As US newspaper drowns in a sea of red link, publishers are desperately searching for ways to survive in a digital future.

Some are toying with the idea of charging readers for news on the Web while others are ganging up to extract money from powerful aggregators such as Google News which link to their articles.


Online advertising is seen as a potential savior in some newsrooms although it currently accounts for less than 15% of revenue at most US dialers.

Another proposal gaining currency is selling digital subscriptions through electronic readers similar to Amazon’s popular Kindle.

Japanese electronics giant Sony is also reported to be adapting its e-book reader for daily content and Apple is rumored to be developing a full-color media tablet of its own.

Amazon’s Kindle is designed for electronic books but the new device has a screen roughly the size of a standard sheet of paper and is more geared towards periodical.
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Today’s economic crisis has created challenging and troubling times for many families. AS people struggle to make ends meet in the face of the credit crunch and rising food, education and housing expenses, many are looking for ways to not only cut expenses, but also to make more money. The thought of securing a second job in today’s economy may sound daunting. However, there are many accessible, viable opportunities available that will help to provide that needed supplemental income.

Here are the 10 easy options:

Earn money from your hobbies – Turn your garden into a produces shop, put your wood-shop skills to good use, or offer scrap booking services to friends and neighborhood. For me why not use the web to earn revenue, create your own site of (blog) and update it every now and then to get more traffic, and the blessing will downpour you after…

Put your musical talents to good use – can you play an instrument? Hire yourself to play at small parties, or offer music lessons for a fee per hour.

Have a garage sale – put unsused and unwanted items up for sale.

Put your writing skills to good use – Take advantage of freelancing opportunities or place an add in your local paper to market your writing or editing abilities.

Become a tutor – Fluent in more that one language or a wiz at math, post flyers around your neighborhood or place an ad in the local paper and put your expertise to good use.

Rent a room – If you have a spare room in your house or apartment that is just collecting dust, consider taking in a renter.

Embrace your inner chef – Have a neighborhood bake sale with your famous cookies, pastries and pies or find a local restaurant looking for fresh, homemade pastries.

Party your way to money – Put your party skills to good use by coordinating and planning events like birthday parties, christening, etc. Most parties happen on weekends so these won’t get in the way of weekday work.

Baby-sit for the neighbors.

Become a Sales Agent/Representative of beauty products – the great thing about a freelance sales agent is that you make of it what you want. Whatever your goal may be, you adjust your personal investment of time and effort accordingly.
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The world of Human Resource management is fast changing. On one hand, there is an increasing demand for HR to be a strategic business partner. On the other, there is also a growing recognition that some basic HR functions are better devolved to line managers.

Things to do to strengthen the partnership between HR and the line:

Ensure people management competencies.
Some organizations make the mistake of selecting and promoting managers simply because they are good performers or deliver results. However, good performers do not necessarily make good managers. Thus, it would help to consider people management skills in selecting managers. Beyond selection, it is also essential that HR provide line managers with the training for them to perform HR related tasks. In other organizations, people management skills are part of their Management Development Program. Another strategy to getting managers to embrace their role in people management is to make their jobs easier by providing them job aids, software, manuals and information portals.

Make line managers accountable for people management.
Organization that are truly serious about devolving the HR function need to make line managers accountable for people management. People management is part of managers key result areas. Others even go a step further by pegging variable pay on people management metrics. It is also important to find champions in top management who can be models of a people oriented manager. One way of ensuring that HR systems and policies are understood and supported by managers is by involving them in the design process.

Build credibility of HR
However, if we want managers to partner with us, HR need to first build credibility by delivering basics flawlessly. Unclear policies will be open to misinterpretation or abuse. Users will likely circumvent systems when the do not see the logic behind them. In addition, delivering flawlessly often entails making systems as efficient as possible. More organizations are moving to automating HR systems and processes to ensure efficiency. Beyond delivering the basics, a key to becoming a strategic partner is the ability of HR to understand the business and its ability to align itself to the organization directions.

Reorient and re-educate HR group
Devolution can be threatening to HR practitioners because of the loss of control. On the other hand, some HR practitioners may not have the capability to evolve. Organizations need to addresses these sources of resistance by ensuring the HR staff are reoriented and provided the training needed for them to upgrade their competencies. Partnering for human resources will undoubtedly require much effort from both HR practitioners and line managers. Yet, there is no escaping this reality. Managers can no longer afford not to know how to properly manage their people. HR practitioners cannot take sole responsibility for people who are not under their direct supervision.

Great organization are those who are able to effectively harness their talents and it will take great partnership between HR and line to make this happen.
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In a crisis, productivity is the best policy
Not all motion is value-adding work

So you have downsized to cope with the recession. And you now think you have a lean and mean organization, with everybody productively working. Nothing could be farther from the truth unless you really know the meaning of productivity. Who is productive? Most confuse working hard with high productivity. In fact, to untrained eyes, any semblance of movement is misconstrued as value adding work. Our idea or “working hard” is actually “moving hard”, which has an acronym AIDS (As If Doing Something). All work is motion, but not all motion is work. So now what is “work,” if that’s what productivity is all about? The name of the profession determines its true function or work. For instance, salesmen must be “selling”, machine operators must be “operating” the machine, nurses should be “nursing,” surgeons must be doing “surgery,” bank tellers should be “tellering,” and managers should be “managing”.
If they do something other than their true function, then we say they are doing unproductive work. Back to our examples, this time when our worker is not really “working.” We shall load them with the usual administrative and logistical tasks and some inefficiencies that distract them from real work, thereby pulling down their productivity. A salesman is not selling when he is in the office, writing reports, attending meetings, or simply finding a place to park. Like the salesman, the bill collector is someone you don’t want to see in the office. He should be in the field collecting bills. A machine operator is not operating if he has to walk to search fro and get his tools, to follow up material requests and to call maintenance to have his equipment fixed.

Wasted time
Like the machine operator, the aircraft mechanic must be inside the aircraft holding a tool to be considered working. The moment he leaves the aircraft to get tools, materials, or data from the computer, he abandons work. One survey revealed that mechanics spend only 47 percent of the time working on the aircraft. The rest of the time is spent or wasted getting tools and waiting for parts. A nurse is not nursing if she is not beside the patient’s bed, answering patient’s call, or assisting a doctor. She is not nursing if she is filling out forms in the nurse station, walking great distances to get to pharmacy or the laboratory, grappling with an unreliable hospital IT system, or simply waiting in front of slow elevators. A major Asian hospital found out in a survey that 40 percent of patients’ calls where requests to nurses to bring housekeeping items such as pillows and linen. To free up the nurses time and make them more productive, the hospital added these frequently requested items when preparing a room for admission.

Continuous improvement
A surgeon is not working if he is outside the operating room waiting for the patient to be prepped. A doctor is not working if he is not attending to a patient, not using his equipment or not writing a prescription or order. He is not working if he is walking to look for the nurse or medical records. A manager is not managing if he is not planning, leading, organizing and controlling (PLOC). If he is busy firefighting or attending endless meetings, he stops “managing.” Most Japanese companies have stricter definition of “managing”: A manager should be in “gemba” or shop floor. If he is in any other place like in cozy office, then he is not managing. An even stricter definition is if he is not doing kaizen or continuous improvement, but simply solving day-to-day problems or doing PLOC to maintain status quo, then he is not working as a manager. The ideal manager should spend at least 30 percent of his time doing kaizen.

It is usually not the intention of any employee to perform unproductive work. If he does, it is often due to management, bad process design, or some re-tape regulation. Somebody working hard would honestly think he is working productively 100 percent of the time for the sake of the company, even though the reality is he may be producing mostly wastes.

To appreciate this principle, let us classify activities using value stream analysis into three: Value Added (VA) which we call “work”, nonvalue added (NVA) which we call “waste” due to inefficiencies and business non-value added (BNVA), which technically refers to “necessary waste”.

BNVAs are those that need to be done to comply with standards, regulation, laws, etc. NVA occurs if a machine operator has to walk and search for missing or misplaced tools. NVAs are reduced or eliminated by better housekeeping, process redesign, and sometimes by training. But if he has to write down manually or electronically the details of the batch he just produced for the purpose of tracking and traceability requirements, he is performing a BNVA task.

Constant measurement
In both cases, note that he is not “working.” i.e., not operating his machine. BNVAs cannot be eliminated; the most we can do is reduce their cycle time through simplification. BNVAs are part of the cost of doing business, which customers do not see. Therefore to enhance work content (VA) and productivity, we must eliminate NVAs and reduce processing times of BNVAs. As a guide, consider Vas as those activities that customers are willing to pay for and become part of product costs. Communicate to all their amount of value-adding work so they can start continuous improvement programs or projects. We cannot expect productive work to be 100 percent of total time, but from whatever baseline you start with, however low, make sure to increase it continuously. Then you are assured that your company’s productivity and chances of coping with the recession will constantly rise. (Read more inside ..)

People spend most of their waking hours working. Not surprisingly, organizations have begun to realize the importance of instituting systems to help employees in their career development.

The results show that career development systems do exist in local organizations. The most common interventions are training and development programs. These are followed by assessment and evaluation of employee potential and internal placement systems.
The good news is that career development programs appear to enhance employee attitudes. Employees who experience these interventions report greater career satisfaction and attachment to their organization. The bad news is that their career development systems are only “somewhat effective”. This is because that there are still areas to be improved on such as clarifying objectives, strengthening ownership of managers and supervisors, and ensuring that the system addresses career needs of employees.

I suggest looking at the following:

Disseminate information - Organization need to better explain career development objectives, interventions, tools and processes.
Link career development to other HR systems – People tend to confuse career development with performance management. Thus, it is important to show how career development is linked with the various HR systems.
Specify career development roles – It is good to note that career development is seen as shared responsibility of the employee, supervisor and the organization. Nevertheless, respondents say that managers, at times, lose sight of their responsibility in the process. This makes it important to make people accountable for their roles in career development.
Provide career development training and tools – The processes and tools for implementing career development and the necessary training should be given to groups who are responsible for implementing it. For example, if managers are expected to do career coaching, they must be provided the skills in doing so.
Evaluate career development systems – Constantly evaluating one’s career development system is important to ensure that it remain relevant and effective. Other that through feedback or questionnaires, specific indicators such as promotion or retention rates can be used to gauge the success of career development.
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