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Referral hiring is not great for diversity at the workplace

Referral hiring isn’t great for diversity, says an article titled “Hiring an employee’s buddy is fuelling a major workplace crisis” on Bloomberg by Rebecca Greenfield. The article cites research by Ian Schmutte, an economics professor at the University of Georgia, who says, “Referral networks can lead to lesser diversity or — to put it another way — exacerbate between-group inequality.” He adds, “It’s very clear that people who get referrals tend to get referrals of the same race, gender, ethnic group, or national origin.”
 
Schmutte’s research has found that people tend to look to their social circles for referral hiring. Those groups are often made up of similar people, a phenomenon known as homophily. Using a data set from Boston that matches individuals to both their home and work locations, Schmutte found that a pair of workers living in the same block are three times more likely to work at the same company than a pair of workers living in the same neighbourhood. These effects are stronger for workers of the same race and the same gender. It's not just a matter of valuing diversity for its own sake. Companies with more diverse workforces tend to perform better, the article adds.

 
E-commerce sector powering employment generation in India
 

E-tail and the allied ecosystem (logistics, warehousing, information technology, IT-enabled services) is expected to generate direct employment for a workforce of around 1.45 million by 2021, according to a study titled Impact of E-commerce on Employment in India that was jointly conducted by online marketplace Snapdeal and KPMG. The study focuses on the role of e-tail in socio-economic development, outlining the alignment of measures with key government initiatives like Make in India, Digital India, Start-up India and Skilling India. Logistics and warehousing sector is expected to be the largest contributor (approximately 55 per cent) to direct employment opportunities in e-tail. E-tail is also expected to add 400,000 high skilled jobs by 2021.

 
Richard Rekhy, CEO, KPMG India said, “The contribution made by the e-commerce industry in employment creation is something that has been recognised for a while now. This report highlights how this impact can be increased multi-fold by facilitating an ecosystem of growth for the industry — developing a skilled workforce, promoting entrepreneurship, improving physical infrastructure, facilitating participation of SMEs and MSMEs, defining clear regulatory frameworks, and providing easier access to funds, etc. to name a few areas which require attention. These measures will ensure that growth in this industry becomes self-sustaining to support the expanding employment opportunities that it can offer.”

 
Smart machines to enter mainstream adoption by 2021, says Gartner
 
Smart machines will enter mainstream adoption by 2021, with 30 per cent adoption by large companies, according to Gartner, Inc. Technologies including cognitive computing, artificial intelligence (AI), intelligent automation, machine learning and deep learning fall under the umbrella term for smart machines.
 
“The use of smart machines by enterprises can be transformative and disruptive. Smart machines will profoundly change the way work is done and how value is created. From dynamic pricing models and fraud detection, to predictive policing and robotics, smart machines have broad applicability in all industries,” said Susan Tan, research vice-president at Gartner. The opportunity for consulting and system integration (C&SI) services will range from advising enterprises to help them sort through the hype to aiding with strategic design, training of the smart machines, deployment and integration to expansion and ongoing refinement. These will help drive spends on smart machine C&SI services from $451 million in 2016 to nearly $29 billion in 2021. Enterprises’ investments into smart machines will span over a decade, implying that the smart machine C&SI service market will be a long-term one.