Month: May 2019

Since expanding to Australia in 2016, Logical have been keen to give back to the Australian community. The charity mission we have embarked on sees us donate $500 to a charity of our clients choosing every time we raise an invoice through providing services to them. Read more about our charity campaign here.

The charities we’ve supported so far include Grow Mental Health, the Melbourne City Mission and most recently supporting the ReadyTech team in their Oxfam Trailwalker fundraising event, read more about this here.

Some of our clients have been stuck on which charity to select so we’ve taken the liberty of compiling a list of the top 10 Australian Charities we think are well worth a donation.

1. Australian Wildlife Conservancy

We are so lucky to be surrounded by unique wildlife in Australia, and the team at the Australian Wildlife Conservancy are doing their best to protect them all. Their aim is to prevent the extinction of many different Australian species by establishing sanctuaries and effective land management strategies.

2. The Smith Family

The Smith Family is an independent charity supporting disadvantaged children and young people in Australia. According to their research, one in six children are living in poverty, and they’ve made it their mission to break the cycle through education. They receive approximately 60% of their funding through donations, and almost 50% of this money is spent on education programs.

3. Australian Indigenous Mentoring Experience (AIME)

AIME work with Australian Indigenous high school students to help them finish school and continue on to further study, training or employment. They also run a mentoring program based at universities. They want to improve retention rates of Indigenous high school students to Year 12 and post-school to connect Indigenous students to university and employment. AIME highlight that 40% of Indigenous people aged 18-25 are in university, employment or training compared to the non-Indigenous average of 75% for the same cohort.

4. Sisterworks

Sisterworks is an incredible charity that helps women migrants, asylum seekers, and refugees to become financially independent and happily settled in Australia. Based out of Richmond, this non-for-profit currently supports no less than 171 women from 55 countries and provides a workplace, learning centre and sales channel that’s designed to help them overcome significant social and employment problems.

5. Peter Mac Cancer Foundation

Peter MacCallum Cancer Foundation is an Australian public hospital solely dedicated to overcoming cancer. Around 600 laboratory and clinical researchers work at Peter Mac, searching for better ways to detect and prevent cancer in the early stages and treat patients using more effective methods with fewer side effects. When you donate to Peter Mac your funds go directly into the purchase of researcher resources, recruitment of new researchers, clinical trials, and the purchase of new technologies for treatment.

6. Care Australia

As a globally-recognised development organisation, Care Australia provide humanitarian services and promote equal living standards for everyone, regardless of race, religion, or status. Their focus is on moving towards equal rights for women, providing education and access to clean water, and ending world hunger. Their 2017/2018 report indicates that 85% of donations were used directly for program funding.

7. Beyond Blue

Beyond Blue is an Australian independent non-profit organisation working to address issues associated with depression, suicide, anxiety disorders, and other related mental disorders. They work in partnership with health services, schools, workplaces, universities, media, and community organisations, as well as people living with anxiety and depression, their friends and family, to raise community awareness of anxiety and depression and reduce the associated stigma.

8. Forever Friends Animal Rescue

Staffed entirely by volunteers, Forever Friends Animal Rescue (FFAR) saves animals from ‘death row’ and gives them a home, food and endless cuddles. The non-for-profit operates an incredibly generous fostering network of carers, transporters, trainers and behaviourists that help these animals find their forever homes.

9. Autism Spectrum Australia (Aspect)

Aspect are an Australian not-for-profit provider and supplier of services for people on the spectrum. They provide information, intervention, and services to meet the needs of people on the spectrum and their families. Autism lasts a lifetime and affects an estimated 1 in 70 Australians. The word ‘spectrum’ reflects the different challenges that people on the autism spectrum face and the degree to which they may be affected. Aspect wants to provide the best opportunities for people on the autism spectrum.

10. Share The Dignity

Share the Dignity is an Australian women’s charity offering support for homeless women and victims of domestic violence, by collecting and distributing packs of personal hygiene products. They accept product donations, which are first distributed locally, and excess items are then sent out nationally and internationally to women in need.

Starting a new job can be daunting. Never mind when your predecessor did an amazing job and everyone is devastated to see them go. It can leave you wondering; “Will I ever be as good as Stephanie?”

 

Small businesses are a breeding ground for self-made successors like Stephanie. These are the type of people who take a job, make it their own and perform above and beyond what is expected of them. When job responsibilities are fluid within a business, it can result in employees molding their roles to fit their own strengths. It disassociates the person from a specific job title and makes it difficult to define what they do. They themselves become the definition of what they do.

 

This can be great news for the business – they’ve got a superstar employee who is engaged, motivated and willing to go the extra mile. But what happens when Stephanie moves on from this role?

 

Replacing Stephanie is not easy. It will be near impossible to find another Stephanie if that’s all your looking for.

 

Recruiters; don’t overlook candidates who can’t do every single thing that Stephanie could do. Every candidate has unique skills they can bring to the table and you’ll miss these if you’re looking for a clone of Stephanie.

 

Candidates; don’t let Stephanie’s legacy intimidate you! Stop looking at every positive comment made about her as a dig at you. It’s not! Yes, she was great at her job but you will be too. Leverage the positive feedback and turn it into an opportunity to ask your employer what made her so successful.

 

Stephanie; keep being amazing! You’re setting a high benchmark which is great. Some who follow in your footsteps may be bitter… try not to take it personally.

The average person spends a third of their life at work so naturally, we become good friends with our colleagues. This is great news for happiness in the workplace and employee engagement however this can make it easy for boundaries to become blurry. Everyone’s boundaries are different and what one employee deems appropriate, another may find inappropriate.

 

Let’s have a look at the stats…

 

Research from The Creative Group shows that 35% of respondents said it was very common to greet their co-worker with a hug rather than a handshake and a further 30% on top of that said it was somewhat common to do this. With regards to a client or business contact; 23% said that it was very common to greet with a hug and 29% said it was somewhat common. That means that in both instances between co-workers and clients, over half of the respondents regard it to be conventional and accepted to greet with a hug rather than opting for a handshake.

 

Since the #MeToo movement, physical contact in the workplace has been put under a microscope and people feel more cautious around even innocent forms of touch. It’s a movement that has seen 55% of companies make or propose changes to how they handle sexual harassment in the workplace. Some companies have even created a specific outline of rules around areas you can and cannot touch and have even gone as far to stipulate a ‘5 second rule’ on the length of time you can touch a person for… sounds crazy, doesn’t it?

 

We asked Jason Demillo from Logical what his thoughts were on the effects of this movement; “I’ve seen instances within our client base where males have been hesitant to assist their female counterparts through fear of their intentions being misinterpreted. This erodes collaborative team culture and is detrimental to organisations. Open dialog should be encouraged so that we maintain the ability to work supportively with one another while respecting an individual’s space”

 

Here at Logical, we consider clients and candidates to be friends. We’ll often go out for coffee with them or hit the pub for a few beers after work. Our team typically go for the failsafe handshake but we’d love to know – would you hug your business partners?

Sometimes less is more – but is this the case when it comes to working?

A New Zealand based company, Perpetual Guardian, trialled a 4 day work week for 8 weeks. The trial was closely tracked by researchers at Universities in Auckland. They found that although employees trimmed their hours from 40 to 32 per week, they were actually 20% more productive. Employees took the initiative to increase their own productivity to counteract having fewer hours to work – they shortened meeting times and told colleagues when they were being a distraction in order to focus on work. Perpetual Guardian found the trial to be so successful that they made it a permanent option for its employees.

‘The Case for a 4-Day Workweek?’ found that only 19% of Australians are happy with the five day work week and 47% want a four day work week. With the rise of productivity software to improve efficiency, administrative tasks are being automated and less time is spent on inconsequential tasks. In theory, this should enable employees to opt into a four day work week without it affecting their volume of work.

However, not all industries can participate in the four day work week with ease. As a service provider, we at Logical want our candidates and clients to be able to contact us in all usual business hours and a four day work week would get in the way of that. Even if a roster was implemented to cover all business hours, the relationships with our candidates and clients would potentially suffer and time would be wasted handing over partly completed work.

A four day work week could increase employee satisfaction and see time used more efficiently however the risk could be expensive and it could end up damaging your business more than helping it succeed.

Would you prefer to work a 4 day week? How do you think it would affect your organisation?

Microsoft’s stock has climbed by about a third in the past year and on Thursday 25th April, it became the third member of an extremely elite club; companies that have exceeded a total market value of $1 trillion USD. The other companies to have reached this astounding milestone are Apple, who hit it in August 2018, and Amazon in September 2018 however due to stock fluctuation, all 3 tech giants have since lost their $ trillion status.

Microsoft, who was once reliant on Windows Operating System for the majority of their revenue, have developed and grown their cloud services and hardware divisions. This resulted in all 3 divisions contributing roughly the same amount of revenue to the business this quarter.

Microsoft’s Azure is now second behind Amazon’s AWS for cloud services. Amy Hood, Microsoft’s Chief Financial Officer, said: “Demand for our cloud offerings drove commercial cloud revenue to $9.6 billion this quarter, up 41% year-over-year.” Here at Logical, we’ve seen first hand the impact of growth in the cloud space for the tech companies we work with. Demand for Cloud Architects, Engineers and Consultants is on the rise. Businesses are moving to a cloud-first IT strategy however 84% of businesses lack the skills needed to effectively carry out this strategy. This translates into businesses looking for IT professionals to develop their skills in the cloud space to stay relevant.

Surface revenue continued to grow by 21% racking in $1.3 billion and contributing to the total hardware revenue of $10.7 billion. Office, Linkedin, and Dynamics generated $10.2 billion this quarter giving Microsoft a total revenue across all divisions of $30.6 billion.

So, who’s next to join the $1 trillion market cap club?

Let’s start with the obvious one; Alphabet Inc, the holding company for Google, is currently sitting at $834.2 billion and is in the running to be the fourth company to become a $1 trillion club member. However Berkshire Hathaway is the underdog, sitting at $532.73 billion just now, they may be far behind Alphabet but their stocks fluctuate more so they could still be in the running.

Has the growth of Microsoft’s cloud services left you struggling for Cloud Architects and Consultants? If so, Logical can help – get in touch at gday@logicalresources.com.au