PEOPLE - Berlusconi associates accused over underage prostitution

Berlusconi associates accused over underage prostitution

By Sara Rossi | Reuters – 1 hour 42 minutes ago

Italy's former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi speaks onstage during the final mayoral campaign 

rally for Rome's Mayor Gianni Alemanno at the Colosseum in Rome May 24, 2013. REUTERS/Alessandro Bianchi

MILAN (Reuters) - Italian prosecutors accused two associates of Silvio Berlusconi on Friday of recruiting teenager Karima El Mahroug, alias "Ruby the Heartstealer", for paid sex with the former prime minister despite knowing that she was under 18 years of age.

A verdict in Berlusconi's own trial on charges of paying for sex with a minor and abuse of office is expected next month, a potential headache for the governing coalition of Prime Minister Enrico Letta, which depends on Berlusconi's support to survive.

Emilio Fede, a former news anchor in Berlusconi's Mediaset television empire, and showbusiness agent Lele Mora were "associates and accomplices" in a well-organised system in which women were offered money or presents to attend the parties, prosecutor Antonio Sangermano told a hearing in Milan.

Fede and Mora, together with former dental hygienist Nicole Minetti, face charges of procuring El Mahroug in a case running alongside Berlusconi's own trial. All three deny the charges.

El Mahroug, a former nightclub dancer, has also denied ever being a prostitute or having sex with the 76-year-old Berlusconi although she has said she attended parties at his home where she received thousands of euros in cash.

Fede, who first saw El Mahroug at a beauty contest in Sicily, "had appreciated Ruby's beauty like a connoisseur of fine wines," Sangermano told the court, adding that Mora had "kept her warm before introducing her on to the circuit."

The Ruby case has become the centre of a tense battle in which Berlusconi, leader of Italy's main centre-right party, and his supporters have accused what they say are politically motivated prosecutors of trying to destroy him.

In Berlusconi's trial, prosecutors have asked for a six-year jail term as well as a lifetime ban on holding public office for the media magnate, who also denies all charges.

Berlusconi has repeatedly said the parties at his sumptuous residence near Milan were elegant dinners attended by a wide variety of people. However, several witnesses have testified that striptease shows were staged at the parties by women dressed up as nuns or policewomen.

On Friday, Sangermano said prosecutors had no choice but to go ahead with the trial once they became aware of police evidence surrounding El Mahroug.

"Is there anyone who wears a magistrate's robes of office with any dignity who could have blocked their ears?" he said.

He described El Mahroug as "a minor who went about town with a packet of money, lived with a professional prostitute and declared that she frequented the house of a rich and powerful man".

She was "an integral part" of a system of paid sex at the parties involving a large number of young women, many of whom lived in apartments owned by Berlusconi in Milan, he said.

While Fede and Mora were accused of recruiting El Mahroug and others, Minetti, who stepped down last year as a regional councillor for Berlusconi's People of Freedom party in Milan, was accused of managing the young women's activities. (Writing by James Mackenzie; editing by Mark Heinrich).

KNOWLEDGE POWER - Expertise. It's not how smart you are, but how much you know that matters

How to become an expert

Published on January 17, 2009 by Tad Waddington, Ph.D. in Smarts

When scientists began to study expertise, they first assumed that experts must be smarter or more talented than novices, but they quickly learned that the key difference between experts and novices is not mental power, but knowledge. Cognitive psychologists Michelene Chi, Marshall Farr, and Robert Glaser have defined an expert as somebody who has a great deal of highly organized domain-specific knowledge, where a domain is a network of knowledge, such as chess, mathematics, or music. For experts, knowledge has morphed from many pieces into a unified whole. An expert can start with any piece of knowledge and explain how it fits with every other piece. I always picture the way Sherlock Holmes could start with a soil stain and, through a chain of reasoning, solve the case.

Understanding other people's expertise can help you develop your own. Surprisingly, experts make mistakes, but experts catch and correct their mistakes faster than do novices. Experts take a long time to make sure they understand a problem. If you give an expert and a novice the same problem, the novice will immediately begin to try to solve it. The expert will reflect on the nature of the problem. From the outside, it will appear as if the expert is doing nothing and the novice is making progress. Once the expert understands the problem, she can solve it better and faster than can the novice.

Understanding expertise also helps you see where intuition comes in: it comes last. Experts do use intuition to solve problems, but it is a cultivated intuition resulting from at least 20,000 hours of on-task study. Intuition works as a guide only after experts have satu¬rated themselves with their field's knowledge. Herbert Simon described expertise as follows:

"Counts have been made of the number of "friends" that chess masters have: the numbers of different configurations of pieces on a chessboard that are old familiar acquaintances to them. The estimates come out, as an order of magnitude, around fifty thousand, roughly comparable to vocabulary estimates for native speakers. Intuition is the ability to recognize a friend and to retrieve from memory all the things you've learned about the friend in the years you've known him. And of course if you know a lot about the friend, you'll be able to make good judgments about him. Should you lend him money or not? Will you get it back if you do? If you know the friend well, you can say "yes" or "no" intuitively."

Nobel laureate Louis Alvarez provides an example of how to learn the language of a domain. Louis and his son, Walter, were the first scientists to suggest that an asteroid killed the dinosaurs. The clue was a dusting of iridium, an isotope that is rare on earth but common in asteroids. As soon as Alvarez saw it, he knew it was significant; but how did he know? Alvarez's biographer Richard Rhodes wrote that for years, Alvarez ran the only cyclotron in the world: "On a wall in the laboratory the young physicists put up a big board laid out with the periodic table, with hooks projecting from the boxes designating elements, and each time someone identified a new isotope, Luie labeled a wooden tag with the isotope's characteristics and hung the tag from the ap¬propriate hook. That's how he got to know isotopes so well. The knowledge he derived from those hard early years of work stayed with him like a vocabulary for the rest of his life." In short, you are an expert in your field when you know its vocabulary and grammar as well as you know that of your native language.

ANXIETY - Debunking Myths of the Mind

A little knowledge can be a risky thing.

by Srini Pillay, M.D.

How Much Anxiety Is Too Much?

You are listening to your anxiety more than you may realize.

Published on June 21, 2011 by Srini Pillay, M.D. in Debunking Myths of the Mind

There is a law known as the Yerkes-Dodson law. This law teaches us that many psychological phenomena affect how we perform in a U-shaped manner. Anxiety is no exception. At first, the more anxiety you have, the better it is for you. But at the top of the curve, the effect starts to reverse. 

Your performance starts to drop when anxiety is too much. Your challenge in daily life is to keep anxiety within the risking part of that curve, but how do you do this without risking burnout?

I think that this curve is helpful, but misses a few key points, which I will highlight below:

1. Anxiety can be unconscious: Studies show that anxiety activates the brain unconsciously. When it does, it also disrupts how you make decisions or assess risks. In fact, it can make you interpret neutral events as negative. You may not be aware of your anxiety, and as a result, cannot measure it.

ACTION POINT: When your performance declines, assume that unconscious anxiety is playing a role. Ask yourself: what could be causing this anxiety.

One way to find out is to probe your background: what events caused major anxiety in the past? How does the current situation relate to it? For example, you may be under pressure to meet a deadline. And this may activate old memories of never being at school on time or having been fired. 

The latter may not be something you are thinking of but may come up unconsciously. Make a distinction between the past and present.

2. Stresses add up: You may have just minimal anxiety about missing that deadline, so you may be expected to feel motivated but you may also be worried about your child's ADD and your close to absent sex life. This may all add up.

ACTION POINT: Think of home and work related anxieties as happening in the same brain. There is no work-home boundary in the brain unless you create it. To do this, you will have to train your brain to attend to whatever is in your physical environment and give all its attention to that rather than also be looking over its shoulder at home-related anxieties. This can happen but is not automatic. Leaving home anxieties at home can - believe it or not - be anxiety provoking. But realize that you can only attend to a few things at a time and that while you are at work, you will likely only make things worse by obsessing about home-related anxieties.

3. Surviving is different from thriving: Having low anxiety does not always mean having no anxiety. It may mean that your anxiety is being dealt with. This takes brain resources and can contribute to burnout.

ACTION POINT: If you are a high functioning person who copes well, recognize that you may be settling for less than you are capable of because you are being burned out. Aside from exploring your anxieties- explore what coping methods drain you. Do you have to strain to keep things out of your mind? Are you pushing back tears? Do you find that you "get by" but are by no means living a relaxed life? Coping also causes fatigue. It is a delicate balance to "cope" when it is necessary and "over-cope" too often because that is your lifestyle.

4. What is too much for you? Anxiety is not just about how much you have, but whose brain it is in. Are you genetically vulnerable to medium anxiety whereas others are not? Do you find yourself in an embarrassing meltdown while others think you should be just fine?

ACTION POINT: Do not judge your own reactions by other people's standards. Take a minute and understand that you have your own genesand your own history. It is unreasonable to expect yourself to have the same reaction as anyone else. You may have to come to terms with more than your anxiety - you may have to accept that you are different and seek to be around people who understand this.

5. Anxiety can be less "personal" than you think: Sometimes the body flips out. It goes into sympathetic overdrive and has your heart pounding and has you feeling a little dizzy. By focusing on this, you can make things worse.

ACTION POINT: You can say to yourself: "My body is just freaking out. I hope it stops soon." If you are medically well (make sure that you are because medical illnesses can masquerade as anxiety), not identifying with your anxiety is helpful. Sometimes it helps to look at rather than analyze your anxiety. And while you are doing this, interrupt the process by thinking of something good or even amazing. You will see how helpful this can be when you are in the mist of this turmoil.

Work anxiety then cannot simply be measured by how much or how little you have. If your performance is not optimal or you are not setting the bar higher in your life, consider that you are listening to your anxiety more than you may realize.

BRAIN & MEMORY - It's Not How Much You Learn That Matters. It's How Much You Remember

Half a dozen things to remember about memory.

Published on April 27, 2009 by Tad Waddington, Ph.D. in Smarts

Review in an hour; then in a day 
Forgetting follows a pattern. There are steep drop offs in retention after 60 minutes and after 24 hours. Immediately after learning something, you will be able to retrieve a great deal of information. But then you will forget the information rapidly if you do not review it - first within an hour and then within a day. The best times to review information are right before you go to sleep and right when you wake up. This is so for three reasons. First, in sleep the brain secretes chemicals that cement memories. Second, forgetting happens because information we learn later knocks out information that is already in our heads. Third, most forgetting happens because our heads are already full of information and have trouble packing more in.

Work on what you want to remember 
Working on what you want to remember is one of the ways you beat the forgetting curves. For example, "Hi," she said, "I'm Marion Brown.

"Darn," I said to myself, "I am lousy with names." But then I recalled that you remember things that you work on so I thought: This Brown is a blonde. Maybe she went to Brown University. She wears a wedding ring so Marion is the marrying-type. But she's a one r-marrying type. Marion has only one r.
The best way to make information memorable is to use the keyword method, because it links our verbal memory with our spatial memory. Suppose you were learning Japanese. The word の, pronounced ‘no,' works like the possessive (apostrophe s) does in English. Remember it by saying to yourself, "It looks like a Pac Man. Do I want to be eaten by (be possessed by) a Pac Man? Why, the answer is No."

Repeating improves recall
If you seem never to be able to remember your doctor's phone number when you need it most, consider using the phone number as part of a password on your computer, for example, Dr5551212Jones. Your recall of the phone number will greatly improve by incorporating it into a procedure you repeat very often. Doing a task over and over can improve your memory of the task details considerably. Make a conscious effort to incorporate important facts into tasks you practice often.

Don't go beyond seven 
The average short-term memory capacity is 7 plus or minus 2 pieces of information. That is 5 to 9 pieces. This is why phone numbers are seven digits long. "Ten digits," you say? Yes and no. You are supposed to have the area code stored in long-term memory so that you say, "New York is 212." Then you hold in short-term memory the other seven digits that somebody is rattling off until you successfully dial the number. So if you don't already know the area code, you'd better get a pen.

Short term memory is only what you hold in your mind at the moment. If you don't elaborate on it - find some way to make it stick - then as soon as you stop repeating the information to yourself, it will be gone.

To remember, focus not on sound, but on meaning 
In addition to the 7 plus or minus 2 limit, short-term memory last for only about 20 seconds. When it comes to language, short-term memory generally encodes information by sound, while long-term memory encodes information by meaning. If you give somebody as list of words with the word labor in it and distract them so they can't work on the information to transfer it to long-term memory, they are likely to make the sort of mistake represented by reporting that the word later was on the list. If you give them time to memorize the list, but not enough time so that that they can memorize it perfectly, then they are likely to make not sound-mistakes, but meaning mistakes, such as reporting the word work.

Therefore, when you want to remember something, don't rely on catchy rhymes or other auditory tricks, aim for meaning. Similarly, to make your words more memorable, try to make it meaningful and to help people make connections between what you are saying and things they already know.

Make it memorable by using first and last 
Items at the beginning and end of a list are more easily recalled than items in the middle. So too with the first and last topics in a speech or in a text so put the important points in the introduction and conclusion. Within paragraphs, put the ideas you want remembered in the first or last sentences. So too with conversations, begin and end with what you want remembered.

The reverse of this principle works too. Bury the bad news in the middle of your report or presentation to decrease its impact and increase the chance that people will forget it. By consciously arranging how you present information you can increase the effectiveness of your communication.

BRAIN & MEMORY - Why Do You Close Your Eyes to Remember?

Does it help to close your eyes when remembering?

Published on October 7, 2011 by Art Markman, Ph.D. in Ulterior Motives

Ask somebody a difficult question, and chances are they will either look up at the sky or close their eyes. What is going on there?


Quite a bit of the brain is taken up with understanding what is going on in our sensory world. For example, if you clasp your hands behind your head, most of the area taken up by your hands reflects the amount of the brain that is devoted to making sense of the information coming in through your eyes.
Those same areas of the brain are also involved in visual recollections of things that you have seen in the past. It makes sense that the brain would re-use areas devoted to vision to help in memory for visual information.

When your eyes are open, those areas of the brain that are involved in vision are getting input from the eyes, and this input keeps those areas busy. Consequently, when you have to answer a difficult question or think about some visual memory from the past you either close your eyes or look upward to help you disengage from the world. (Looking up helps, because the ceiling of the room or the sky are often much less visually interesting than what is happening at eye level and below.)
As an example exploring the influence of looking at the world on memory, there was a nice paper in the October, 2011 issue of Memory & Cognitionby Annelies Vredeveldt, Graham Hitch, and Alan Baddeley.
In this study, people watched an 8-minute clip of a television show in which a character got shot, stitched up, and then engaged in a fight.  After a 5-minute delay, participants were then asked a number of questions about what they saw and heard in the clip.

There were four groups of people in this study. One group answered questions while looking at a blank computer screen that had been shut off. A second group answered questions with their eyes closed. A third group watched a computer screen as nonsense images were shown on it. A fourth group stared at a blank screen, but heard words from an unfamiliar language being spoken as a distraction.


The group that stared at a blank screen and the one in which people closed their eyes answered more of the questions correctly overall than the ones that saw visual distractions or heard words in an unfamiliar language. That finding suggests that people close their eyes in order to avoid any interesting visual input that would interfere with their ability to remember.
A particularly interesting finding of this study was that the group that saw the images had most difficulty answering questions about the show that asked about visual details. The group that heard the foreign words had most difficulty answering questions about auditory details of the show.

In the end, sensory distraction has both a general and a specific component. Any kind of a distraction makes it harder for you to remember things to some degree. In addition, having a visual distraction makes it particularly hard to remember visual details. Having an auditory distraction makes it particularly hard to remember details of things that you heard.

So, the next time you are trying to remember something important, look up, close your eyes, and minimize distraction.

BRAIN & MEMORY - How To Remember Things

Proven strategies to improve your memory.

Published on November 16, 2009 by Alex Lickerman, M.D. in Happiness in this World

I once came up with a metaphor I thought perfectly captured the sheer mass of material my classmates and I were expected to memorize in our first two years of medical school: it was like being asked to enter a grocery store and memorize the names of every product in the store, their number and location, every ingredient in every product in the order in which they appear on the food label, and then to do the same thing in every grocery store in the city.

When I look back now I can't imagine how any of us were able to do it. And yet we did. The mind's capacity to store and recall information is truly wondrous. Since I attended medical school we've learned a lot about memory and learning. Though much of what follows are techniques I used to survive my first two years of medical school, much of the science that proves they work is new.

STRATEGIES FOR REMEMBERING

1. Become interested in what you're learning. We're all better remembering what interests us. Few people, for example, have a difficult time remembering the names of people they find attractive. If you're not intrinsically interested in what you're learning or trying to remember, you must find a way to become so. I have to admit I wasn't so good at this in medical school. The Krebs cycle (I provided the link only to prove how immensely boring it is) just didn't excite me or relate to anything I found even remotely exciting (though I made myself learn it anyway).
2. Find a way to leverage your visual memory. You'll be astounded by how much more this will enable you to remember. For example, imagine you're at a party and are introduced to five people in quick succession. How can you quickly memorize their names? Pick out a single defining visual characteristic of each person and connect it to a visual representation of their name, preferably through an action of some kind. For example, you can remember Mike who has large ears by creating a mental picture of a microphone (a "mike") clearing those big ears of wax (gross, I know—sorry—but all the more effective because of it). It requires mental effort to do this, but if you practice you'll be surprised how quickly you can come up with creative ways to create these images. Here's another example: how often do you forget where you left your keys, your sunglasses, or your wallet? The next time you put something down somewhere, pause a moment to notice where you've placed it, and then in your mind blow it up. If you visualize the explosion in enough detail, you won't forget where you put it. Remember: memory is predominantly visual
   (unfortunately, I can't think of a good image to help you remember this fact right at this moment).
3. Create a mental memory tree. If you're trying to memorize a large number of facts, find a way to relate them in your mind visually with a memory tree. Construct big branches first, then leaves. Branches and leaves should carry labels that are personally meaningful to you in some way, and the organization of the facts ("leaves") should be logical. It's been well recognized since the 1950's we remember "bits" of information better if wechunk them. For example, it's easier to remember 467890 as "467" and "890" than as six individual digits.
4. Associate what you're trying to learn with what you already know. It seems the more mental connections we have to a piece of information, the more successful we'll be in remembering it. This is why using mnemonics actually improves recall.
5. Write out items to be memorized over and over and over. Among other things, this is how I learned the names of bacteria, what infections they cause, and what antibiotics treat them. Writing out facts in lists improves recall if you make yourself learn the lists actively instead of passively. In other words, don't just copy the list of facts you're trying to learn but actively recall each item you wish to learn and then write it down again and again and again. In doing this, you are, in effect, teaching yourself what you're trying to learn (and as all teachers know, the best way to ensure you know something is to have to teach it). This method has the added benefit of immediately showing you exactly which facts haven't made it into your long-term memory so you can focus more attention on learning them rather than wasting time reinforcing facts you already know.
6. When reading for retention, summarize each paragraph in the margin. This requires you to think about what you're reading, recycle it, and teach it to yourself again. Even take the concepts you're learning and reason forward with them; apply them to imagined novel situations, which creates more neural connections to reinforce the memory.
7. Do most of your studying in the afternoon. Though you may identify yourself as a "morning person" or "evening person" at least one study suggests your ability to memorize isn't influenced as much by what time of day you perceive yourself to be most alert but by the time of day you actually study—afternoon appearing to be the best.
8. Get adequate sleep to consolidate and retain memories. Not just at night after you've studied but the day before you study as well. Far better to do this than stay up cramming all night for an exam.

WHY MEMORY MALFUNCTIONS
One of the most common complaints I hear in clinical practice is about memory loss. Unfortunately, as a normal part of the aging process, many people start to find they can't bring to mind names, places, and things as easily as they used to be able to do and worry they're facing the beginning of dementia. "Benign forgetfulness" is the name we give to a process that occurs with normal aging in which a memory remains intact but our ability to retrieve it becomes temporarily impaired. Usually we try to describe the name or thing we can't recall and when someone names it for us we instantly remember the word we wanted. As long as this is age-appropriate and doesn't significantly interfere with normal functioning, there is no increased risk for progression to dementia. However, the trick lies in assessing what is and isn't "age-appropriate." Formal testing is sometimes necessary in ambiguous cases. Reassuringly, in one study, patients over the age of 50 who initially presented with what was considered to be benign forgetfulness had only a 9% chance of progressing to dementia. Unfortunately, cognitive impairments other than memory loss are correlated with a higher risk of progression to dementia.

Another reason people often have trouble remembering things is because memory is a function of concentration. Which means when you multi-task you tend to forget more easily. Have you ever entered a room only to forget why you did so? More likely you'd remember if you weren't simultaneously planning your dinner for that night and trying to remember the phone number of the person who just left you a message. This also explains why people who suffer from depression or anxiety have a harder time remembering things: both conditions interfere substantially with the ability to concentrate. The strength of a memory is also determined by the emotional state that accompanied the original event. Emotion, negative or positive, tends to embed events in our memory like a chisel carves lines in stone. A double-edged sword for people suffering from PTSD.

DECREASING THE RISK OF DEMENTIA
Here are three things you can do that have been shown in studies to decrease the risk of mental deterioration as you age:

1. Exercise your body. Evidence suggests this not only retards normal age-related memory deterioration but reduces the risk of developing dementia. It doesn't even have to be vigorous exercise. Just 150 minutes of walking per week has been shown to be of benefit. Whether more intense exercise results in a greater risk reduction remains unknown.
2. Exercise your mind. Evidence also suggests that doing things that work the mind may delay or prevent memory loss. This research is just in its infancy, so here's as good a guide as any to figuring out what activities will work: if an activity requires you to take breaks, it probably qualifies. We can watch television, for example, for hours on end without becoming mentally fatigued, but solving math problems, learning to knit, or even reading all require effort that tires the mind.
3. Take ibuprofen. Though one study suggests a daily dose of ibuprofen decreases the risk of developing dementia, the risk reduction appears too modest to justify the increased risk of stomach bleeding that accompanies ibuprofen's daily use and I do NOT recommend this. However, if you're already taking ibuprofen for some other condition, like arthritis, here might be an added benefit.

If the mind is indeed like a muscle (and research is validating that model more and more) then memory may very well be like muscle tone: the more the mind is used, the more robust memory may become. As I've moved on from my medical school days to reach early (very early) middle age, I've found myself experiencing benign forgetfulness far more than I like. As a result, I find myself comforted that the old adage "use it or lose it" is seeming more and more not just to apply to the body but to the mind as well.

P SUMBER MANUSIA - Pengambilan Tenaga Kerja

Oleh Faudzil Harun 

Senarai Semak Pengambilan Pekerja

1.   Berfikir secara kreatif bagaimana kerja yang ditinggalkan boleh 

      dilaksanakan tanpa menambah pekerja (menambah-baik proses, 

      menghapuskan kerja yang tidak perlu dilakukan, membahagikan tugas 

      dengan kaedah lain dsb).

Jika pengisian orang masih perlu :

2.   Adakan perbincangan melibatkan semua orang yang boleh menyumbang 

      idea.
3.   Tentukan tugas-tugas utama dan tugas-tugas lain bagi jawatan itu. 

      Tentukan juga kelayakan, kemahiran dan tingkahlaku yang diperlukan yang 

      akan digunakan sebagai info penting yang akan di iklankan.
4.   Tuliskan diskripsi tugas bagi jawatan yang akan di iklankan.
5.   Tentukan gaji yang akan ditawarkan.
6.   Iklankan di dalam organisasi untuk suatu tempoh yang ditentukan dan 

      galakkan permohonan dikalangan pekerja yang sedia ada
7.   Iklankan di media untuk suatu tempoh yang ditetapkan.
8.   Tentukan jadual temuduga yang tidak padat.

Selepas menerima permohonan :

9.   Semak maklumat penting yang diperlukan.
10. Buat pertanyaan menerusi telefon atau saluran lain (jika perlu).
11. Adakan perbincangan untuk memilih calon yang akan di panggil menghadiri 

      temuduga.
12. Tentukan soalan penting yang akan ditanyakan semasa temuduga.
13. Tentukan aliran sesi temuduga.
14. Minta calon menghantar info tambahan (jika ada).
15. Hubungi calon untuk menetapkan tarikh dan masa temuduga.
16. Hantarkan kad jemputan temuduga kepada calon yang terpilih.
     ● Menghantar borang permohonan untuk di isikan sebelum hari temuduga 

        dapat menjimatkan banyak masa.

Pada hari temuduga :

17. Sambut kedatangan calon dengan impresi yang bersesuaian.
18. Berikan calon salinan diskripsi tugas dan info organisasi sementara 

     menunggu.
19. Mulakan sesi temuduga dengan ucapan terima kasih dan teruskan dengan 

     perbualan topik umum bagi membantu calon mengurangkan perasaan gugup 

     dan jalinkan hubungan kemanusiaan.
20. Jika terdapat calon yang berpotensi dan perbincangan lanjut diperlukan, 

     tangguhkan sesi temuduga untuk suatu tempoh yang singkat bagi 

     berbincang langkah seterusnya atau apa yang perlu di kaji atau ditanya 

     sebelum membuat keputusan.
21. Jika sesi yang lebih lama diperlukan, bahagikan sesi temuduga kepada 

     beberapa sesi.
22. Jika temuduga lanjutan diperlukan, maklumkan kepada calon apakah yang 

     diharapkan dalam sesi berikutnya.
23. Ucapkan terima kasih di akhir sesi temuduga.

Jenis Temuduga

Terdapat pelbagai jenis temuduga yang digunakan pada sesi yang sama atau berasingan. Juru temuduga perlu menjalani latihan untuk meningkatkan kemahiran yang diperlukan.

Jenis temuduga yang umum adalah :

Structured Interview
●  Merupakan temuduga berstruktur yang mana juru temuduga mempunyai 

    senarai soalan yang akan ditanyakan.
●  Juru temuduga boleh bertanya semua soalan atau bertanya soalan yang 

    mereka pilih.
●  Membahagikan soalan kepada beberapa orang juru temuduga juga boleh 

    dilakukan.
●  Adakalanya terdapat suatu borang yang menyenaraikan soalan-soalan yang 

    akan ditanya dan terdapat ruang permarkahan untuk di isikan oleh juru 

    temuduga.
●  Jika suatu sistem atau kaedah diperkenalkan, juru temuduga perlu 

    diberikan latihan yang betul.

Contoh Soalan Mudah :

Soalan 1 – Apakah makan yang anda gemari ?

Jawapan yang baik            :  Makanan yang tidak pedas.
Jawapan yang lebih baik    :  Sayur hijau dan ikan tidak bersisik.
Jawapan yang lemah         :  Semua makanan asalkan halal.

Soalan 2 – Apakah subjek yang anda pelajari di Sekolah Menengah?

Jawapan yang baik            :  Membacakan senarai subjek.
Jawapan yang lebih baik    :  Saya pelajari (senarai subjek) dan saya juga 

                                         mempelajari (nama subjek) sebagai subjek 

                                         tambahan.
Jawapan yang lemah         :  Semua subjek 

Unstructured Interview.
●  Merupakan temuduga yang mirip kepada perbualan harian.
●  Teknik ini tidak perlu dipelajari secara serius.
●  Teknik ini pada kebiasaannya membuat penilaian berdasarkan keperibadian 

    dan perkara lain dan tidak tertumpu hanya kepada kelayakkan dan 

    kemahiran calon itu.
●  Adakalanya perbualan berkaitan perkara umum dapat menerokai potensi 

    calon.

Behavioral Interview
●  Merupakan teknik yang sangat umum.
●  Juru temuduga bertanya soalan-soalan terancang bagi menilai bagaimana 

    calon berfikir.
●  Juru temuduga perlukan latihan yang betul untuk memahami respon calon.
●  Teknik ini selalunya melibatkan kegemaran juru temuduga terhadap respon 

    calon yang berdasarkan 4 standard – rasa, personaliti, kemahiran dan 

    hubungan kemanusiaan.
●  Juru temuduga akan bertanya soalan berdasarkan suatu situasi dan 

    membuat penilaian semasa calon memberi respon.

Tugas Juru Temuduga

●  Mengkaji maklumat calon sebelum temuduga.
●  Cuba dapatkan info tambahan berkaitan calon.
●  Tahu apakah matlamat temuduga.
●  Memilih lokasi yang selesa dan bebas dari gangguan.
●  Mewujudkan suasana yang selesa.
●  Menghindari semua halangan komunikasi.
●  Menepati waktu.
●  Tampil ceria, ramah dan bersahaja.
●  Menjalinkan hubungan kemanusiaan.
●  Menggunakan tonasi suara dan ekspresi wajah yang membantu calon.
●  Membantu calon respon kepada soalan.
●  Merekodkan jawapan atau kenyataan penting oleh calon.
●  Mempengaruhi calon yang berpotensi.

P SUMBER MANUSIA - Pemecatan Pekerja

Oleh Faudzil Harun 

Pemecatan Atas Sebab Salahlaku

S 14 (1) Akta Kerja 1955 – Pemecatan Atas Sebab-Sebab Khas
Majikan berhak memecat pekerja atas sebab-sebab khas. Menurut peruntukkan, majikan atas sebab salahlaku setelah siasatan dijalankan, boleh sama ada :

1.  Memecat pekerja tanpa notis;
2.  Menurunkan pangkat pekerja;
3.  Mengenakan denda yang lebih ringan dan jika penggantungan kerja tanpa 

     gaji dikenakan, ia tidak boleh melebihi tempoh 2 minggu.


S 14 (2) Akta Kerja 1955 – Pemecatan Atas Sebab-Sebab Khas
Untuk tujuan siasatan, majikan boleh menggantung kerja pekerja tidak lebih dari 2 minggu dan membayar separuh gaji untuk tempoh penggantungan tersebut dengan syarat jika hasil siasatan tidak mendapati sebarang salahlaku dipihak pekerja, maka majikan hendaklah membayar kembali sepenuhnya separuh gaji yang ditahan itu serta merta.

Pemecatan Atas Sebab Prestasi Kerja

Pemecatan atas alasan prestasi kerja lemah atau tidak memuaskan atau tidak efisyen merupakan alasan yang munasabah untuk pemecatan tetapi majikan harus menanggung beban untuk membuktikan yang mempengaruhi pekerja bersalah diatas tuduhan tersebut.


Prosedur Menanggani Prestasi Kerja Lemah

1.   Memberitahu Pekerja
      ●  Majikan hendaklah memberitahu pekerja perihal prestasi lemahnya 

          secara jelas dan spesifik dan menjelaskan standard prestasi yang 

          diharapkan.
      ●  Majikan harus mengkaji punca atau faktor penyumbang kepada prestasi 

          lemah itu.
 

2.   Memberi Peluang Untuk Meningkatkan Prestasi
      ●  Majikan hendaklah memberikan bantuan dan sokongan kepeda pekerja 

          untuk mengatasi prestasi lemahnya itu.
      ●  Majikan hendaklah memberikan kepada pekerja itu latihan yang betul, 

          peralatan yang mencukupi, tunjuk ajar dan panduan untuk 

          meningkatkan prestasi
      ●  Majikan handaklah membuat pengawasan dan merekodkan perihal 

          prestasi pekerja secara jelas dan spesifik.

3.   Memberi Amaran

      ●  Majikan hendaklah memberi amaran bertulis tanpa lengah.
      ●  Majikan harus memberi tempoh yang munasabah kepada pekerja untuk 

          membaiki dan meningkatkan prestasinya.
      ●  Majikan hendaklah memberi amaran bahawa tindakan serius akan 

          diambil termasuk pemecatan jika pekerja atas tindakannya sendiri 

          gagal membaiki dan meningkatkan prestasinya.

4.   Membuktikan Pekerja Gagal Meningkatkan Prestasi

      Majikan hendaklah membuktikan bahawa walaupun setelah memberikan 

      latihan, tunjuk ajar, dorongan dan sokongan yang munasabah, pekerja 

      atas tindakannya sendiri telah gagal membaiki dan meningkatkan 

      prestasinya.


Penting !!

Komunikasi yang mencukupi diperlukan untuk melepaskan majikan dari beban dan mengalihkan beban kepada pekerja sebelum majikan boleh membuktikan tindakan memecat pekerja atas alasan prestasi lemah adalah munasabah.

In TWU v Toong Foong – I/C Award 103/77 the court stated :
‘Dismissed workers should ask “have I given unsatisfactory service or have I caused a problem to my employer that merits my dismissal or termination? If he can sincerely and honestly answer “no” to these questions, then the court will always sympathise with him and will extend its fullest sympathy to him, but if he for one moment hesitates to answer ‘no’ to either question then I would advise him to stay away from this court and not waste his time and everybody’s time.’

Conversely an employer who is not able to prove poor performance on the part of the employee cannot expect the sympathy of the court.

In Smith and Wood Industrial Law (page 302) states :

“In the realm of dismissal for incapability, it is important the employee whose work is causing dissatisfaction should be treated fairly. The question for the tribunal is whether the employer has satisfied them that he genuinely believed on reasonable grounds that the employee was incapable. The requirement of reasonable grounds means that the employer should make a proper and full investigation into the facts of the case;…… whether the employee was given proper training for the job, adequate supervision and, where appropriate, proper support from the employer.

Also it is well established that this area is amenable to the application of a warning procedure, though the emphasis may be different from that in misconduct cases for here the constructive side of a warning may be more important, not only pointing out the employer’s ground for complaint but also instructing the employee how to improve and giving him reasonable time in which to do so. The importance of a fair procedure in this area should not be underestimated, and lack of it leads to inadequate investigation by the employer that can make the dismissal of an incompetent employee unfair.

The rationale underlying the requirements of a due inquiry in the case dismissal for misconduct ought to apply equally to the procedure to be taken by employers in the dismissal of an employee for incapability.”


Awas !!


Kenaikan Gaji dan Pemberian Bonus
Adalah menjadi beban kepada majikan untuk membuktikan prestasi lemah seorang pekerja yang telah menerima kenaikan gaji atau bonus setaraf dengan pekerja lain.


Pujian dan Penghargaan
Pekerja boleh menggunakan apa-apa pujian atau penghargaan sebagai bukti kepada prestasi baiknya.