Online reputation management - 8 simple steps

Many companies are getting more aware of the need to provide fast and accurate information in a crisis situation. This might be to journalists but it is also likely to include a wide array of other stakeholders.

Few organisations however give adequate consideration to the threat to their reputation posed by online media - consumer websites, social networks and blogs can spread a story at an alarming rate.

This concise article from SEOptimise provides 8 simple tips on how to manage an online reputation challenge. Companies large and small would be wise to heed the advice. Read the story here

How to Rise in a downturn

When is the best time to start a business? Not during an economic downturn, according to many. Celebrity cake maker Jane Asher began her baking empire in 1989, and defied the gloomy times to create a business that is still flourishing today.

She shares her recipe for success, as well as some of her mistakes, in this article. Read the Management Today story here:

How to enjoy work-free weekends

As the long hot lazy days of summer are upon us (our UK readers will need to use their imagination here), many workers are having to take on extra office duties to cover for colleagues who are away on their vacation. This additional work can often eat into leisure time and create stress at a particularly unwelcome time.

It doesn't need to be so, according to this article, which gives us 6 tips on how to ensure a work free weekend.

Read Teresa Medina's article in the Boston Herald here.

Workplace Taboos exposed

Do you ever wonder just what goes on at work that you might be unaware of? The scandals that might play out under your very nose? This illuminating article exposes illicit smooching, theft, sleeping on the job and snooping on a co-worker's PC as being more common than you might think!

Read the HR Training Center article here:

docleaf Briefs

LONDON (AFP) - A small British airport advertised for an air traffic controller -- and offered those interested an application pack in braille.

According to the website for Saint Mary's Airport on the Isles of Scilly, off the southwest tip of England, controllers need to be able to keep a close eye on the changeable weather as their work "is not over-dependent upon very costly and sophisticated electronic equipment".

But applicants for the job could still ask for an application pack in large type, braille or audio format, newspapers said.

A spokesman for the local council said the wording was included on all job advertisements, while the Royal National Institute for the Blind praised its "good practice".

And finally... a story of a very dangerous diet that is thankfully not likely to catch on... Doctors in a coastal town in northwestern Peru have rescued the innards of a 38-year-old man by removing 17 metal objects -- among them nails, a watch clasp and a knife -- that he ate.

Luis Zarate was taken to the regional hospital of Trujillo earlier this week by his family after complaining of sharp stomach pains. Doctors took X-rays of his chest that showed his insides littered with screws. "There were 17 strange objects found at the level of his stomach and colon," said Dr. Julio Acevedo, one of the surgeons who operated on Zarate.

The black-and-white scans showed Zarate's skeleton interlaced with things like bolts, barbed-wire and pens. "The objects had caused the stomach to expand," said Acevedo.

Doctors said Zarate was mentally ill but it was not clear why he ate the metal. (Reuters, Lima)