2015’s Top 8 Social Media Fails

Social media. It’s all fun and games until someone comes along with a fantastically inventive hashtag that gets taken over and suddenly turns into a pile of pants. Every year there are hash tag disasters and 2015 was no different. So here, in no particular order are the Top 10 social media fails for 2015. #NameAHorseRace William Hill, the owner of Tom Waterhouse and SportingBet attempted to get into the Easter Monday Race spirit by starting the hashtag called #NameAHorseRace. While the Melbourne Cup is seen by many as a day of glamour, gambling and fun, the fact that horse racing...

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Corporate Tax Transparency: ATO releases tax data on 1500 large corporations

Just days after Treasurer Scott Morrison took the axe to welfare, family day care, health, and aged care services the Commissioner of Taxation Chris Jordan AO published the tax details of 1500 large corporate taxpayers. The report forms part of a much wider domestic and global push for improved corporate transparency. The published report is an entity by entity listing of public and foreign owned corporate entities reporting total income of $100 million or more in 2013-14. With ASX data showing more than 20 per cent of companies make an accounting loss in any given year, no tax paid...

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New Year, New You

As 2015 draws to an end people begin to focus on making the most of the New Year. Changes to lifestyle, budget, career. Everything is fair game when you’re planning to make 2016 the best year of your life ever. Come January 1st, as we emerge from our New Year’s Eve stupor we set in motion the plans we’ve laid out to increase our productivity and energy for the New Year. Gym membership, done. Quit Smoking, I’m wearing the patches right now. Save money for a holiday, budget on spreadsheet with all the bells and whistles at the ready. And then you return to work, the day to day grind...

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NSW State Government to force local council amalgamations

Media reports on the 18th of December 2015 suggested that NSW Premier The Hon. Mike Baird MP was set to announce the forced amalgamations of a number of councils to create larger municipalities and significantly reduce the number of local governments. Minister for Local Government The Hon. Paul Toole had previous welcomed the number of councils who had lodged their merger preferences ahead of the November 18 deadline. “There is widespread acknowledgement among councils of the need to be Fit for the Future. There is real momentum building up among councils that are talking and agreeing...

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Social Media – the fine line in intent

The Victorian Taxi Association(VTA)’s “failed” social media campaign recently made headlines. News feeds were flooded with reports of how the campaign “backfired” and was an “epic fail”. A news site even went so far as to say that it was the “social media fail of the year”. In the aftermath, the VTA has parted ways with the agency responsible for the campaign, just days after the campaign was launched. The VTA released a statement stating that the “campaign concept and delivery did not match our intention”, but asserted that the organisation wanted to “connect with customers and listen...

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No, you haven’t won the Nigerian Lottery: Fraud, the internet and spam

I can’t count the amount of times I’ve received emails from law firms or bank managers from overseas, intent on stealing a portion of my dead Nigerian relative’s ill-gotten gains. To be fair, I hadn’t realised I was related to so many thieving Nigerians until I got a Hotmail account. Given my ancestry is predominately from an Irish and Scottish background, you can imagine my surprise the first time I came across an email telling me my beloved uncle had died in a car crash and as his only relative I was entitled to his $300 million fortune. Back in the day, email scams were not all...

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December MYEFO brings little Christmas Cheer to Australia’s elderly

The December release of the annual Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook (MYEFO) brought little in the way of Christmas cheer to the nation’s lower income families, elderly and the sick, with billions of dollars cut from the health portfolio. Medicare received a total $650 million cut, health training received a cut of $595 million over four years, with preventative health losing $146 million and cancer treatments receiving a funding cut of $27 million. Totalling over $1.4 billion in savings measures over the four year period, the MYEFO cuts negatively impact some of the country’s most...

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Motivate, Engage and Retain: How to set 2016 off on the right path.

Every year around this time there are reams of articles written about the year in review or how to avoid the mistakes of the past. The world abounds in Top 10 Lists. For me, this time of year isn’t really about introspection, but about focusing on the New Year to come and what we can do to make sure the New Year is bigger, and better, than the current one. Staff engagement and retention is always at the top of most HR managers’ minds. Having to replace staff after an exodus around late January/early February is both time consuming and costly. The idea of seeing the same faces at next...

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