Over 50,000 senior citizens continue to benefit from Makati’s Blu Card program, which offers perks to enhance their quality of life, Mayor Abby Binay announced on Tuesday.

More often than not in traditional management consulting engagements involving operations, there is usually room for setting up or revising goals, metrics & reporting, and service level agreements. Depending on the phase of development of a company (often couched as Stage 0 [Ad-Hoc], Stage 1 [Functional], Stage 2 [Intrabusiness Cross-Functional], etc. maturity levels by a consulting firm), the next higher-level of metrics and reporting may apply and be a goal for the client organization to strive for.

Where management has to be somewhat careful about applying metrics, however, is how people and company culture play a role in getting everything to work together right.

To put a finer point on things, one can put in place a perfectly appropriate set of metrics and reporting systems for a company yet miss the boat completely on a management-level as to how the results should be applied because of the culture.

As an example in sales operations, I have frequently seen a competitive environment laid out. People's individual performance levels are exposed, and poor performing people are weeded out. This environment can work out in some cases. On the other hand, in a collaborative engineering or product development environment, cooperation may be encouraged.

On a related topic, a friend of my wife and I, Dr. Uri Gneezy at the University of Chicago, has some great research on the relationship between competition and gender. From the research summary:

Gneezy suggests that CEOs creating incentives in their firms should be aware that making the internal environment more competitive might create a bias that helps men, while putting women at a relative disadvantage.

My take on applying this type of research would be to recognize and raise one's sense of awareness to the environment one is implementing metrics in. Although metrics may be encouraged to be tracked to an individual-level doesn't automatically equate to that the environment has to be a competitive one. Choosing a collaborative versus dictatorial management style that is compatible with the desired company culture is a separate choice from metric implementation.

Steve Shu Managing Director S4 Management Group Email: sshu@s4management.com Web: http://www.s4management.com

Greece has one of Europe's lowest fertility rates, a dire demographic state driven by a decade-long economic crisis

One year of experience and perspectives for the future from Pensoft Publishers and GBIF

In 2012 GBIF and Pensoft pioneered a workflow between the GBIF’s Integrated Publishing Toolkit (IPT) and Pensoft’s journals ZooKeys, PhytoKeys, MycoKeys, Nature Conservation, etc. to automatically export metadata into the form of a data paper manuscript, based on the Ecological Metadata Language (EML). One year on they share their experience and perspectives for the future of data publishing.

In its essence, a Data Paper is a scholarly journal publication whose primary purpose is to describe a dataset or a group of datasets, rather than to report a research investigation. As such, it contains facts about data, not hypotheses and arguments in support of the data, as found in a conventional research article. The future of data publishing according to Pensoft Publishers and GBIF, lies in the elaborating of formats for descriptions of various kinds of data (ecological, morphological, genomic, environmental, etc.), as well as in linking to various platforms (GBIF, Scratchpads, Dryad, EDIT, CBOL, etc.).

More about the collaboration and experience of Pensoft Publishers and GBIF learn from their joint poster available here.

Boston – Employees may be more likely to participate in workplace wellness programs if employers offer financial incentives, according to a new study from Harvard Medical School’s Department of Population Medicine.

Philadelphia – Financial incentives are ineffective at encouraging obese workers to lose weight, according to a study from the University of Pennsylvania.

Philadelphia – Financial penalties are more effective at helping workers reach physical activity goals than monetary rewards in a wellness program, according to a study from the University of Pennsylvania.

In “The Essential Elements of Effective Workplace Programs and Policies for Improving Worker Health and Wellbeing,” NIOSH states that workplace incentives and rewards can have a positive effect on worker participation.

Technology continues to play a prominent role in safety programs, and safety incentive programs are keeping pace.

These partnerships aim to encourage wheat, corn and rice farmers in select regions of North America to implement regenerative agriculture practices, contributing to scope 3 carbon reductions.

The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine have been awarded a grant for $100,000 from Arcadia — a charitable fund of Lisbet Rausing and Peter Baldwin — to support the work of the Academies’ Roundtable on Aligning Incentives for Open Science.

A new rapid expert consultation from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine’s Societal Experts Action Network says strategies such as giving advance notice, partnering with trusted sources, and offering incentives can encourage individuals who have tested positive for COVID-19 to respond to health department contact tracing and share information about people they may have exposed to the virus.

The IRA provides incentives to homeowners looking to replace old equipment that burns fossil fuels with new high-efficiency systems that is powered by renewable energy, and HVAC contractors are needed to install it.

Those in favor of the Inflation Reduction Act’s incentives for residential building decarbonization say the numbers show they’re working, but critics fear the program is flawed.

A change in the balance of power in Washington, D.C., and a desire to extend Trump-era tax cuts, could derail parts of the Inflation Reduction Act.

Since President Joe Biden invoked the DPA back in June 2022, HVAC-related energy efficiency incentives and renewable energy technology, have made their way into the spotlight. Many of those who work in the geothermal industry have been “waiting for this day” for decades.

Though geothermal systems can cost several times more than traditional HVAC units, the energy savings may be substantial.

The bill significantly reduces the cost of a geothermal installation, spurs job creation, and hopes to inspire more contractors to tap into the geothermal market.

Is reducing a facility's energy consumption by over 130,000 kWh annually through HVAC optimization possible?

With the election of Donald Trump to President of the United States, the HVAC industry is wondering how this will affect the Inflation Reduction Act incentives.

Low public awareness of incentives that can subsidize residential HVAC purchases means contractors have the opportunity to educate and position themselves as trusted advisors, marketing experts say.

With “heat pump” and “incentives” almost being synonymous at this point, contractors need to understand the basics to ensure customers are receiving the benefits.

A panel of state legislators rejected a bill that would have provided new financial incentives in New Mexico for the hydrogen fuel that is derived from natural gas.

Tackling Illegal Wildlife Trade in Africa: Economic Incentives and Approaches Research paper sysadmin 5 October 2018

Combating illegal wildlife trade and further pursuing conservation-development models could help generate considerable economic benefits for African countries, while ensuring the long-term preservation of Africa’s wealth of natural capital.

Summary

• The illegal wildlife trade (IWT) significantly impacts African economies by destroying and corroding natural, human and social capital stocks. This hinders the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and has an impact on national budgets. Illicit financial flows from IWT deny revenue to governments where legal wildlife product trade exists and perpetuate cash externalization. IWT diverts national budgets away from social or development programmes, increases insecurity and threatens vulnerable populations.
• In expanding wildlife economies and pursuing conservation-driven development models, governments can protect their citizens, derive revenue from wildlife products, and establish world class tourism offerings. The illegal exploitation of wildlife is often due to a failure to enforce rights over those resources, where rights are unclearly defined or not fully exercised. Southern African countries have defined these rights in various ways, contributing to regional differences in conservation practices and the socio-economic benefits derived from wildlife resources. Combating IWT is an important step towards allowing legitimate business and communities to develop livelihoods that incentivize stewardship and connect people to conservation.
• The Southern African Development Community (SADC) has several framework policies for the establishment of transfrontier conservation areas (TFCAs). These promote local stewardship across multiple land-use areas to conserve biodiversity and increase the welfare and socioeconomic development of rural communities. Private-sector partnerships also increase skills transfer, improve access to investment finance, and expand economic opportunities, including through the promotion of local procurement. The economic benefits of TFCAs extend beyond tourism.
• The economic value of African ecosystems is often under-recognized because they remain unquantified, partly due to the lack of available data on the broader economic costs of IWT. Improved monitoring and evaluation with key performance indicators would help governments and citizens to appreciate the economic value of combating IWT.

South Carolina's public universities only produce enough teachers each year to fill half of the state's vacant teacher positions.

The federal state of Brandenburg is committed to ensuring investors are welcomed into Frankfurt (Oder) through a string of generous incentives.

Title: Financial Incentives May Speed Radiology Test Results
Category: Health News
Created: 8/20/2010 2:10:00 PM
Last Editorial Review: 8/23/2010 12:00:00 AM

We’ve all seen Medicare Advantage (MA) plans become a significant player in the healthcare industry. Yet, with the […]

InComm Incentives takes the stress out of planning and executing rewards and promotions with an easy-to-use, B2B e-commerce portal.

Buy a new Clayton home and receive gift cards from Lowe�s* to build your dream backyard.

The Philippines Department of Finance has announced that the Fiscal Incentives Review Board (FIRB) will complete the implementing rules and regulations for the corporate Recovery and Tax Incentives for Enterprises (CREATE) Act by the third week of May.

The effort is aimed at companies such as Apple, Dell, HP Inc. and Asustek Computer Inc. to widen or begin local production

National Bureau of Economic Research