A tool that predicts employee flight risk
CategoriesSustainable News

A tool that predicts employee flight risk

The cost of employee turnover is difficult to quantify, but one estimate from Gallup suggests that voluntary employee turnover costs US businesses $1 trillion (around €915 billion) per year. And, according to payroll firm Remote, turnover rates have increased by nine per cent in the UK and US since 2019.  

While the importance of talent retention is well understood, it can be difficult for HR departments to be proactive in holding onto their most valuable employees. By using algorithms to analyse masses of data, startup HR Signal is making it easy for companies to predict the chances that any employee will leave in the near future.  

The startup’s software assigns each employee a ‘Retention Risk’ score that represents the likelihood that they will voluntarily leave their role in the next 90 days. This score is based on information on the current job market and patterns in career progression taken from millions of anonymised CVs. This is then supplemented by salary information and other forms of public data. So far, the startup has harvested data on over 50,000 job positions across all sectors.     

If an employee’s Retention Risk score exceeds a certain level, they are automatically flagged to the HR team. The software then provides a step-by-step suggested workflow so that companies can plan suitable interventions and record the outcomes.  

Using additional data about tenure trends both inside and outside the company, HR Signal’s platform also highlights potential promotion opportunities to encourage employee development – thereby increasing worker satisfaction and corresponding retention rates.

In the archive, Springwise has spotted many other innovations looking to improve employee well-being and boost retention, including workplace digital counselling services and smart greening solutions for the office.

Written By: Matilda Cox

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Electric flying car completes public exhibition flight
CategoriesSustainable News

Electric flying car completes public exhibition flight

Spotted: Flying cars are becoming a reality. China’s XPENG mobility technology experts recently completed a public flight of the electric flying car XPENG X2 at an event at the Dubai World Trade Centre. The zero-emission vehicle is a two-seater car that uses vertical lift-off and landing to transition from road travel to air. Designed specifically for the complexities of urban driving, the X2 flies at low altitude and can be driven manually or autonomously.

XPILOT is the company’s advanced driver assistance system. It provides guided options specifically for city or highway driving, including intelligent cruise, on- and off-ramp assistance, and speed limit adjustments. The car is made from carbon fibre in order to reduce the weight for flying.

In the future, the XPENG X2 will be suitable for low-altitude city flights, particularly over short distances. Medical transportation and sightseeing are therefore two promising potential applications for the technology.

Supported in its exhibition flight by the Dubai Civil Aviation Authority, the success of the recent trip shines a light on the need for regulatory bodies to keep pace with technological developments. Cities will need to build new air travel codes for high volumes of low-altitude flights.

Other types of autonomous travel that Springwise has spotted include last-mile delivery robots and marine research observation drones.  

Written By: Keely Khoury

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Airbus A380 completes flight powered entirely by sustainable aviation fuel
CategoriesSustainable News

Airbus A380 completes flight powered entirely by sustainable aviation fuel

Spotted: Aviation accounts for around 2.5 per cent of global carbon dioxide, but its actual contribution to climate change is much higher. This is because air travel not only emits CO2, but also a number of other pollutants—such as nitrogen oxides and particulates—along with water vapour, which triggers cloud formation. These emissions are also released higher up in the atmosphere than with other forms of transportation, resulting in a greater warming effect. For this reason, replacing aviation fuel with more sustainable options has become something of a holy grail in the sustainability sector.

Now, Airbus has made new progress, with an A380 flight powered entirely with sustainable aviation fuel (SAF). The flight used an A380 test aircraft MSN 1 and lasted around three hours – taking off from Blagnac Airport in Toulouse. The 27 tonnes of SAF fuel used in the flight was provided by TotalEnergies, and was produced locally, in Normandy.

Like other brands of SAF, the TotalEnergies fuel is made from hydroprocessed esters and fatty acids (HEFA). These are free of aromatics and sulphur, and were made primarily using used cooking oil and other waste fats, such as animal waste fat as feedstock. These fats are then refined to produce a fuel that has a very similar chemistry to traditional jet fuel. However, in addition to being produced from waste, rather than fossil fuels, SAF also contains fewer impurities (such as sulphur), which means fewer emissions.

According to Airbus, this is the third Airbus aircraft type to fly on 100 per cent SAF in the past year. Earlier flights included an Airbus A350 in March 2021, and an A319neo single-aisle aircraft in October 2021. However, the A380 is the largest of the three to fly entirely on SAF. The company claims that, “Increasing the use of SAF remains a key pathway to achieving the industry’s ambition of net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.”

At the moment, each passenger on a round-trip flight between New York and London requires more emissions than used by an average person in Paraguay during an entire year. So it’s no wonder that SAF is increasingly in the spotlight. Springwise has seen this with innovations such as an SAF made using captured CO2. And in 2021, United Airlines completed the world’s first commercial flight powered entirely by SAF. 

Written By: Lisa Magloff

Website: airbus.com

Contact: airbus.com/en/airbus-contact-us

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