As a business owner or indeed manager, you are expected to be across every rule and regulation that affects your business. Each rule on its own might seem innocuous enough but piled on top of each other becomes a mountain. And if you get it wrong, you are penalised. What if we demanded the same condition on Government (access to 1 person to provide binding advice for each type of business)? Perhaps that person would be a great advocate for the rest of Government to simplify it all? And really, it shouldn’t be too much to ask for just 1 dedicated public servant contact point when the Federal Government has added 25% more people in just the last 3 years.
There are over 90,000 pages of legislation related to employment conditions alone, plus 122 awards (the highest in the world). And Government can change them at any time but doesn’t have to update employers. Businesses are just expected to know. Newsflash – I haven’t read all the pages, in fact I challenge anyone to put forward any person that has. If you phone a “friend” for help (in this case Fair Work, who state in their annual report that “We helped resolve 18,570 disputes and recovered $358 million from employers” – so it’s pretty clear they take sides), if you get a reply it won’t be in writing, not binding, and if it turns out to be wrong you as the employer will still be penalised, not anyone else. So what areas can Government help in?
Of course for a business to be able to pay anyone, they first have to get revenue, which means getting people willing enough to part with money to pay for the benefit of the product or service you offer. Insufficient revenue, and the business is not sustainable. This is not a requirement for Government departments, as they simply get revenue irrespective of what they deliver. So as they don’t have anyone that sells or sets prices etc, we don’t need Government to take this most important aspect into the areas where we need their help. Closely linked to sales is of course marketing, and again, an area where they can steer clear.
The next big part of running a business is “Operations”. Irrespective of if it’s a Café, Mechanical Workshop, warehousing/logistics, all businesses have some kind of product/service delivery function. The very few times we’ve had any Government “advice” in these areas, it’s basically been that they tell the business what they’ve done wrong “compliance wise”, but don’t provide a workable solution. Their solutions are usually more administrative than practical and productive, adding paper shuffling whilst stifling work flows. So basically businesses are on their own anyway, so do better without their help in this area also.
Then of course there are the “Accounts/Administration” functions. Every business has to make sure money comes in and is reported through the business correctly or it will quickly go broke. Much of the reporting is structured in a way that Government needs it to be done in order to allow them to collect the data (which is actually to make it easy for each department to collect taxes). GST, income tax, payroll tax, property tax, import taxes (just in these areas alone, it shows that business is collecting data/money for the ATO, Office of State Revenue, Council, Import related taxes etc). Overall, about 30% of most businesses’ revenue is collection of taxes for Government – by far the highest cost in any business. When you hear of the rising cost of living, it’s worth reflecting on that Government takes about 10 times more out of every dollar you spend than the average business owner gets to keep. The Public Service as the name indicates should be serving the public (or in this case business), but the role is clearly reversed with business serving Government and paying dearly for it.
Obviously, we all need taxes to pay for services that we all use but can’t effectively provide ourselves (like roads and infrastructure, health care, defence etc). I nearly added in Education into that description, but based on what comes out of the education system nowadays it is to a large extent up to business to teach people and make them work ready, so let’s call that a shared responsibility. Businesses increasingly have to manage people’s social issues also for instance by paying for all kinds of leave (mental health even from issues outside work; leave when a person decides to have a child; union training days; domestic violence leave – none of these were a cost to business only a decade or two ago, but is an expectation for the business to pay for now). As if there wasn’t enough leave in place already, the Reserve Bank just agreed to give all their staff 8 “wellbeing days” per year. This is on top of 10 days sick leave, but the wellbeing days don’t even need any documentary evidence, so is basically an extra 8 days annual leave without the courtesy to the employer of notice that the person will be away. Guess those lost days will be a rounding error anyway, based on that only one third of all public servants front up to the office 5 days a week (and as low as 10% in some departments). And this is from the section of Government that has been highlighting that the most important thing for Australia at present is to improve productivity… But I digress.
There is an expectation that a person conducting a business is fully across everything required to run that business, ALL rules and regulations, as well as find the time to actually run the business and make a profit to pay for it all. It should therefore be fair that a business could call just 1 person in Government to get all required information to run their business and get a correct binding answer.
Maybe I have too high expectations of 1 single contact person for every matter for each business segment (i.e. 1 for café’s; 1 for earth moving contractors etc), so I’d settle for 1 in each section of each segment: Accounts; Human Resources: and all things legal/compliance. We actually don’t need much help, just occasional guidance to ensure we “comply”.
There are 2.7 million businesses in Australia, of which <1 million employ people. There are 2.6 million public servants in Australia. Granted, that includes defence force, teachers, medical etc, of which front line roles are maybe half that figure. I recall a saying: “If you aren’t serving a customer, you’d better be serving someone who is”. With all those people, perhaps both Government and business would benefit from having one person who understands the rules for each type of business, and then that person works to ensure the rest of Government is there to make it so simple for them that (a much smaller) Government can simply answer questions about what they expect business to do? Help, rather than hinder.
Closing out the year, I would like to sincerely thank all our terrific people, suppliers, customers and families. Your support in the past year has been fantastic, and we wish you all a Merry Christmas, a safe holiday period, and a very Happy New Year!
Words from the wise
“Smart people focus on the right things” – Jensen Huang
“Focus on what to do next, not on what went wrong” – good advice from someone.
“The ability to concentrate and to use time well is everything” – Lee Iacocca
“Responsibility equals accountability equals ownership. And a sense of ownership is the most powerful weapon a Team can have” – Pat Summit, but came to the forefront recently when I saw true character in the way a person took responsibility for something that went wrong.
As always, Onwards and Upwards!
Fred Carlsson
General Manager
