Knowledge

This week I attended the SRO technology board meeting in Brisbane. It was great. It was eye opening and confirmed a hunch I have for SMEs: There are opportunities in niches. 

Over the last 2 months I have published 2 articles in our “Demystifying the Sales Process” series. The Series unpacks the key steps that a business owner needs to take in order to take their business to market. 

It is essential that people and businesses fully understand what they are committing to before putting pen to paper and signing a lease. If you are an individual or business that is looking to sign a lease, here are some things you should look out for before signing:

What is a Heads of Agreement?

 It can be temping for founders to run their own expenses through the business they founded, they may think this is their company and as such their assets they are deploying. Unfortunately, this is not the case when it comes to a Proprietary Limited company, where the company exists separate to it’s founder. This raises issues that the founder then has to deal with, which can lead to unintended tax issues, for the company and the individual.

Generally part-time workers are assumed by most Awards and the Fair Work Act 2009 and Fair Work Regulation 2009 to be working on fixed days every week, however we know that, particularly since the onslaught of COVID‑19 and in the increased movement of employers to make flexible arrangements with their employees in some industries that there are roles where permanent part-time employees have the flexibility to choose their own working days every week.  It may not be a true permanent part time arrangement under the law but employers are certainly paying leave entitlements out to these employees and treating them as permanent staff members.

Corporate Trust:

Over the next few months we will be demystifying the sales process and taking you through, in our mind, the key steps that a business owner needs to take in order to take their business to market. 

Often times businesses that are rapidly growing (and fundraising) run into a key issue – they take on too many shareholders to remain a private company and breach (or will soon breach) the 50 shareholder (non-employee) limit.

It will come as no surprise to anyone who is somewhat technologically literate, that as technology advances, the concerns about privacy also increase. A valid concern considering the difference in speed at which technology and the law move. Overseas, facial recognition technology is used by government to create a social credit system for citizens, where their every move affects their standing in society, made possible only through this technological advance. In Australia, the concerns over a citizen’s privacy mean that all must tread carefully when obtaining and using a person’s private information, but this concern has not stopped businesses in using this technology. As citizens, we hope that the benefits to the bottom line do not invade our privacy to the extent seen overseas, but recent investigations and complaints made against a number of corporations indicate that perhaps this technology, is more far extensively used here than expected. But is it legal at the end of the day for these businesses to be using facial recognition technology?