Kirk Smith, assistant professor of human resources and leadership at Western Carolina University, will deliver a keynote address Thursday, April 11, for the HR Metrics and Indicators Special Forum to be held in Brazil.

Smith will present via video conference “How Performance Metrics and Indicators of Human Capital May Contribute to Improving Organizational Quality, Innovation and Productivity.” Participants will be encouraged to identify the leading and lagging human capital indicators for their organizations and correlate them to the key performance measures at the operational and strategic levels of their organizations.

“Then they can use human capital analytics to predict what could and should happen instead of, or in addition to, describing what has happened,” said Smith.

Merchants pay credit card companies like VISA and MasterCard a processing fee each time a customer uses a credit card. Historically, credit card companies and large banks that issue cards prohibited merchants from passing that cost directly on to customers in the form of an extra fee.

But retailers took the card companies to court and under a settlement agreement, credit card companies can no longer prevent retailers from hitting customers with a surcharge for using a credit card. The added charge is supposed to represent the merchant’s cost to accept the card, and it can be anywhere from 1.5% to 4% of your purchase price, not including the sales tax.

Since January, the employees of Whitley Products Inc., their families and many others in the community have been waiting for some good news about the future of the plant, but most of the hope that once existed has been extinguished since the plant announced that it would be closing by early May.

On Feb. 14, Macon County Board of Commissioners Chairman Kevin Corbin, informed the public at a forum hosted by the League of Women Voters that the commissioners, town officials, and the Economic Development Commission (EDC) had been in negotiations with a company who specializes in domestic production of components for international sales. The optimism was apparent in the update of events surrounding Whitley, but became nonexistent as news broke last week that negotiations had fallen apart and the doors would most likely shut permanently.

Webster Enterprises of Sylva has been notified by the Commission on Accreditation of Rehabilitation Facilities (CARF) that it has received a three-year accreditation by the international organization.

A two-member survey team visited the facility in mid-December and conducted an evaluation comprised of more than 700 standards.

“We were extremely pleased that out of such a large inventory of items to be checked, Webster had only six recommendations which have already been addressed,” said Gene Robinson, executive director.