishing gear, cargo); or deliberately left by people on beaches and shores.”

   Marine litter, including plastics and microplastics, is known to result from land-based sources in massive quantities but can also originate from ships. Debris particles have been observed in coastal areas, in waters far from anthropogenic pollution sources, in surface waters, in the water column of deep water and in ocean sediments, and from the equator to the poles, including trapped in sea ice.

  UN Environment estimates that 15% of marine litter floats on the sea's surface, 15% remains in the water column and 70% rests on the seabed.

  According to another study, 5.25 million plastic particles, weighing 268,940 tonnes in total, are currently floating in the world”s oceans.

What problems does marinelitter cause? 

  In addition to the environmental and health problems posed by marine litter, floating garbage and plastics pose a costly as well as dangerous problem for shipping, as they can be anavigational hazard and become entangled in propellers and rudders.

  Another problem requiring urgent remedial action is the massive accumulation of plastics, not only in coastal areas but also in the deep sea.

  This litter is harmful to marine life: sea creatures can become trapped inside containers or strangled by nets or ropes, and microplastics can also enter the food chain as they are indigestible when swallowed.

(Adapted from https://www.imo.org