Impact of COVID-19 on cybersecurity The global pandemic significantly intensified fraudulent activities as many people become more vulnerable to cyber threats while working remotely. According to the Annual Cyber Threat Report 2020-21 from Australian Cyber Security Centre, there were over 67,500 cyber-attacks reported, an increase of nearly 13 per cent from the previous financial year. During the fiscal year 2020-21, …
We Live in Unsettling Times: Inflation To Affect Wages and Wage Growth
Headline inflation in 1Q22 rose to 5.1% and this is the highest inflation rate since 2001. Yesterday the RBA surprised many punters by raising the interest rates by 0.25%. There is now discussion of increases in wages increases between 3 and 4 percent. At the same time, the central forecast for 2022 is for headline inflation of around 6 …
The Great Resignation Continues, 44% of Australian Workers Are Looking for a New Job
The Great Resignation, also known as the “Big Quit”, continues to be a challenge for Australian businesses in the near future. A recent survey from Elmo Software found that up to one-third of Australian employees believe that they will only stay with their current company for up to 18 months. Some alarming results from the survey: 44% of Australian workers …
Return-To-Office Full Time Is Not Happening Anytime Soon
Close Contact Isolation Rules Currently, all Australian states and territories require close contacts to isolate for seven days from the last time they were in contact with someone with COVID-19. According to the Department of Health, over the past week, there have been an average of almost 40.5K new cases reported each day with 396.3K active cases. Based on an …
Australian CEO’s looking offshore to resolve skills shortages
It was recently reporting that the CEO’s of Australia’s biggest companies are struggling to hire IT specialists, engineers and teachers because of locked borders and skills shortages. At the same time, the 260,000 shortfall in overseas students who have failed to arrive due to locked borders has led to falls in rentals for student accommodation of up to 25 percent …
Blog double trouble for Australian accountants
CPA Australia recently released an article on Australia’s reduction in migration numbers, commenting the effects are likely to last for years to come. For Australian accounting firm owners, there are going to be 3 main impacts: Many Australian businesses are going to struggle with finding Australian based workers, with a likelihood of wages growth going to cut down margins in …
Australia lacks workers
In an interesting opinion article last week, businesses across Australia are battling labour shortages as the economy lifts out of the Covid slowdown. Many of the shortages are easily understandable with the lack of working tourists being unavailable with the cessation of international travel, along with restaurants closing a couple of days each week due to lack of staff partly …
Australian compliance: the flight to quality offshore
For the past decade Australian accountants have been hearing of digital transformation, automation, data scraping and a dozen other terms that were on one hand labour saving, and on the other hand job threatening. For some, it’s been about as interesting as watching paint dry. Even with Covid-19 forcing the shift to at-home work, the resulting innovation has not resulted …
Are you ready to disclose your Australian accounting outsourcing: 1 July 2021 APES305
APES 305 sets the standards in respect of Terms of Engagement for Members in Public Practice in the provision of quality and ethical Professional Services to Clients. In December 2020 a revised APES 305 was released with a mandatory requirement, effective 1 July 2021, to disclose material outsourcing. In section 3.6 Where a Member in Public Practice will utilise Outsourced …
Top 5 reasons why “Outsourced” Remote staff are outperforming local office workers
In a recent Harvard Business Review report the number of people who say they can’t concentrate at their desk has increased by 16% since 2008, and the number of those who don’t have access to quiet places to do focused work is up by 13%. Office space design today seems to come with noises and other distractions that break concentration or inhibit …