How to make work meetings actually productive

By: Cesilia Faustina

For all the employees out there, I’m sure we can agree that meetings are not the most fun activity there is. A lot of the time, meetings end up mundane and essentially a waste of one’s time; not saying that all meetings are a waste of time, but many employers tend to depend on meetings too much with very little results.

Sometimes, employers need to take a step back and ask the question, “is it worth it?” Meetings have become the culture in corporate spaces now, but many tend to forget that sometimes, some things don’t require meetings. Now, I’m not saying we should get rid of meetings altogether, as I know that meetings are needed and can be quite useful when applicable, but employers definitely need to review their meeting usage, especially during the era of COVID-19 and working-from-home.

Save Earth for a better future

By: Rinad Hammoud

Have you ever asked yourself how are we over-consuming natural resources or why it is important to protect our home planet?

Earth is our home, it is what we need to survive, thrive, and develop. Earth’s nature provides us with all the essential factors that we need to be alive, including water, land, forests, oil, rocks, soils, fuels, animals, minerals, air, and others.

Tapping into the supply of Earth’s natural resources (renewable and non-renewable resources) is the basis of our life; we use all these resources to support our every day activities by producing food, buildings, energy, goods, vehicles, plastic, and other life necessities.

Education in the time of Corona: What lessons can we learn?

By: Omar Abdul-Hafiz

If you had the impression that the title of this article faintly resonates with that of the famous Gabriel García Márquez novel “Love in the Time of Cholera”, then you are correct. After all, the dramatic impact that the coronavirus pandemic had brought on the world in virtually all facets of life is nothing short of a drama itself.

But one particular aspect that was especially affected by the coronavirus pandemic is education. According to UNESCO estimates, as of March 2020, over 90 percent of the world’s students were already forced to stay home. And that was only two months after coronavirus had spread in China. So, what does this all mean for the future of education as we know it?

The top 5 in-demand soft and hard skills in the market today

By: Omar Abdul-Hafiz

In the wake of the global coronavirus ordeal, the job market has witnessed some dramatic changes. For one thing, there is an ongoing debate about whether working from home will continue to be relevant after the pandemic. This, in turn, raises the question: what skills are most relevant for staying competitive in today’s turbulent job market?

In this article, I have compiled a list of 10 skills (soft and hard) that are highly demanded by employers today. And while I agree that there many more skills to consider, the ones mentioned here should hopefully give you an idea of what employers are looking for nowadays.

Can technology really help with student affairs?

By: Cesilia Faustina

All this talk about technology is getting more real than ever. With a pandemic in our midst, everybody is now keen to give technological solutions a chance. As one of the best options we have right now, many sectors are now implementing tech options when it comes to operations, one of which includes the education sector.

Once back-to-school becomes a thing again, many people are wondering how exactly the learning process will be like? We can only expect the help of technology and a blended learning appeal to be adopted, but one question remains, which is how effective will it be for the students?

How blended learning will change our education system

By: Cesilia Faustina

Since the start of coronavirus and with a pandemic in our midst, we have constantly been becoming more aware of the presence of online learning and the use of technology to practice social distancing. As more schools are conducting online classes, educational institutions are depending on these types of methods to help them get through times of uncertainty.

Now, with people trying to adopt the new normal, many schools and other education institutes are gathering methods to ready their students for the year or semesters. There has been constant talk about adopting a blended learning style in dealing with the new normal, so will this be it? Are we forced to live in a world where blended learning is the new normal?

What can HRM systems do for educational institutions?

By: Omar Abdul-Hafiz

In the education sector, much like in every other sector, the importance of maintaining a competent and well-qualified workforce cannot be emphasized enough. And to achieve this, it’s essential to provide your HR personnel with a powerful and comprehensive system to help them manage all these responsibilities to the best of their ability.

In this article, we are going to shed some light on the main merits a good Human Resources Management System (HRMS) can bring to your school or educational facility.

Hiring & recruitment

Hiring highly qualified academic staff can be a daunting task especially in big institutions, but it doesn’t have to be that way.

How not to hate your job

By Cesilia Faustina

The everyday nine-to-five job is a blessing and a curse. Let us be honest, as happy as we are to get a job, employment also comes with hours of agony and complaints. Plenty of jobs, from office ones to retail and hospitality can come with mental health challenges, but it does not mean we should just drop it right away. It’s very common for us to experience immense pressures from the workplace, so much so we may end up with a lot of stress and mental health problems, and hey, this is normal, we are all humans after all.

As humans, we live in a society where we need to make a living to survive and nine-to-five work hours is almost a must. Yes, it does seem like we are stuck in a never-ending loop of routines and boredom, but before you go setting buildings on fire, what if I told you there are ways to make the mundane job cycle a little bit more interesting?

How to improve your patient experience by having everything digitalized & connected!

By Lana Bawaneh

Many, if not all of us, have experienced the hassles of going to hospitals or medical centres. The healthcare sector is one of the most complicated sectors because it has a lot of departments or entities that are related to each other; when describing the healthcare sector, we are talking about a hospital, medical centre, clinic, polyclinic, pharmacy, lab, radiology, or it could be a combination of some or all of them.

It is very important to develop software applications or systems that support healthcare services to provide the best medical treatment. The problem here is that some of the medical institutions have one or few of their entities switched to digital processes, while the other entities are still handling their processes manually.

The impacts of medical coding on healthcare systems

By Cesilia Faustina

Medical coding is a crucial part of the healthcare billing system. It works to ensure that the whole billing process is accurate, and reimbursements are taken care of.

Thanks to the handy tool that is medical coding, hospitals and other healthcare institutions can easily exchange data and accurately create insurance claims and bills for patients. In fact, medical codes are extremely needed in order to successfully provide the right services.

It starts with taking a description of the disease, injury, etc. and then transforming them into numeric or alphanumeric codes to accurately describe the diagnosis. So, these symbols are very important to uphold, especially when it comes to digitalization.

5 factors encouraging pharmacies to utilize pharmacy information systems

By Omar Abdul-Hafiz

Generally speaking, Healthcare Information Systems have brought numerous benefits to the healthcare sector. From streamlined data analytics to cost control, these systems turn all the operations that were once manual and time-consuming into automated and fully organized hassle-free procedures.

But more specifically, let us talk a little about Pharmacy Information Systems. According to experts, Pharmacy Information Systems (PIS) have been highly effective in facilitating pharmacists’ tasks in managing the medication process.