Keeping workplaces COVID and flu safe ensures teams, businesses and industries can continue to move forward. Helping limit the transmission of viruses in the workplace and illness among staff is a key part of this.

There are five key things businesses can do to help reduce the risk this winter:

1. Encourage staff to ensure their COVID-19 and flu vaccinations are up to date, including a booster. Those aged 30 years and over who had their COVID-19 booster more than three months ago are now eligible for an additional winter booster. It is strongly recommended for those aged 50 years or over. With the number of cases expected to rise in the coming weeks, there is no time to wait.
2. Ensure staff stay home if they are sick, even with mild symptoms, and get tested as soon as possible. If they test positive for COVID-19, ensure they remember to inform employers and register their rapid antigen test results with Service NSW to receive the right health information.
3. Have a risk assessment plan in place for positive cases, household, and close contacts. While household contacts do not have to self-isolate, they are still at risk of unknowingly having and transmitting COVID-19. Safe Work Australia has the latest information and checklists to help businesses with return to office plans for both positive cases and close and household contacts.
4. Remind staff it is mandatory to wear a mask when commuting on public transport, taxis and rideshares and in high-risk settings. Masks are strongly recommended in all indoor public areas.
5. Create well-ventilated meeting spaces where possible. Ensure there are well-ventilated, large spaces for meetings or encourage virtual, walking or outdoor meetings, which can help reduce the risk.

The NSW Government has developed a toolkit to help businesses communicate to staff, customers and visitors so everyone knows how they can help keep workplaces COVID-19 and flu safe.

Faster payment times and stronger jobs growth help the Xero Small Business Index reach record high

Australian Index rose to 156 points in June, as payment times decline due to EOFY

Xero, the global small business platform, today released its latest data on the health of Australia’s small business economy during June from the Xero Small Business Index. Based on aggregated and anonymised transactions from hundreds of thousands of small businesses, the Index, developed in collaboration with Accenture, is part of the Xero Small Business Insights program.

Xero’s Small Business Index for Australia rose 29 points to 156 points, the highest result ever recorded. The increase is largely due to a decline in the average time small businesses waited to be paid, which fell 3.5 days to 20.1 days. The big fall is likely off the back of the end of the financial year, and echoes a similar shift that New Zealand and the United Kingdom saw in March. For the other metrics, wages and sales recorded a slowdown and jobs delivered the best result since November 2021.

Joseph Lyons, Managing Director Australia and Asia, Xero, said: “The time it takes for small businesses to get paid can massively impact cash flow, so it’s encouraging to see a drop in payment times. Although this is a seasonal impact, there is still reason to be cautiously optimistic – after all, healthier cash flow equals stronger small business performance. Despite inflation impacting Australian household spending, sales growth has continued at a double-digit pace.”

Sales holding up better in Australia than in New Zealand and the United Kingdom

Despite customers facing cost of living pressures, sales have held up, rising a healthy 10.6 percent year-on-year (y/y). All industries recorded positive sales growth, led by administrative services at +15.9 percent y/y. This is a nominal measure of sales and includes both price and volume impacts. When prices are taken into account, using the June quarter Consumer Price Index, the volume of sales rose a smaller 4.5 percent y/y. But this shows that small businesses still sold more goods and services in June 2022, compared to the same period in 2021.

This is a much better result than the experience of small businesses in the United Kingdom and New Zealand, where sales actually declined in the year to June once the impact of price rises were removed.

“The sales results show that Australian small businesses are continuing to sell more goods and services than they did a year ago, despite customers facing cost of living pressures,”said Louise Southall, Economist, Xero. “It’s a testament to how our small business economy has continued to show resilience through the current inflation crisis.”

Strongest jobs result in 2022

June recorded the strongest jobs result for 2022, increasing 2.0 percent y/y, following a 0.2 percent y/y rise in May. Leading these results were administrative services (+6.9% y/y) and professional services (+4.4% y/y), echoing previous months where industries that facilitate working from home have been better able to grow jobs. Continuing recent trends, education and training (-1.9% y/y), wholesale trade (-0.5% y/y) and agriculture (-0.2% y/y) were the three industries still recording declining jobs.

“The jobs result is hugely positive, and fantastic to see a rebuilding in recent months after a soft start to 2022,” said Southall. 

The end of financial year improves time to be paid

The average time small businesses waited to be paid fell by 3.5 days in June to 20.1 days. There  was also a 2.2 day decline in late payments to 4.7 days – which is a record low for this series which began in January 2017. These improvements, while welcome, are most likely due to the end of the financial year and could be revised up in future months. For example, in June 2021 the initial report was for a 2.9 day decline to 20.1 days but this reading has since been revised up to be 22.4 days.

To download the full June results, including industry and regional breakdowns, go to the website here. To find out more about how the Xero Small Business Index is constructed, see the methodology.

CHARTERED ACCOUNTANT TIPS FOR BUSINESS AS ECONOMIC WARNING BELLS SOUND

With the Treasurer sounding alarm bells, business owners are once again reviewing their business plans and balance sheets whilst still managing hits from the pandemic and rampant inflation.

Chartered Accountants are helping businesses navigate this challenging economic period and prepare for what is likely to be a prolonged period of tough economic headwinds.

“It’s an incredibly difficult time for business owners, and given the state of the economy described today, it’s unlikely there’s any new direct assistance on the way from government,” said Simon Grant, Group Executive Advocacy, Professional Standing and International Development at Chartered Accountants Australia and New Zealand.

“That’s why Chartered Accountants are working closely with their clients across the country to support them in getting in the best possible shape to meet what are going to be extended tough operating conditions.”

Chartered Accountants offered the following tips for business to help clients deal with difficult fiscal conditions:

Get the information you need to take a risk: One of the biggest barriers to growing a business is uncertainty – and it’s important not to be trapped in the headlights of negative sentiment. Businesses should work with well-informed decision-makers who can help them take action – and understand that they will continue to need to take risks, with the right advice, to keep moving towards their goals.

Look for efficiencies: Tough economic times demand that businesses take a good long look at how they do things to see if there are productivity savings to be achieved. Experts estimate that about 75% of possible productivity gains can be achieved by simply adopting existing best practice processes.

Reduce expenses: With so many businesses failing because of cash flow problems, there are some simple ways to cut down costs. Hold virtual meetings to save time and travel costs; use free or cost-effective digital payment services; look for alternatives to paid advertising, such as social media; go paperless; get rid of landline phones and faxes; look to make savings on insurance; improve time management and consider whether you need office space with the rise of virtual workplaces, or virtual and flexible workforce solutions while talent shortages continue.

Make the most of what you’ve got: Encourage clients to make sure their business is making the most of the resources it already has – including investing in employees and maintaining a sharp customer focus. Clients should also audit their business assets and ensure they are extracting maximum value from their investments – this is not the time to leave anything in the tank.

Grow your market: Look for opportunities to grow your market share and innovate, particularly as cash-strapped rivals hit the wall. There will be gaps in the market as times get tougher and tougher, and you must be alert and ready to move in to fill any voids which emerge.

 RingCentral, Inc. a leading provider of global enterprise cloud communications, video meetings, collaboration, and contact centre solutions, announced an expansion of its hardware ecosystem and new feature enhancements for RingCentral Rooms™. With return to office becoming a focus for many organisations, 76% of respondents in a recent US survey¹ reported that technological improvements and upgrades to conference rooms is a key priority.

RingCentral Rooms enables organisations to transform their meeting spaces into dynamically enabled video conferencing destinations. It extends RingCentral Video and allows customers to have the same great video experience in a conference room that they already have in a home office or on the go. Now customers can select among several new hardware partners to enhance their conference rooms with high-quality, intelligent audio and video, and whiteboard – allowing room participants to better collaborate and be better seen and heard.

“RingCentral Video has been great for maintaining that sense of team, especially during the lockdowns when we were all remote. And now that some of us are coming back into the office, having RingCentral Rooms is also great to make everyone’s conference room experience consistent and ensure we can always include anyone, anywhere, in our meeting,” said Justin Collins, IT manager at Credit Human Federal Credit Union.

New RingCentral Rooms Hardware Partners 

As old conference rooms undergo improvement, IT decision makers are turning to technology providers for the most advanced rooms solutions that allow workers to collaborate efficiently. To meet these needs, RingCentral is partnering with three added hardware vendors.

Avocor: RingCentral is partnering with Avocor, a leading global provider of touch-enabled interactive displays, to unveil new innovations for RingCentral Rooms. Through this partnership, the company is bringing RingCentral Rooms For Touch™ to market, which allows customers to join and end meetings with the touch of a finger. Customers can harness new capabilities through a new series of Avocor Collab Touch hardware displays with RingCentral Rooms for Touch software, including digital whiteboarding and on-screen annotation. RingCentral Rooms for Touch will be compatible with Whiteboard, a virtual collaborative canvas now available to customers in beta.

EPOS: A premium audio brand, EPOS, recently announced a new line of meeting room solutions using EPOS BrainAdapt™, a group of technologies that are designed to support the brain’s natural way of processing sound. It enables users to easily adapt to a hybrid meeting sound environment and reduce cognitive load through a video bar device. With support for RingCentral Rooms on EPOS Expand Vision 5, customers can leverage the premium audio of EPOS and the latest collaboration features for meeting rooms to deliver a great experience for customers. (RingCentral Rooms software is scheduled to be certified with EPOS Expand Vision 5 video bar by Q4.)

Jabra: By partnering with a leader in personal sound and office solutions, RingCentral Rooms is able to harness Jabra’s advanced onboard AI to deliver an intelligent feature set that takes users’ video experience to the next level. Jabra’s PanaCast 50 intelligent video bar is certified for RingCentral Rooms. PanaCast 50 can automatically detect who’s speaking and intelligently adjust the picture to focus on them, delivering a better meeting experience that puts the most important content front and centre.

“Strong relationships with strategic hardware partners are important as we strive to address the complex challenges around fostering collaboration in modern hybrid work environments. We are excited to work with innovative partners like Avocor, EPOS and Jabra,” said Kira Makagon, chief innovation officer at RingCentral. “When paired with our partners’ advanced hardware offerings, RingCentral Rooms can unlock the full potential of today’s hybrid workforce and enable equitable collaboration for workers wherever they are.”

In addition to these new partners, RingCentral continues to innovate through long-standing Rooms partnerships with hardware solution providers Logitech, Poly and Yealink, giving users a wide range of RingCentral Rooms-enabled, all-in-one video conferencing solutions.

A Plethora of Rich and Intuitive RingCentral Rooms Features

In addition to partnerships, RingCentral has also announced key new feature enhancements for RingCentral Rooms that will enable interactive experiences for customers in hybrid work environments. These features include:

●      Whiteboard for RingCentral Rooms: Whiteboard for RingCentral Rooms allows users to co-create and collaborate with other participants regardless of whether they are in a room or home office. It’s easy to annotate and organise ideas with digital sticky notes and shapes using the whiteboard’s immersive, near-infinite canvas.

●      Proximity sharing mobile: Sharing content from a user’s mobile device amongst meeting participants in a room is now made possible with the new proximity sharing mobile feature.

●      Share and View room camera full screen: Just like screen sharing, this feature further elevates the collaboration experience by sharing the meeting room camera full screen to enable remote participants to get closer views of what’s happening in a room.

●      E2EE Rooms support: RingCentral Rooms supports end-to-end encryption, which means data is encrypted for its entire journey between endpoints, and no one other than meeting participants has access to that information.

●      Closed Captioning: With closed captioning, users can enable on-screen captions. This gives better engagement for those who need extra language assistance, are hearing impaired, or simply want to be able to follow along and read what’s being said in the room’s environment.

●      HDMI share: With the new HDMI share, it’s easy to share presentations or content from a user’s laptop into the meeting room. Simply plug the RingCentral Rooms HDMI into any laptop to instantly share screens with all meeting participants.

●      Rooms activation code: Instead of using admin credentials to register each new conference room with a Rooms licence, it’s just a matter of hitting a few buttons. Admins can provide an activation code for each room and turn on Rooms remotely, easing the burden on IT.

“As businesses adapt to the hybrid work model, one thing is clear – investments in office meeting spaces will continue to grow,” said Roopam Jain, VP of Research at Frost & Sullivan’s Connected Work Practice. “RingCentral’s new features, including Whiteboard, are designed to enhance team creativity and inclusivity with the goal of narrowing the effectiveness gaps found in most hybrid collaboration environments and better connect today’s dispersed workforce.”

For more information about RingCentral’s hardware partners and its Rooms-enabled solutions, visit .

MobileMuster, the telecommunications industry’s flagship product stewardship program, has announced hardware manufacturer TP-Link as the latest business to join the expanding program, which collects and recycles a broad range of end-of-life telecommunications e-waste products.

The new membership will see TP-Link, a global provider of reliable networking devices and accessories, including wireless routers and adapters, join existing MobileMuster members who are playing an active role in addressing the growing electronic waste issue.

Run by the Australian Mobile Telecommunications Association (AMTA), MobileMuster in July announced the expansion of its product stewardship scheme beyond mobile phones to now include three new, growing e-waste product streams, including network connectivity, smart home technology, and wearables and peripherals.

Spyro Kalos, Head of MobileMuster, said with Australia currently ranked fifth in the world for the generation of electronic waste per capita, the program’s expansion to enable more unwanted devices to be recycled correctly was essential.

“Expanding the scope of products collected and recycled through MobileMuster will further demonstrate how the industry can work together to deliver measurable social and environmental outcomes that benefit the local economy and consumers.

“MobileMuster’s aim is to play a genuine role in creating a more sustainable circular economy through product stewardship. We are delighted to have TP-Link join our other members in demonstrating leadership and action through their commitment to a more sustainable future.

Neville Wang, Managing Director of TP-Link, said, “As our connected lifestyles continue to evolve and consumers seek new and improved devices, TP-Link continues to expand our product offering to anticipate and meet the demands of tomorrow.

“At the same time, we are very conscious of the growing e-waste issue globally and recognise we have a crucial role to play in minimising the impact of those devices on the environment over the long term.

“TP-Link’s business values align well with the sustainable e-waste solution that MobileMuster provides. We encourage more businesses to follow suit and join the program to keep more electronic devices out of landfill.”

MobileMuster is the only voluntary government-accredited electronic product stewardship scheme in Australia and provides a complete e-waste solution to address the environmental, health and safety impacts of telecommunication products across their full life cycle. The program is funded by members, including the major handset manufacturers and network carriers alongside a growing number of other electronic hardware manufacturers.

Have you missed travelling? It seems many have to the point that the length of business trips are longer. New data from leading travel management company Corporate Traveller has revealed that business travellers have more than doubled the length of their trips this year compared with 2019, with the most significant extension being international trips, followed by domestic, then Trans-Tasman.

Corporate Traveller, Flight Centre Travel Group’s flagship travel management provider for SMEs, sourced the findings from its travel booking data from January to May 2022, comparing it to bookings in the year before the pandemic – specifically, January to May 2019.

So far this year, the average domestic business trip has been 3.09 days long, compared with just 1.1 days in 2019, while Trans-Tasman trips have averaged 2.6 days this year, compared with 1.3 in 2019. The lengths of international trips overall have been averaging 8.7 days this year, compared with 3.4 days in 2019.

Tom Walley, Global Managing Director at Corporate Traveller, says there are many reasons behind extended trips this year.

“With most restrictions removed, more businesses are meeting with interstate and international stakeholders face-to-face. After two years of virtual meetings, face-to-face meetings are likely increasing in frequency,” Mr Walley said.

“Executives may also be reuniting with teams for the first time since 2019 and engaging in lengthy operational and strategy meetings in person. Some businesses are also rebuilding again to focus on their growth and conducting longer sales and recruitment-based trips.”

Passenger numbers are bouncing back strongly this year, with Australia’s domestic travel industry headed for a full recovery.

In April, Gold Coast routes, in particular, saw significant numbers: the Canberra-Gold Coast route saw a 193 per cent increase in pre-pandemic levels and flights between the Gold Coast, Melbourne, Adelaide, and Sydney also eclipsed pre-pandemic numbers.

However, while a healthy return of passengers benefits the industry’s recovery, airports and airlines have also faced challenges due to workforce shortages.

“Some businesses have experienced, or maybe anticipating, delays and cancellations and maybe choosing to extend trips to make up for any lost time,” Mr Walley said.

“The school holidays may have also seen delays in airports and on flights. Sydney airport alone expects to see more than two million passengers flying this month, surpassing the volumes seen during the April school holidays.”

Tom adds: “Businesses will likely continue increasing the length of their trips to account for potential delays and other disruptions. International flight capacity has been slower to return than domestic, and I expect business trips will increase by around one to two days further over the next year.

“At Corporate Traveller, we’re seeing significant demand for domestic and international travel from our customers this year.

“This suggests businesses are more eager than ever to take to the skies and will continue organising more lengthy trips to multiple destinations, with the aim to rebuild, increase sales, facilitate acquisitions and partnerships, expand into new markets and recruit and retain talent.”

Airwallex, a leading global fintech platform, has announced the launch of its Airwallex Online Payments App on Shopify. The Online Payments App is a payment gateway plugin that merchants can integrate into their online store to accept payments from their global customers.

This new app is offered through Airwallex’s payment acceptance solution that covers many payment methods. These payment methods include Visa, MasterCard and UnionPay bank cards, and 30+ other local payment methods across the Asia-Pacific and Europe, such as GrabPay in Southeast Asia, WeChat Pay in APAC, and Bancontact and Sofort in Europe.

“We are excited that our online payment acceptance solution will now be available on Shopify, helping merchants create a seamless payment journey on their online store,” said Ravi Adusumilli, SVP of Partnerships at Airwallex. “Our app is one of many offerings we have built to help merchants accept cross-border payments. In this case, by using an Airwallex account, merchants can gain secure access to a multitude of payment methods, both globally and locally, in a convenient, fast and affordable way possible.”

In addition to accepting payments globally, merchants can also receive settlements in 7+ major currencies, including USD, thus avoiding unnecessary currency conversions and related fees. Merchants can also accept payments directly into their Airwallex multi-currency wallets and payout with Borderless Cards or Transfers.

Learn more about the Airwallex Online Payments App.

Airwallex was established in 2015 in Melbourne, our purpose is to connect entrepreneurs, business builders, makers and creators with opportunities in every corner of the world. Today, it has a global footprint across Asia-Pacific, Europe, and North America. 

When it comes to data, everything is growing – quantity, size, format, resolution, use cases, applications, value and more. As people and businesses look for solutions to effectively and efficiently store their data in the zettabyte era, Western Digital HDDs continue to play a critical role in delivering massive capacity, performance and reliability.

Western Digital has announced that it is now shipping new 22TB HDDs targeting three key segments: WD Gold™ HDDs for IT/data centre channel customers; WD Red™ Pro for network attached storage (NAS); and WD Purple™ Pro for smart video/surveillance. As highlighted in its What’s Next Western Digital Event, these new drives are loaded with industry-firsts, including OptiNAND™ technology, energy-assisted PMR (ePMR), triple-stage actuator (TSA) and HelioSeal® to deliver the industry’s highest areal density at 2.2TB per platter, delivering 22TB CMR HDDs for its customers.

“We are thrilled to reach this milestone as HDDs are complex and sophisticated systems,” said Ravi Pendekanti, senior vice president of product management and marketing, HDD Business Unit at Western Digital. “From the cloud to the edge, Western Digital’s hard drives play a vital role in storing, protecting, capturing and analysing data that’s shaping nearly every aspect of our digital lives. Our technology leadership and expanded portfolio of industry-leading HDDs provide us with a tremendous opportunity to deliver value to our customers today and well into the future.”

Western Digital Gold Enterprise-Class HDDs for Data Centre Storage Systems

Cloud and enterprise data centre architects continue to squeeze every drop of investment out of their IT infrastructure. The economics of storing every bit matters, and factors like capacity, density, energy use, sustainability and more all play a critical role in helping to reduce total cost of ownership (TCO). Moving to the industry’s highest available CMR HDD capacity can help. Western Digital’s new enterprise-class, 22TB WD Gold™ CMR HDD with OptiNAND technology gives users the ability to lower TCO by increasing storage in the same footprint or by reducing racks, which can help reduce costs such as adding more racks, network, power, cooling, cabling, etc. Unique to Western Digital is its OptiNAND-enabled ArmorCache™ technology that combines the performance of write cache enabled mode with the data protection of write cache disabled mode without having to compromise by choosing between the two. With a full portfolio of solutions ranging from 1TB-22TB¹, these highly reliable WD Gold HDDs are ideal for demanding storage environments, providing up to 2.5M hours MTBF ², vibration protection technology and a low power draw thanks to HelioSeal technology (for 12TB and above).

WD Red Pro HDDs Support All Major NAS Systems with Up to 24 Bays

Work from home has accelerated and many small office/home office (SOHO) workers and SMBs are struggling to keep up with rapidly growing amounts of data. The new 22TB WD Red™ Pro CMR HDD with OptiNAND technology is ideal for those who have high-capacity storage needs, or for those who have reached the maximum capacity on their existing network-attached storage (NAS) system. Engineered specifically for NAS systems with up to 24 bays, WD Red Pro HDDs are optimised for multi-user environments and are designed to handle high-intensity workloads in 24×7 environments. WD Red Pro HDDs are ideal for storing, protecting, archiving, and sharing massive amounts of data with many users and can handle multiple data-hungry applications such as file sync and sharing, backup/archive, multimedia repository, and private cloud storage. The WD Red Pro family comes in capacities ranging from 2TB to 22TB¹.

WD Purple Pro HDDs for Advanced AI-Enabled, Always-on Smart Video Recorders, Appliances and Servers

Smart video surveillance is on the rise, bringing increased storage requirements along with it. For example, high-resolution cameras are capturing multiple video, picture and metadata streams per camera; AI and video analytics are placing new demands on the quantity, quality and retention of video data; and deep-learning solutions need more video to train AI algorithms, all while video-surveillance-as-a-service (VSaaS) customers are needing purpose-built storage to efficiently manage this data at scale. The 22TB WD Purple Pro CMR HDD with OptiNAND technology delivers a big capacity to address these trends in a purpose-built enterprise-class drive supporting video analytics servers and AI and deep-learning systems. The drive features Western Digital’s exclusive AllFrame™ AI technology that supports 32 AI streams for deep-learning analytics within the system while helping to reduce dropped frames. WD Purple Pro drives are optimised to handle up to 64 single-stream HD cameras3 and many of the latest smart cameras that transmit multiple streams. It offers high reliability with an MTBF of up to 2.5 million hours for advanced smart video solutions that operate in 24/7 environments. The WD Purple Pro HDD family now comes in 8TB-22TB capacities¹.

Western Digital’s industry-leading Ultrastar 22TB CMR HDDs and 26TB UltraSMR HDDs began shipping to select hyperscale cloud customers in June.