HR World: 11/14
Global tidbits you may have missed last month – including the company paying its employees in goldGolden opportunity: Singaporean firm pays staff in precious metals
A precious metals dealer in Singapore has taken the unique step of paying its staff in gold to help them build up a financial buffer that is not affected by inflation.
Torgny Persson, CEO of BullionStar, told HRMAsia that instead of getting paid solely in dollars, employees can now opt to have part of their salary settled in gold and other precious metals.
A number of staff at the company were already using their salary to buy precious metals as a long-term investment or savings plan. The new programme enables them to be paid in precious metals directly. So far, five workers have signed up for the programme, which allows them to increase, maintain or decrease the proportion of their salary paid in this way on a monthly basis.
“More and more companies and individuals are rediscovering the safety and stability of precious metals,” said Persson. “When a company is offering its staff members a stable plan for financial security, everyone gains.
“We encourage other companies to consider it as it is a liberating salary savings plan with no need for any financial intermediaries or brokerage firms.”
Want to make better decisions? Lay off the snacks, say Dutch scientists
If you’ve ever justified eating cake at work on the grounds that you’ll be more focused on a full stomach, we’ve got bad news. Dutch researchers have discovered that people faced with complex choices actually make better decisions if they’re hungry.
A study by Utrecht University, published in online journal PLOS One and reported by Pacific Standard magazine, found that in situations where long-term outcomes are uncertain, people with rumbling stomachs are more likely to make good decisions than those who have had enough to eat.
The findings – in direct contrast with the conventional view that people in agitated emotional or visceral states (so-called ‘hot states’) make bad, impulsive decisions – were based on three experiments. In one of these, 30 university students took part in a computerised version of the Iowa Gambling Task, a psychological test said to mimic real-life decision-making. All the participants fasted overnight ahead of the morning experiment, but while half were served breakfast before the task, the other half went hungry.
All the students were offered four decks of cards and asked to take one card at a time from any deck. For cards from decks A and B, they received 100 Euros, while cards from decks C and D yielded 50 Euros. However, all the decks also contained cards incurring financial penalties, which were greatest for the cards from decks A and B – making decks C and D more advantageous in the long run. According to researchers, it was the hungry participants who chose more cards from the advantageous decks.
“It may be that hot states in general, and hunger and appetite in particular, do not necessarily make people more impulsive, but rather make them rely more on gut feeling, which benefits complex decisions with uncertain outcomes,” said lead researcher Denise de Ridder. “Alternatively, it may be that hot states do increase impulsivity, but that impulsivity is not necessarily bad.”
One of a kind: website compiles list of jobs unique to just one country
Fancy dressing up as a zebra and directing traffic for a living? No problem if you live in Bolivia, where the city authorities pay workers in zebra costumes to enforce road safety in an effort to help young people fund their education.
This is just one of multiple jobs named by contributors to Question-and-answer website Quora, which asked its community of users for examples of jobs that only exist in their country.
Other examples include:
• Honey hunters in Nepal: local people who hang from cliffs up to 300m in height using bamboo ladders and hemp ropes to harvest honeycomb from the nests of wild bees
• Number-plate blockers in Tehran: people who get paid to walk behind cars to conceal the number-plate as they enter restricted traffic areas
• River crossers in Vietnam: strong men who carry students and teachers who need to get to school in remote areas across flowing rivers in plastic bags
• Bike diggers in the Netherlands: people who dig rusty bikes out of country’s numerous canals every few months to prevent accidents
America’s top 10 scariest jobs? Hint: if you have kids, you’re doing one of them
When it comes to the jobs most likely to fill working people with fear, you’d expect to see those involving exposure to death and disease come close to the top of the list.
But a recent Careerbuilder survey of American workers shows that those involving small children, hysterical tweens, public speaking and the voting public are just as likely to have our US counterparts trembling in the corner of a room.
The survey of more than 3,000 workers, conducted by Harris Poll, found that some considered being a politician, kindergarten teacher or even parent every bit as intimidating as being a scientist exposed to infectious diseases, crime scene investigator or mortician.
The full top ten are:
- Politician
- Microbiologist for infectious diseases
- Security guard at teen pop idol concert
- Kindergarten teacher
- Crime scene investigator
- Animal trainer
- Mortician
- Radio, cellular and tower equipment installer and repairer
- Stand-up comedian
- Parent
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