Aussie Rules

Phil Dobbie talks to Karen Curtis, Australia’s Privacy Commissioner, about how people are less likely to do business with a company that handles their personal information in an unsatisfactory way.

Now, with the 2008 Australian Privacy Awards, companies or divisions have an opportunity to showcase the good work they are doing in the realm of privacy protection.

Click on “Play” above to hear the podcast.

Add your thoughts and comments by clicking “Participate” at the bottom of this post.

Thank you to all those who entered the BNET Australia “Words of Bizdom” competition. We received a large number of interesting and insightful examples of useful managerial advice. Winners of the competition include:

Major winner

• D. Gee from NSW took away top prize with this entry: ” Don’t assume that you always know the answer, but always trust that you know the person who does.”

Runners-up

• N. Stratford, SA
• J. Carey, NSW
• T. Mitchell, VIC

Here are a few more of the submissions we received — please feel free to add your own advice or leave a comment.

• “When recruiting staff or building team, there is no substitute for experience and intelligence - qualifications are secondary.”
• “When listening, really be involved in hearing all that is said, the little words are as important as the grand explanation of concepts. Pay heed to the lowest employee of any business, always say thank you, and never take your own publicity as factual.”
• “There is always a choice about the way you do your work, even if there is not a choice about the work itself.”
• “The only certainty about a 5-year plan is that it will be dramatically wrong in 5 years.”

Thank you again to all those that entered the “Words of Bizdom” competition.

For a strong retail advertisement you need to distil your offer to a single message that promises something for the customer.

Phil Dobbie talks to Bruce Potter, Creative Director at Streetwise Advertising (part of the AdCorp group) about these and other elements that make a successful ad. Bruce suggests that simplicity and brevity is the key to successful advertising designed, as he puts it, to appeal to people with the attention span of gnats.

Click on “Play” above to hear the podcast.

Add your thoughts and comments by clicking “Participate” at the bottom of this post.

Online crime continues to rise, presenting problems for consumers and businesses alike.

In this edition of BTalk Australia Phil Dobbie talks to James Turner from IBRS about phishing, credit card fraud and other online scams. What else is worrying IT managers? James says hanging on to good staff is increasingly becoming an issue. Many IT staff are taking a seachange — they’ve gone fishing!

Click on “Play” above to hear the podcast.

Add your thoughts and comments by clicking “Participate” at the bottom of this post.

Some people are never happy — more work and income than they can poke a stick at and still they grumble and complain. Others scrape to make a living, yet whistle away and smile all the time.

How does that work?

Well, it’s either something they put in the tea or only one group gets the whole “satisfaction and fulfillment” thing.

Here’s the scoop:

We all have a means of adjusting our own level of satisfaction, but in order to do so we first have to understand what makes us tick (aka: whistle and smile).

What follows is a short series of questions that can help tease out your present level of satisfaction and fulfillment and importantly highlight any areas that need work.

Ok, here we go.

Instructions: Please read the following statements and give yourself a 1-5 rating on how your current status aligns with what’s said, where 1 means “Fat chance” and 5 is “Yup, that’s me!” Either add the numbers in your head as you go along or if you don’t do that kind of thing any more, jot them down in your Blackberry and email them to your Virtual Assistant for calculation and extrapolation.

1. “My work is varied and interesting and causes me to stretch and grow.”
2. “I am financially rewarded to an acceptable level as a consequence of my work. I am not underpaid, nor do I undercharge.”
3. “I feel connected to the world and am in sufficient contact with like-minded individuals.”
4. “My life is in balance. I spend quality time with my friends, colleagues and family.”
5. “In front of me I see an exciting and challenging future.”

So, out of a possible total of 25, how did you do?

In the style of those annoying trash mag tests, here’s my assessment:

• 20-25 — Well done! You’re doing well. Take yourself out for lunch.
• 15-19 — Pretty damn good. Pay attention to your weakest areas though. Eat in.
• 10-14 — Something needs to change. Time to get some plans in place.
• Below 10 — As above, but with more urgency. Give yourself priority.

I do hope you found this little exercise of value. Regularly asking these questions of yourself (and acting on the results), really can make the difference between loving your work and hating it.

So which is it to be? (Here’s some follow-up reading.)

Prices should be set at what customers are willing to pay based on the benefits your products or services provide. This “value-based” approach to pricing will produce higher profits than the old-fashioned cost-plus approach.

That’s the view of Ron Wood of Pricing Insight who talks to Phil Dobbie about getting your price right. He explains how you can arrive at the optimum price through “voice of customer” research, understanding the elasticity of your product category and by learning from your competitors’ price experimentation.

Click on “Play” above to hear the podcast.

Add your thoughts and comments by clicking “Participate” at the bottom of this post.

For your business to be successful in Asia you need to have a strong understanding of the local culture in your chosen market. For example, respecting the sense of hierarchy that is prevelant in most Asian societies and toning down that Aussie directness can help immensely.

Phil Dobbie talks to Paul Tolton, who has worked in Southeast Asia for many years. He is now based in Singapore as a trainer for The Maura Fay Group.

Click on “Play” above to hear the podcast.

Add your thoughts and comments by clicking “Participate” at the bottom of this post.

You might also want to check out this BNET video on outsourcing to China.

What is brand and how important is it? Dr Stephen Downes, a lecturer at RMIT University in Melbourne, describes brand as a series of associations that determine how customers think about your company and the services you offer. Today on BTalk Australia Phil Dobbie asks if brand is important even in small businesses offering B2B services. Do companies sometimes see their brand differently to how their customers see it? And what about the proposed merger between Westpac and St George — can the St George brand survive?

Click on “Play” above to hear the podcast.

Add your thoughts and comments by clicking “Participate” at the bottom of this post.

The Federal Government recently released its 10 National Employment Standards (”NES”) — a new “simpler” statutory safety net aimed at “protecting fair minimum wages and conditions for all working Australians”. Although the standards will apply from 1 January, 2010, it is important for employers to just how they might affect their obligations to employees.

The new safety net is made up of 10 standards covering:

1. Maximum weekly hours of work
2. Requests for flexible working arrangements
3. Parental leave and related entitlements
4. Annual leave
5. Personal/carer’s leave and compassionate leave
6. Community service leave
7. Long service leave
8. Public holidays
9. Notice of termination and redundancy pay
10. Fair Work Information Statement

The 10 NES will enshrine a number of additional entitlements for employees that did not previously form part of the industrial safety net under WorkChoices.

FOr example, employees (with a qualifying period of at least 12 months) will have the right to request a change in their working arrangements to assist them in caring for a child under their responsibility. Although employers will have the opportunity to refuse the request on “reasonable business grounds”, in most cases employers will need to accommodate their employees’ family responsibilities when requested to do so. This could potentially affect the current 9-to-5 full-time working arrangements that most businesses operate under.

Employees will also have the right to be absent from work for jury service, voluntary emergency management services or other prescribed activities. Employers will be required to pay full-time employees up to 10 days’ pay for attending jury service. Employees will also have the right to be absent from work on public holidays, unless the employer’s request for them to work is reasonable.

Employers will be required to honour long service leave provisions reflected in awards and other industrial instruments. There will also be a legislated minimum scale of redundancy payments which an employer must pay in the event that the employee’s employment is terminated because the employer no longer requires the job to be done or because the employer is insolvent.

While the penalties for failing to abide by these standards are still unclear, it is clear that businesses will need to start factoring the NES into future planning.

The rate of Australian small businesses involved in exports is starting to outstrip the US, although our geographic remoteness still places us a long way behind European nations. So what do successful export businesses have in common? What can prospective exporters learn from their experiences? And what could the government be doing to help?

Today Phil Dobbie talks to Peter Leisch, a professor of International Business at the University of Queensland. Peter has produced a report “Born To Be Global” for the Australian Business Foundation. It provides some useful insights to companies wanting to expand overseas.

Click on “Play” above to hear the podcast.

Add your thoughts and comments by clicking “Participate” at the bottom of this post.