RECRUITMENT

ISSUE 53 September 2015
FOUNDED IN PARRAMATTA
WWW.WSBA.COM.AU
Available at 230 drop points
in Western Sydney and online
RECRUITMENT
Why money isn’t everything
See story torypage 8
Business rejects
Blacktown rebrand
The Greater Blacktown
Chamber of Commerce
has come out in protest
against the proposal to
rename Blacktown.
Page 3.
Private investors
cash in on land
Knight Frank says there
are opportunities for
industrial land owners
in Western Sydney to
control market share.
Page 4.
Campbelltown City
is on a roll
For many years the
forgotten region, now
Campbelltown has
come of age with a raft
of major projects and
redevelopments.
Page 7.
Ready for growth?
Taking your business to the next stage requires solid foundations.
Let us help you grow your business with the right strategy.
Contact David Pring on 9455 9996.
kpmg.com.au
© 2015 KPMG, an Australian partnership. All rights reserved.

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NEWS
WWW.WSBA.COM.AU
WHAT’S IN A NAME?
Business rejects
Blacktown rebrand
SEPTEMBER 2015
By Di Bartok
WITH the business, indigenous and, seemingly,
general community, against a name
change for Blacktown City, you have to
wonder what is behind the council’s decision
to have a plebiscite on the issue.
President of the Greater Blacktown Business
Chamber Trevor Oldfield is shaking his head
over the council decision made late August,
led by Liberal councillors and independent
long-term councillor Russ Dickens, to go to
the people over a name change for the council
area - but not the suburb - and what that name
should be.
As Mr Oldfield pointed out, only people
against the decision attended the council meeting
to protest any move to change the City’s name.
Judging by all media reports, no-one in the
general public has come out in support of a name
change.
To most of the 332,000 plus residents of the
City, it is business as usual with no apparent community
campaign to drop the Blacktown name.
The indigenous community - the largest
Aboriginal and Torres Strait urban population in
NSW - certainly is upset over the council decision
Ḋarug tribe Aboriginal Corporation chairman
Gordon Workman was at the council meeting
and said he was infuriated by the council’s
actions.
“Blacktown is our history, our home and it’s
what we are proud of,” Mr Workman told the
media after the meeting.
“We love this area and council is trying to
take that away from us.”
Labor Mayor Stephen Bali has always been
vehemently opposed to a name change, saying
Blacktown was a proud area with a proud history.
WESTERN SYDNEY BUSINESS ACCESS SEPTEMBER 2015
He and other Labor councillors were proud
enough to don I Love Blacktown t-shirts at the
fiery council meeting
He has suggested that the Liberals pushed for
a name change to garner the crucial vote of Clr
Dickens in the upcoming mayoral elections, as
the veteran councillor holds the balance of power.
But Clr Dickens told WSBA that the name
Blacktown did not reflect the diversity of the local
government area.
Changing the name of the city has been a
passion of Clr Dickens since he was elected to
council more than 30 years ago.
“The council area is more than just Blacktown
- we have 48 suburbs in the local government
area, the biggest in the state,” Clr Dickens.
“I think an Aboriginal name such as Bungarribee
and Nurragingy would be more suitable
for the local government area, with the suburb
staying the same.”
At one stage, the Liberals wanted the area to
be called Western Sydney but now the decision is
being handed to the people, probably to coincide
with next year’s local government elections.
Mr Oldfield said the business community
could not understand the economic sense of
council calling in re-branding consultants and
then, before their job was done, decide to go
ahead with a renaming exercise.
“I certainly don’t support a name change - it
suggests there is something wrong with Blacktown,”
he said.
Mr Oldfield said Blacktown businesses had
not encountered negative reactions to the city’s
name, which goes back to the early days of the
colony when the area was named Blacks Town to
denote the high Aboriginal population.
More awards success for Aussie Parramatta
RETAIL SUCCESS
AUSSIE Parramatta has won National Retail Store of the Year for
the third consecutive year at the company’s biennial sales conference.
Aussie Parramatta also won Retail Store of the Year NSW/
ACT, and mortgage broker Matthew Preston won Loan Writer of the
Year NSW/ACT and placed second nationally.
Held at the Crown C onference Centre in Melbourne, the gala
awards evening attracted over 700 Aussie brokers, franchisees, lenders
and industry experts.
Aussie Parramatta took the title after another stellar performance
over the 2015 financial year.
Aussie Parramatta Co-Principal Ross Le Quesne said: “We are
thrilled to win these awards and be recognised as a leader amongst our
peers, lenders and industry greats like John Symond.
“Aussie Parramatta shows what’s possible when you put a great
brand, training, products and support together with motivated,
engaged and passionate business professionals. They are leading
our national team in providing what I believe are the highest service
standards of any mortgage broker in Australia, and this award was
Quest rebrands to appeal to younger generations
REBRAND
THE privately-owned Quest accommodation
provider has rebranded its properties
to appeal to people in their 20s and 30s.
The brand has been changed from
Quest Serviced Apartments to Quest Apartment
Hotels because the former was not
relevant to its customer base, according to the
company,
The new brand applies to Western Sydney
properties in Bella Vista, Sydney Olympic Park,
President of the Greater Blacktown Business Chamber Trevor Oldfield.
North Ryde, Campbelltown, Liverpool and
Castle Hill, in Western Sydney, among the 150
across Australia, New Zealand and Fiji.
The company is set to rapidly expand its
network following the announcement, in October
2014, of a major strategic partnership with
one of the world’s largest serviced apartment
owner-operators, Singapore-based The Ascott
Limited.
The deal is expected to see a $500-million
investment in new Quest properties across Australia
over the next five years, fast-tracking the
company’s plans to expand the network to over
250 properties by the end of the decade.
What’s in a name change?
Under the Local Government Act,
councils can only hold referendums on
specific subjects and changing a name is not
one of them. Even with a non-binding poll,
a proclamation by Governor David Hurley
and support from Local Government Minister
Paul Toole would be required to enact
the name change. Council needs to show
evidence of significant support for the new
name and a case outlining the costs versus
benefits to the community. Only half of the
16 councils that have requested a new name
in the past decade have been successful.
Mario Rehayem, Pepper Financial Services Group, Ross Le Quesne, Franchisee,
Scott Le Quesne, Franchisee and John Symond, Aussie Founder & Executive
Chairman.
earned amid very hot competition within the market, so it’s really
an accolade to be very proud of,” said Chief Executive of Aussie, Mr
James Symond.
Quest CEO, Zed Sanjana, said the strategic
partnership was a transformational opportunity
for Quest; which would result in both accelerated
growth of the brand’s Australian footprint,
as well as fast tracking Quest’s global expansion.
“This will provide us with an opportunity to
accelerate our organic growth over the next five
years to take advantage of the strong demand
dynamics in the Australian accommodation
market,” he said.
The Ascott Limited is a wholly-owned
subsidiary of Singapore-listed company, CapitaLand
Limited, one of Asia’s largest real estate
companies.
Glenn’s health scare
proves a wake-up call ..........PAGE 7
GWS business growth
as fast as the nation’s ...........PAGE 6
Emails – are they
stress or bliss? .....................PAGE 8
Feeling connected to
customers is the key ..........PAGE 13
Communication in
family businesses ..............PAGE 19
The future of health care ....PAGE 52
VIEW EACH EDITION ONLINE AT
www.wsba.com.au
Western Sydney Business Access (WSBA)
ABN 9336 7098 582
Publisher/editor: Michael Walls
M: 0407 783 413. E: michael@wsba.com.au
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3

NEWS
WWW.WSBA.COM.AU
Time for private investors to cash in
OPPORTUNITY
By Keiasha Naidoo
SYDNEY’S strategy to accommodate
growth in industrial development lies in
the Western Sydney Employment Area
(WSEA), which is the largest new employment
space in the metropolitan area.
Located at the intersection of the M7 and
M4 Motorways, WSEA is the largest new
employment space in the metropolitan area,
and includes major precincts such as Eastern
Creek and Erskine Park.
The existing WSEA comprises 2,200 hectares
of industrial zoned land that has gradually
been developed over the past 12 years.
Land supply will further be supplemented
by the additional 4,357ha earmarked for
employment usage within the Broader WSEA
extension area.
Despite the presence of this land, supply
of land for immediate development remains
constrained due to a lack of undeveloped land
being both serviced (connected to water and
sewer) and appropriately zoned.
Knight Frank’s Director of Industrial, David
Hall, said this provides opportunities for
existing land holders, who are able to provide
serviced land, to control market share over the
next two to three years.
He said this applied to private owners of
land that is currently zoned or easily zoned.
Going through the zoning process could take
up to two years to have it ready for use.
“This presents a great opportunity for land
owners who can control the market share
because there are so few players in this space.”
David said land restrictions in other regions
made it difficult to secure large parcels of
land for industrial development in those areas.
“With the bulk of land supply unlikely
to be readily developable within the next
three years due to factors such as zoning and
acquisition lead times, current land owners
with appropriately zoned land have an opportunity
to be active players in the current precommitment
cycle with competition broadly
limited to some institutional developers and
larger private land owners. For example,
DHL recently secured just over 58,000sqm in
Oakdale.”
He explained that logistics companies
represented a growing sector that wanted to
move to the WSEA region.
“There are several factors for this such as
access to labour, good road infrastructure,
traveling times, cost of transport (because of
improved road infrastructure), and access to a
second airport.
Mr Hall went on to say
however, that larger private
land owners are now being
more proactive in their
development strategies and are
showing a greater propensity to
start competing in the pre-lease
market.
“Larger private land owners
have the potential to compete
in the short term development
cycle. Although they
have shown limited urgency to
progress the development of
land holdings to this point in
time, they are now being more
proactive in their development
strategies by spending capital
to bring services to undeveloped
land in addition to sourcing
potential tenants.
Parramatta “township” tag doesn’t fit with development pace
By Red Dwyer
MEDIA
THE proud citizens of Parramatta are not
likely to relish its description as the
Western Sydney “township” by the nation’s
leading financial newspaper.
The putdown by The Australian Financial
Review, of the city does not ring true with
the NSW government’s acknowledgement
of Parramatta as the major regional city in
the metropolitan area.
Nor does it sit well with the same article
noting council’s masterplan, “Building
Australia’s Next Great City”, to realise the
government’s concept of Sydney being a
dual CBD city comprising the Sydney and
Parramatta CBDs.
The unfortunate reference to Parramatta
was made in an article highlighting the wave
of Asian investment in the city.
The latest being the Chinese developer,
Greenland Group, which is considering
the purchase of the Crown Hotel, at 295
Church Street, from pub owners Iris Hotels.
Iris Hotels has lodged a planning
proposal with Parramatta City Council to
increase the height and floor space ratio of
David Morris and David Hall.
the building, formerly the Oneworld Sport
Hotel, which is in the heart of the “eats
street” precinct in the CBD.
Other examples of Asian investment
include Malaysian property developer, Eco-
World International which will develop the
$300 million, 397-apartment West Village
residential project at 100 Church Street.
Starryland Australia, an offshoot of
China’s Fuxing Huiyu Real Estate Company,
is building the $550 million Promenade,
comprising 774 apartments across 11
buildings, ranging from three to 12 storeys,
overlooking the Parramatta River, on a fivehectare
site, in Morton Street.
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4 WESTERN SYDNEY BUSINESS ACCESS SEPTEMBER 2015

NEWS
Glenn’s health wake-up call
LIFE CHANGE
By Di Bartok
Glenn Anthoney recovering in hospital with his visiting
17-month-old grandson.
GLENN Anthoney thought
it was the after-effects of the
chilli he had eaten the night
before that stopped him in his
tracks on a recent morning walk.
“I mean, there was a lot of chilli
and it really felt like heartburn,” the
Winston Hills businessman said.
Glenn, who is the BNI franchisee
for north western Sydney, was
on a break in Noosa, but was not
taking a break from his morning
regimen of a good 6km walk.
But it was not heartburn that
slowed him down. To Glenn’s and
his family’s horror, a major artery in
his heart was 99 per cent blocked.
“This is the artery that, if
blocked, takes people out,” Glenn
said, hardly believing his close
encounter with death.
The shock diagnosis came a
week after the first incident when,
again while on a walk, Glenn felt
pain radiating to his back.
There had been no spicy food
ingested the night before so Glenn
could not write it off as indigestion
this time.
He rang his doctor immediately
who asked him to walk a bit more
and call back if he felt worse. Glenn
did not enjoy that second call to his
doctor.
Promptly booked into Hills Private
Hospital to have a stent inserted
in the blocked artery through an
artery in his groin, Glenn was in his
fi ft h week of his six week rehabilitation
when he spoke to WSBA and
starting to feel well.
His family, including his wife
and 17-month-old grandson, know
how lucky they are. The 55-yearold
considered himself “reasonably
fi t ”a ft er taking up regular exercise
since being diagnosed with Diabetes
2 six years ago.
“I was probably undiagnosed
for 10 years. The diagnosis forced
me to look at what I ate and how
much I exercised,” he said.
“Walking 6 kms every day was
my way of dropping weight and
helping the diabetes. I had become
fit, the diabetes was under control
and my cholesterel was
fi n e .”
But, with his long
working days, often
starting with breakfast
meetings and ending
with after five business
events, watching what
he ate and how much
time he exercised was
not that easy.
Plus, there is that
little matter of his
heavy smoking days.
“I was a heavy
smoker - about 50 a
day but I gave that up
in 1996. There has to
be be some effect from
that,” Glenn said.
Speaking during
his last week of rehab,
Glenn said he was almost
back to his old self. But he is
excited to get back to his forgotten
old, old self.
He explained that when someone
has had an unknown heart
condition for some time, they
accept how they feel as normal,
forgetting the more energetic
person they had been.
“I am looking forward to having
that energy I used to have. I am
getting there.”
Glenn knows that like many
men, he ignored - note the past
tense - early warning signs about
his health.
“Men tend not to go to doctors
when they should and can ignore
early signs that things are not
right,” he said.
WWW.WSBA.COM.AU
Why the Premier’s WSABE
invite went all pear-shaped
AWARDS NIGHT
By Di Bartok
IT was a comedy of errors that saw
the recent successful 25th WS-
ABE awards night without a State
Government representative.
With Premier Mike Baird stating
as far back as April that he could
not attend the August gala night,
Parliamentary Secretary for Western
Sydney Ray Williams was set to
be the Premier’s representative.
And that is when it went pearshaped.
Apparently, the organising
committee, which includes
WSABE hosts Parramatta Chamber
of Commerce, stated they only
wanted the Premier at the event - or
at least a Minister.
When told that was not possible,
the committee was then
prepared to accept Mr Williams
- but he says he had been told by
the Premier’s office to remove the
event from his diary.
“By then, I had another commitment
but I would have loved
to have represented the Premier at
WSABEs, which I have always supported
and attended,” Mr Williams
told WSBA.
“I would not refuse an invitation
to be part of WSABEs. I love
the awards and their support for
businesses in western Sydney.”
With Parramatta Liberal MP
Geoff Lee also otherwise engaged,
the absence of any official State
Government presence was noted
by attendees.
WSABE award nights are usually
attended either by the Premier
or representative.
Federal Labor MP Julie Owens
was able to shine on the night,
telling the audience of about 500
upbeat business people that she
loved doing most of her business in
her local area.
WSABE patron Alan Cadman
admitted that “things could have
been handled better” in securing a
representative of the Premier.
“There was fault on both sides,
no-one is really to blame,” Mr Cadman
said. “We need to have better
communications next year, but we
still have a good relationship with
the government. It is all about planning
it earlier.”
Despite the absence of a state
leader, The Western Sydney Awards
for Business Excellence shone on
leaders from a diverse range of businesses
in the greater west.
With 16 categories, the awards
are judged after self-nomination,
based on strict criteria, unlike business
awards that are voted on by
customers.
The glittering awards night was
held in WaterView in Bicentennial
Park on August 14 and was hosted
by Dwayne Jeffries from Hope
Media.
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WESTERN SYDNEY BUSINESS ACCESS SEPTEMBER 2015
5

NEWS
GWS business growth twice
as fast as the nation’s growth
By Keiasha Naidoo
SURVEY
WESTERN Sydney’s business growth for
the next 12 months is more than double
the business growth Australia-wide.
William Buck Director,
Greg Travers, said the positive trend
is pleasantly surprising and reflected
firms expected growth, business sentiment,
employee intent and profit.
The average growth rate for western
Sydney over the next 12 months
is 8.63% while the nation-wide figure
is between 3-4% according to Greg.
More than 85 percent of large
businesses interviewed in the bi-annual
Making Western Sydney Greater research
expect to grow their business within the coming
year, while 66 per cent of SME businesses recorded a
similar expectation.
The research is a collaborative project between
William Buck, St.George, the University of Western
Sydney and Western Sydney Business Connection.
The latest research report drew on responses
from over 200 business owners and senior management
personnel involved with businesses in Western
Sydney.
Greg said that the positive trend in western
Sydney had a massive impact on businesses in the
region. “It is interesting to note that the business
sentiment amongst large businesses has improved
significantly.”
He said in the SME demographic there was a
small decrease in business sentiment, but overall it
remained positive.
“Both SME and large businesses are forecasting
Matthew Kelly
that they will exceed their revenue and profit targets.
Capital expenditure is expected to be maintained for
SMEs, and marginally increased for large businesses.”
He said the SME business sentiment results was
unexpected, but presented an opportunity to “dig
into in the next research”.
St George Executive Manager for Western
Sydney, Matthew Kelly said: “Overall, the research
indicates a real strength in the Greater Western Sydney
economy which reflects what I’ve been hearing
from St.George business customers in the
region.
“It’s positive to see a big proportion
of businesses expecting to grow. Many
have taken concrete steps to plan and
implement this growth. There are also
some businesses that appear to be at the
front end of their growth cycle and have
not yet planned for future growth - these
businesses are facing huge potential to
expand their workforce and invest in the
future.”
Developing the Parramatta CBD is a central focus
of the State Government’s policy for the region.
Special attention of the research was on business
attitudes towards this strategy.
Of the businesses based outside the Parramatta
LGA, 60% thought the redevelopment would directly
benefit them, and 90% felt it would be valuable
for the region.
Three priorities to ensure the success
of Parramatta as the second CBD:
• Creating improved public transport connections
with surrounding Western Sydney
centres.
• Increasing the number of financial and professional
service businesses.
• Ensure Parramatta is developed as a “living
city” by having a mix of residential, commercial,
entertainment and open spaces.
Bespoke hosts visit
by MP Alex Hawke
INNOVATORS
NEW med-tech company, Bespoke
Medical Innovations (Bespoke),
the designer and manufacturer
of the unique Apnea-Seal nasal
adaptor received a visit recently from
Federal MP Alex Hawke
During his visit to the Norwest Business
Park facility, Chief Executive Officer,
Darren Churchill, briefed Mr Hawke
on how the all-Australian designed and
manufactured Apnea-Seal adaptor was
offering real hope to Sleep Apnea sufferers,
many of whom reside in the local
Hills community.
Mr Hawke spoke to Winston Hills’
resident Betty Bruce, who’s been successfully
using the device for the past
month, after experiencing non-compliance
issues with her existing mask.
“We took the opportunity to
brief Mr Hawke on how Bespoke was
meeting the aspirations of the Abbott
Government’s Industry Innovation and
Competitiveness Agenda,” Mr Churchill
said.
“Given that the Government has
identified Medical Technology and
Pharmaceuticals as a core element to the
future of Australian industry as it transitions
to a skills-based economy producing
world class innovation, Bespoke is
pleased to be playing our part in delivering
the next wave of economic growth.
“Since our soft-launch in June
we have experienced significant local
WWW.WSBA.COM.AU
From left: Bespoke CEO Darren Churchill,
Federal Member for Mitchell, Alex Hawke
MP and local Apnea-Seal customer Betty
Bruce.
interest. We are also looking to overseas
markets, applying for an FDA approval,
which will create an export pipeline
for Apnea-Seal in the significant US
market,” said Mr Churchill.
About Bespoke Medical
Innovations
Based in the Norwest Business Park,
Bespoke Medical Innovations was established
in September 2014.
The company is wholly Australian
owned and specialises in designing and
commercialising customised medical innovations
specifically for the individual
– aimed at enhancing their quality of life.
Apnea-Seal is a custom-made
nasal and nasal pillow adaptor designed
to perfectly fit a sufferer’s nose like a
second skin, allowing for a better, more
comfortable fit with their existing Sleep
Apnea mask.
6 WESTERN SYDNEY BUSINESS ACCESS SEPTEMBER 2015

NEWS
WWW.WSBA.COM.AU
Campbelltown City is on a roll
By Red Dwyer
INVESTMENT
CAMPBELLTOWN is on a roll with a new
status, multi-million public and private
investments and a business park proposal
for health related industries.
Late last year State Government’s new
metropolitan planning strategy – A Plan for
Growing Sydney, nominated Campbelltown
as a regional city – the fourth in Western
Sydney along with Parramatta, Penrith and
Liverpool.
“By recognising the Campbelltown CBD
in its own right as a regional city centre, the
plan acknowledges the area’s role in supporting
the surrounding community, and will help
cement Campbelltown as the capital of the
Paul Lake.
Campbelltown Arts Centre.
Macarthur region, “ said Mayor Paul Lake in
welcoming the new status.
“Campbelltown will be in a position to
attract a range of new business, government,
health, cultural, retail and recreational opportunities
to support our growing population.”
Cr Luke’s aspiration is turning into reality.
Campbelltown set to accommodate the
fi ft h largest shopping centre in NSW following
its owner’s approval of a $240 million redevelopment
of the Macarthur Square shopping
centre.
Australian Prime Property Fund Retail
and GPT Wholesale Shopping Centre Fund
said the redevelopment which would see
floorspace increase by 16,000 square metres
to 100,000 square metres maintain its position
as the largest shopping centre in South –West
Sydney – the fastest growing region in the
metropolitan area
Construction is expected to take two
years, with the main extension due to be completed
by Christmas 2016.
Campbelltown City Council is drawing up
a formal proposal for a $30 million expansion
of the Campbelltown Arts Centre, regarded as
Macarthur Square Shopping Centre.
one of the state’s biggest and most respected
creative hubs.
Any funding for the project would hinge
on the leasing of half the state’s electricity
assets. While construction would be fully
funded by the state, the council would be
required to fund the operating costs.
“If we were successful [in the funding application]
that would be assessed in a business
management plan [and while] I’m not an arty
person – I’m more of a sports person – but
you need mix for the future regional population,”
Cr Lake said
With regard to sport, council has signalled
its intentions to push ahead with a sport centre
of excellence at the University of Western
Sydney’s Campbelltown campus, having the
support of both sides of politics.
Council has given initial support to an
application for stage one, the Nexus Business
Park, part of a proposed 60-hectare business
park along Narellan Road
“One of the hopes is to attract educational,
medical and health [industries] and any businesses
that relate to those industries,” Cr Lake
said.
He said council had already signed off on
a $16 million UWS medical school to be built
next to Campbelltown Hospital, and the city
has the school of medicine at the university.”
Potential greenfield development is likely
with the government’s identification of an
Urban Investigation Area in the southern and
south western part of the Campbelltown local
government area, stretching into Wollondilly
Shire.
Adding further emphasis to the growth
potential of the Campbelltown-Macarthur regional
city is the government’s Seven Growth
Centres Plan, which aims to increase urban
densities around train stations from Glenfield
to Macarthur.
Council believes the plan would encourage
consumers to shop in Campbelltown.
However, an issue in need of rectifying is
the state of Queens Street, in the Campbelltown
CBD and the number of $2 dollar shops
along the shopping strip.
Businesses have joined the calls for the
return of the CBD to the bustling commercial
centre of past decades – a time before the arrival
of Macarthur Square.
Katrina Murray, Kingswood Florist
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7

NEWS
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Show me the benefits!
The changing face of remuneration
COVER STORY
By Mike Walls
IT seems that money has dropped down the
list of attractions for recruiters and businesses
looking to attract and retain top talent.
Scott Henshaw director at Forsythe
Recruitment says in his 10 years as a director
of a recruitment business the
money question would have to
be one of the most frequently
asked question is one of the
most frequently asked questions
he gets from employers
and employees.
“Clearly it is a factor that
needs to be considered heavily
by all when considering a
career move because let’s face
it, we all have bills to pay and
mouths to feed,” said Scott.
“But let me state from the
outset, the importance placed
on remuneration will vary
greatly from person to person
and in my experience, when
one considers a new role it is
perhaps not as important as
you might think.
“If nothing else money is
but one piece of an increasingly
complex puzzle that forms a
remuneration and benefits
package.”
It seems that remuneration
in isolation is not enough
to attract and retain top talent
in today’s highly competitive
labour market.
Professionals across all
industries are looking for more
from their current or prospective
employer.
“Businesses that are successful take the
time to understand what is important and
what is valued by their people. They take the
time to develop diverse and tailored strategies
that interest, engage and motivate their staff as
individuals,” said Scott.
So what are these leading businesses doing
to create this competitive advantage: Here
are but a few examples courtesy of Forsythe
Recruitment:
• Clear and time-framed personal development
plan.
• Opportunities to attend training programs
to learn and build skills.
• Realistic and achievable incentive
programs.
• Provision of tools of trade (e.g. iPads,
phones, remote access) to assist
people efficiently do their work.
• Flexibility to work remotely, part
Scott Henshaw.
time and at less traditional times.
• Parking, gym, extended leave entitlement,
company funded social activities
and the list goes on.
In an ever changing and increasing skills
short labour market those businesses that
develop contemporary remuneration and
benefits packages and have regular conversations
with their staff give themselves the best
chance to attract top talent, and as important,
retain the good people that they already have.
“To be successful employers in all industries
and of all sizes need to think more
critically when it comes to remuneration and
benefits structures. Their employees certainly
are,” says Scott.
Managing partner at KPMG Western
Sydney David Pring says people increasingly
joined an organisation for a longer term view.
“If someone feels they’re undervalued,
remuneration will be very high on the list. If
they feel they’re undervalued by their existing
employer, it will be very high on the list. But
generally, people are joining an organisation
for a longer term view than what they’re going
to be paid tomorrow,” said David.
“For us, it’s around career opportunity – if
people will move for a career opportunity,
where they believe and understand the story.
And quite often we’ll have senior people who
move for not very much change in remuneration.”
64 seconds to recover
from email interruption
DIGITAL AGE
By Keiasha Naidoo
IN this rapidly moving digital age, email communication
is part and parcel of work and personal
life, but what is the real impact of emails
on our lives?
First up let’s be honest, withdrawing from
the barrage of emails is simply not an option in
today’s society.
It is through emails that we connect with
family, friends, schools, organisations, get updates
or e-newsletters, and the list goes on.
In business you simply cannot function
without an email whether it is hearing the latest
staff update, responding to clients or communicating
with team members within the business.
Keeping connected is important, but does
it consume more time in our day and lead to
decreased productivity?
The answer, according to studies around the
world is a resounding ‘Yes’. Emails are distracting
and time consuming and can even lead to
stress in the workplace.
The Radicati Group, a technology market
research firm operating in the US and the UK,
report that in 2014 there were 4.1 billion email
accounts and 2.5 billion users, both business
and personal around the planet.
According to their studies, the majority of
email traffic comes from the business world
which accounts for over 108.7 billion emails
sent and received per day.
These numbers are responsible for stress
being experienced by many people who attempt
to maintain a work-life balance.
The average business worker in 2014 received
85 emails per day (75 legitimate and 10
spam) and sent 36 emails per day.
Chairman of Sydney Hills Business Chamber,
Anthony Moss, said he believed there was
certainly an overload of emails in business.
“This is mainly because people are not
thoughtful about how they use emails and its
purpose,” he said.
“Certainly I believe that emails are good for
communication, but not good when working
on different projects.”
Working in management consultancy, Anthony
get emails from his team of consultants, a
virtual assistant, suppliers, and clients who are
mainly at a director or senior management level.
“I can’t get away from emails and find that
it can be very useful. It can be good to capture
and disseminate messages. Messages need to be
short and to the point,” he said.
Anthony says more clients are using Apps
and other project management tools to reduce
emails, which he believes is a more efficient way
of working on projects. One way to reduce the
“noise” and stress created through emails is by
managing them well.
Four years ago the Australian School of
Business research found that workers in Australia
spend less than 2.5 days per week actually
doing their work, the rest of the time was spent
trawling through emails.
The same study found that on average it
takes a person 64 seconds to recover from email
interruption, and an estimated 20% productivity
increase can be gained by addressing
information overload in a business.
One of the ways of reducing the stress and
time consumption of emails is allocating two
slots in a day to look at emails.
The rest of the day can be spent focusing
on work. This may be a little more difficult if
you are working in virtual teams or in global
organisations.
American author and entrepreneur, Tim
Ferris, advocates streamlining the email process
even more.
He says emails can also be reduced by using
alternative communication tools, outsourcing
some jobs, and finding automation processes
for some matters.
8 WESTERN SYDNEY BUSINESS ACCESS SEPTEMBER 2015

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WESTERN SYDNEY BUSINESS ACCESS SEPTEMBER 2015
9

NEWS
WWW.WSBA.COM.AU
“The council area is more than just Blacktown
- we have 48 suburbs in the local government
area, the biggest in the state. I think an
Aboriginal name such as Bungarribee and Nurragingy
would be more suitable for the local
government area, with the suburb staying the
same.” – Blacktown Councillor Russ Dickens
on a proposed name change for Blacktown.
“There was fault on both sides; no-one
is really to blame. We need to have better
communications next year, but we still have a
good relationship with the government. It is
all about planning it earlier.” – Alan Cadman
WSABE patron Alan Cadman on why the
WSABE 2015: Where was the Premier?
Premier or his representative didn’t show
at the 2015 WSABE gala night.
“Parramatta is the best performing office
market in the country and there is an extremely
positive outlook [for the city] in terms of
infrastructure and future government investment.”
– Steven Kearney, of CBRE.
“When completed, The Peninsula will deliver
much needed new apartments, extensive
open space including a 3.9 hectare Peninsula
Park and a new landscaped foreshore,” – Peter
Anderson, of UrbanGrowth NSW on the
Homebush Bay project
“This will provide us with an opportunity
to accelerate our organic growth over the next
five years to take advantage of the strong demand
dynamics in the Australian accommodation
market,” – Zed Sanjana, Quest CEO,
on $500 million investment by Singaporebased
The Ascott Limited.
“By recognising the Campbelltown
CBD in its own right as
a regional city centre,
the plan acknowledges
the area’s role in supporting
the surrounding community,
and will help cement Campbelltown
as the capital of the Macarthur
region, “ - Mayor Paul Lake
in welcoming the new status.
“This is going to be a highly
sophisticated and automated
operation,” – Kerry Schott,
Schott, chair of the Moorebank
Intermodal Company.
“This new headquarters
at Nirimba [in the Nirimba
Education Precinct in Quakers
Hill] will significantly increase
UWSCollege’s capacity, efficiency,
quality and reach across
one of the nation’s fastest growing
regions and further afield,” –
Professor Barney Glover, vicechancellor
UWS.
“Blacktown is our history,
our home and it’s what we are
proud of. We love this area
and council is trying to take
that away from us.” - Darug
tribe Aboriginal Corporation
chairman Gordon Workman
“The council area is more than just Blacktown
- we have 48 suburbs in the local government
area, the biggest in the state. I think
an Aboriginal name such as Bungarribee
and Nurragingy would be more suitable for
the local government area, with the suburb
staying the same.” – Blacktown Councillor
Russ Dickens (pictured) on a proposed
name change for Blacktown.
“I certainly don’t support a name
change - it suggests there is something
wrong with Blacktown.” – Greater
Blacktown Business Chamber
President Trevor
Oldfield.
“I was probably undiagnosed
for 10 years. The diagnosis forced
me to look at what I ate and how
much I exercised.” – BNI’S Glenn
Anthoney on his recent health
scare.
“This presents a great opportunity
for land owners who can control
the market share because there are
so few players in this space.” - Knight
Frank’s Director of Industrial,
David Hall on opportunities in
Western Sydney.
“I would say less than you think.
It’s a part of the decision. But, in
this day and age it is not the most
important. It’s one of half a dozen or
a dozen boxes that I need ticked and
conversations that I need to have
to make sure this is a place that I
can go to work.” – Scott Henshaw
from Forsythe Recruitment on
the importance of remuneration
to employees.
10 WESTERN SYDNEY BUSINESS ACCESS SEPTEMBER 2015

NEWS
WWW.WSBA.COM.AU
Camellia our newest waterfront suburb
REDEVELOPMENT
By Geoff Lee
State M ember for Parramatta
CAMELLIA is set to become the newest
waterfront suburb in Sydney.
The NSW Government has released
Stage 1 of the Camellia redevelopment
– to turn industrial wastelands into a vibrant
riverfront precinct with 10,000 homes. A new
town centre will be created in the north-western
corner of the Camellia Precinct.
It provides a coordinated approach to the
need to unlock much needed housing lands
close to major employment centres as part of
the Plan for Growing Sydney. It is estimated
that Sydney will grow by one million people
over the next 10 years. We must plan for the
future growth of Sydney.
The 350 hectare Camellia Precinct is
ideally located 2km from Parramatta’s CBD.
The precinct will be a major component of
the economic corridor comprising Westmead
Biomedical Precinct, Parramatta CBD, Silverwater
and Sydney Olympic Park.
Since 2011, two external factors have
provided the impetus for change. The first is
Shell’s decision to cease its refinery operations
in 2012 with Viva Energy transitioning the site
from refinery to distribution, freeing up more
land for alternative use.
The second was a decision by Remondis
in 2013 to withdraw their proposal to build
a waste plant that would have processed up
to 150,000 tonnes of garbage a year. Had this
plant gone ahead it would have committed
the land use to heavy industrial for the next 20
years.
These factors as well as Camellia’s strategic
proximity to Parramatta’s CBD have contributed
to the push to rezone the area. This
recognises Camellia’s housing and employment
potential. It is an opportunity to address
the decline in jobs in heavy industry that
dominated the Camellia Precinct in the 20 th
Century. Only 3,000 people currently work in
the area, that’s less than 10 people per hectare.
We need to plan for 21 st Century jobs in
cleaner high-tech and innovation sectors.
We now have the opportunity to get the
planning right to build suburbs where people
want to live and work. Early planning of
Camellia allows us to get the right infrastructure,
transport solutions, and community and
recreation facilities in place.
Arterial roads and intersections need to
be upgraded and connected with new bridges
proposed to link Camellia to Silverwater and
Camellia to Rydalmere.
Rydalmere as a high-tech jobs centre
will become increasing important. Already
Time to review
your strategy
Western Sydney University’s largest campus
with around 16,000 students is located in
Rydalmere and Parramatta City Council has
designated the area a future technology hub.
Rosehill Gardens will be an integral player
in Camellia’s redevelopment.
The Australian Turf Club
is planning a $1 billion
expansion of Rosehill
Gardens to deliver a
new sports and leisure
precinct along James
Ruse Drive.
A revitalised Camellia
riverfront promenade will
provide the public access to
the Parramatta River. Opening
up the foreshore will allow
pedestrians and cyclists to
get to work in Parramatta
without
going on a
road.
Highfrequency
and accessible
public
transport
is essential
for a redevelopment
of
this scale. I have consistently advocated for the
Carlingford Line with light-rail – this would
enable the new town centre in Camellia to be
directly connected to Parramatta’s CBD. The
NSW Government is currently evaluating the
best light-rail route for Parramatta.
The Camellia Precinct is yet another
demonstration that the NSW Government
is committed to delivering a strong Global
Sydney – one that’s resilient and sustainable
with a competitive edge, choice of homes
and lifestyles and well-connected communities.
The Camellia Precinct will be a vibrant
new waterfront suburb, strategically close to
major jobs centres and leisure facilities – providing
a convenient and exciting lifestyle.
Camellia moves one step closer
to realising its true potential
with the recent
release of the ‘Land
Use and Infrastructure
Strategy’ for
public comment.
The strategy is on
exhibition and
residents and
landowners are
being invited
to provide
their
feedback
to inform
the
rezoning
proposal.
For
more information
visit
planning.nsw.
gov.au.
GROWTH
By Anthony Moss
Chairman Sydney Hills Business Chamber
WELCOME to spring! There’s no better
time of year to plant some new
seeds for your business and nurture
their growth.
One of the best ways to do that is to review
your business strategy – and or develop
a written strategy document if you haven’t
taken the time to do it in the past.
It’s tempting to skip this if you think
you’re too busy or if the process seems
daunting but I’m going explain here why not
doing it could be costing your business a
fortune.
• It starts with a picture of success or vision
for your business. Before you dismiss
this because the ‘vision and mission
thing’ turns you off, think on this:
if you don’t have a clear vision of the
outcome you hope to achieve, neither
do your employees your suppliers and
just maybe your customers. A strong
vision creates clarity of expectations
which impacts everything from the
quality of customer service provided to
the morale of your team and your ability
to retain good personnel.
• Preparing a written strategy document
also helps to articulate the spirit or
purpose of your business. That might
not seem like a big deal but in fact, the
purpose of your business is the identity
that your customers see. And like a person
without a strong sense of identity,
a business without one will coast along
with things happening to it, rather than
following a defined path or leading the
way in the industry.
• A good strategy will identify important
factors that help you determine the
right path to take. Who are your customers
– are they the ‘right’ customers
you need to attract? Does the way you
sell or provide service suit those customers?
Are your margins sustainable?
The process of preparing or reviewing
a strategy is very enlightening. It’s the
point where more than a few business
owners and management teams realise
they’ve been delivering the wrong
message, targeting the wrong clients,
or that their current business model
has become unsustainable. It’s also the
point where some owners realise their
business has failed to adapt to changes
in the market place, or that they’ve
overlooked the threat – or opportunities
from emerging technologies,
changing legislation, or simply changing
consumer expectations.
A clear vision – purpose and strategy
provides that true north that guides you and
your team’s decision making.
Whilst larger business sometimes struggle
with the challenges of executing strategy
research has clearly shown that nimble small
and medium business benefit greatly from the
development and execution of a strategic plan.
Strategy for small and
medium businesses
Developing a clear purpose, vision
and strategy can seem a daunting process.
There are many approaches, a multitude of
templates and software programs to assist, all
of which have to be experienced to determine
the ‘fit’ for your business. For most
businesses the process needs to engage all
stakeholders and be detailed, thorough and
engaging –but the process followed needs to
fit the scale of the business.
At the Chamber business breakfast on
September 9, I’ll be presenting on this very
topic. As CEO of Lead Your Industry Pty Ltd
I’ve assisted many businesses large and small
in developing their strategic plans.
At the breakfast I’ll be outlining the five
most important questions you’ll need to
answer to develop the right strategy for your
business.
You don’t have to be a Chamber member
to attend one of our events, but bookings are
essential.
The 9 September breakfast will be at the
Castle Hill RSL Club from 7.00am – 8.30am.
To book visit the Events page at www.sydneyhillsbusiness.com.au,
register and book
your ticket/s.
Phone: Natalie
0478 106 597
n.donders@liverpool.nsw.gov.au
BOOK
ON LINE
www.liverpoolchamber.org.au
3.00PM - 8.30PM
16 SEPTEMBER
CHAMBER
LIVERPOOL CHAMBER
SMALL BIZ-expo
Major Sponsor
Partners
Featuring expert speakers,
product demonstrations and
information
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Members:
Ticket Stall Display $50 (Includes 1 entry ticket)
Ticket Entry: $40 (Includes free banner display)
Non Members
Ticket Stall Display $150 (Includes 1 entry ticket)
Ticket Entry: $45
Banner Display: $50 (Includes 1 entry ticket)
Venue: Country Comfort Hunts Liverpool Cnr. York Street t &
Hume Highwway Casula
WESTERN SYDNEY BUSINESS ACCESS SEPTEMBER 2015
11

REGIONAL ROUND-UP
WWW.WSBA.COM.AU
NORTH WEST
$15m investment
ENDEAVOUR Energy plans to invest
$15 million on upgrading the power supply to
Schofields and Marsden Park. The plans propose
the construction of a new 132kV power
line to supply electricity to the Marsden Park
industrial precinct and surrounding areas.
$40m plan refused
UNREASONABLE traffic safety, land-use
conflict and inadequate parking have led to
the refusal of a $40 million entertainment
facility proposed for an industrial complex
at McGraths Hill, by a private entertainment
group, represented by local planning group,
Montgomery Planning Solutions.
$20 million upgrade
THE $20 million upgrade of the Castle
Towers shopping centre will transform the
centre into an urban shopping, entertainment
and leisure hub, which will increase the
centre’s size by up to 80,000 square metres, in
response to population growth in the region.
Seven-storey hospital
THE Hospital for Specialist Surgery,
a seven-storey facility, at Bella Vista, offers
north-west Sydney a more patient-focused
approach to longer-term elective surgery. It is a
hospital owned and operated by doctors.
Concept plan
MALAYSIAN conglomerate Mulpha,
the developer of the Norwest Business Park,
proposes a $15 million concept plan for a
30-hectare parcel of land currently home to
the Norwest Private Hospital, Quest Serviced
Apartments and Circa Shopping Centre. It
has the potential to deliver more than 450,000
square metres of floor space and more than
25,000 jobs. The precinct would comprise a
central outdoor plaza and commercial core.
SOUTH WEST
Removalist leases
LEND Lease Real Estate Investments has
leased an office/warehouse of 4475 square
metres, at 29b Davis Road, Wetherill Par k,
removalist, King & Wilson, for almost for
$603,000 gross annually.
Trade centre opened
A $1.4 MILLION trade training centre has
opened at Georges River Grammar in Georges
Hall. The state-of-the-art centre includes an
engineering workshop where students learn
traditional trade roles such as fitter and turner,
metal fabricator, pressure welder and sheet
metal trade worker.
Site sold for $4.65m
ABBCA Investments has sold a
12,250-square-metre serviced site, at Victoria
Street, Wetherill Park, to a private investor, for
$4.65 million.
Sold for $24 million
THE Lantern Hotel Group has sold the
1.4-hestare El Toro Motor Inn, in Liverpool,
for $24 million to a partnership between publicans,
the Parras and Lazard families.
Sold for $7.5 million
A PRIVATE investor has sold a7972-
square-metre office and warehouse, on a
13,200-square-metre site, at 17-23 Bryant
Street, Padstow, for $7.5 million.
New R&D centre
ADVANCED manufacturing company
Quickstep Holdings, at Bankstown Airport,
has established a global research and development
centre at Deakin University. The
centre will manage ongoing development of
all Quickstep technologies and intellectual
property, supporting the company’s aerospace
and automotive facilities in Australia and Germany.
R&D activity currently undertaken at
Quickstep’s Munich facility will be relocated
to the centre.
Rezoning plan
HIGH-rise residential buildings and more
villas and townhouses are being flagged for
some Fairfield areas under a proposed rezoning
plan. High-density housing was supported
by 51 per cent of 1422 residents surveyed by
council.
Gold Union buys
AO-Hua International Investment Pty Ltd
has sold a 191-square-metre warehouse, at 7/9
Ladbroke Street, Milperra, to Gold Union Pty
Ltd for $428,000
Warehouse for $2.06m
JOSHHAND Ltd has bought a
1480-square-metre warehouse, at 10 Garner
Street, Ingleburn, from JE Investments, for
$2.06 million.
CENTRAL WEST
EOI for car park
PARRAMATTA City Council has called for
expressions of interest for a proposed contract
for the redevelopment and/or sale of the atgrade
portion of the Horwood Place car park.
Charter Hall buys
CHARTER Hall Group’s flagship, Core
Plus Industrial Fund will pay $45 million for
the former 37,600-square metre Fairfax Media
10.3-hectare print and distribution facility, at
Chullora It was built in 1995 for almost $340
million, with a $70 million upgrade in 2001.
Payce spends $144.5m
LISTED developer, Payce Consolidated
has bought a site from Pfizer at Melrose Park
close to the Parramatta River for $144.5 million.
The site, which Pfizer will lease back for up
to five years, adjoins sites already controlled by
Payce and joint venture partner Sekisui House
and gives the developer 25 hectares of potential
housing land eight kilometres east of Parramatta
and 17 kilometres from the Sydney CBD.
Ridder sells site
RIDDER Machinery sold its 516-squaremetre
engineering factory, at 9 Churchill
Street, Silverwater, to a private investor, for
$1.125 million.
Sold for $2 million
RN Cribb has sold its 1513-square-metre
industrial building, at 35 Vore Street, Silverwater,
to HC Group Australia, for $2 million.
Vacancy rate rises
POSITIVE demand was not enough to
prevent an increase in vacancy rates in Parramatta’s
office market increase from 6.3 per
cent to 7.4 per cent in the six months to July
2015, according to the Property Council’s latest
Office Market Report.
$4.8 million plan
PROPOSED modifications costing $4.8
million to the JR Fleming Grand Stand, at
Rosehill Gardens Racecourse, include construction
of a bridge link between Level 1 and
the Grandstand seating, installation of a new
betting ring enclosure, construction of a new
entrance portal and alterations to the Ascot
restaurant.
New head office
ELECTRICAL manufacturer, Bovara
Electrical, has bought a vacant 3515-squaremetre
office/warehouse, at 98 Wetherill
Street, Silverwater, from a private investor, for
$5.5 million, for use as its headquarters.
Private investor sells
BOVARA Electric has bought a
3515-square-metre office and warehouse, at
98 Wetherill Street, Silverwater, for $5.5 million,
from a private investor.
12 WESTERN SYDNEY BUSINESS ACCESS SEPTEMBER 2015

FEATURE
WWW.WSBA.COM.AU
Is customer delight enough to inspire loyalty?
Feeling connected is more important
CUSTOMERS
DELIVERING service so excellent that the
customer’s expectations have been met
and exceeded has long been the goal of
businesses.
On the scale of service, the aspirational
pinnacle has been to delight the customer
because delight, after all, is a step above excellence
and way beyond plain satisfaction.
Modern consumers like to identify strongly
with the brands and businesses they engage
with, and in many cases customers have a
significant input into creating the experience
through their own interaction with the brand,
employees and other customers.
More than ever before, customers are
investing themselves in the brands they use.
If the customer is delighted the business
assumes they will come back again, and not
only that, they will tell their friends and family
about their experience, too.
But while it might be the top of the
service delivery hierarchy, does delighting the
customer actually serve the ultimate purpose:
which is to drive loyalty to the brand and
ensure repeat business?
It was in this context that three researchers
from UNSW Business School decided to test
the hypotheses that making customers “feel
connected” might actually be more productive
than making them “feel delighted”.
Senior lecturer Mathew Chylinski and
associate professor Liem Viet Ngo worked
with PhD candidate Jake An to examine three
real-life examples to discover whether delight
or connectedness were the best drivers of
loyalty.
“Although 89% of service firms aim to
delight customers by exceeding customers’ expectations,
delighting customers does not lead
to measurable gains in repurchase intention or
word of mouth,” the team reports.
New sensibility
The researchers focused on three business
operations where customers were heavily
involved, and had a significant investment in
the outcome through their own participation
– higher degree research education at UNSW,
a fitness gym, and a US online gaming community.
Detailed questionnaires were created and
distributed to each group, with 191 respondents
from UNSW, 142 from the fitness gym,
and 316 from the online gamers.
“The initial position we had was to look at
the different kinds of emotions customers can
feel,” explains Ngo.
“They can feel satisfied and delighted, but
ultimately the goal is for them to feel connected
and have an emotional attachment to
the brand, and we wanted to understand what
the drivers for this were.
“And we wanted to look at examples where
customers actively engage with the service,
where they have to put in effort to receive an
outcome, and understand which emotions are
most influential in driving their loyalty.”
According to Chylinski, the “new sensibility”
in marketing is around engaging the
customer.
“Passive services have been well studied,
but we wanted to study active participation
where the customer has to put effort into
the service to achieve some kind of outcome
for themselves because active engagement
is what both firms and customers strive for
these days,” Chylinski says.
Fellow researcher An makes the point that
the customer can be “much more powerful
than ever before largely due to social media
and the internet”.
“Customers today can be content creators
and distributors, and that is one reason why
marketing has changed its thinking on some
issues, and our project is around some of
these changes,” An says.
Arms race against expectations
From the results, the researchers were able
to measure the behavioural intentions of loyalty.
Customer delight was consistently outperformed
as a driver of loyalty by measures
of customer commitment and participation.
Feelings of community and closeness to
other students, gym members, gamers and
also staff were found to be more important
factors in the context where customers actively
engage with the service.
An overall finding was that “focusing
on building customers’ emotional commitment
is more effective than trying to delight
customers for achieving a long-term business
success”.
“
Affective commitment
Affective commitment
to a brand is a stronger
predictor of repurchase
intention and brand
advoc acy than customer
delight. Evidence suggests
that connectedness
between customers and
service employees can shift
to a brand or service.”
According to the authors: “Affective commitment
to a brand is a stronger predictor
of repurchase intention and brand advocacy
than customer delight. Evidence suggests
that connectedness between customers and
service employees can shift to a brand or
service.”
As Chylinski describes it, “delighting the
customer is not all it’s cracked up to be”.
“Delighting the customer is also costly
for a business,” he says, noting that it often requires
significant resources and in many cases
the feeling of delight is difficult to repeat.
“So when you understand that it doesn’t
have as much of an impact on loyalty as
befriending a customer and building relationships,
it is probably something of a misguided
approach.
“Every firm has limited resources and has
to invest them in the most effective way, and
though delighting customers will generate
happiness, it won’t necessarily generate a lot
of loyalty.”
By delivering “delight”, adds Chylinski,
businesses run the risk of “setting the bar too
high”.
“Not only do you have to anticipate the
customers’ preferences, but you have to exceed
them every time you interact and that is
very difficult for businesses to achieve.
“As what you deliver increases in its quality
and delight, the customers will simply
adjust to getting additional benefits and
[expect] them. So in many ways it puts you in
a constant arms race against the customers’
expectations,” says Chylinski.
Relational bonds
According to Ngo, a more productive way
forward is for businesses to be more “parsimonious”
in terms of the resources they allocate.
“Our research shows that encouraging a
sense of relatedness is less costly, and more
cost effective than investing in delight,” he says.
“Delighting customers is about providing
more benefits, and that is very different to
establishing a relational bond where you show
a sense of caring.”
In creating this bond, the two major factors
were social media and positive interaction
with employees.
Social media creates a community in
which people are able to actively participate
and find a sense of identity. It means the customer
has something of themselves invested in
the brand, and is a key part of the engagement.
Employees are also critical points of contact
who, in many situations, are the brand’s
key representatives.
“A brand is an abstract form of relationship,”
says Chylinski.
“The most concrete relationship is between
the customer and employee, and that is
the starting point for the relationship with the
brand.
“Businesses still have to provide quality
services and products, but the lesson is that
the best way to form lasting loyalty is to foster
this sense of relatedness, and invest in building
these relationships.”
This article was first published in Business
Think, the online business analysis journal of
UNSW Business School.
WESTERN SYDNEY BUSINESS ACCESS SEPTEMBER 2015
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Celebrating 20 Years 1995 – 2015
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If you would like further information, please
contact Judy Holman, Business Partnership
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or phone (02) 4736 0388.
13

HANDS OFF HOLROYD
Thousands of Holroyd community members have said
NO to forced mergers.
Some 87% of residents surveyed said NO to amalgamation.
You sent a clear message to Holroyd City Council and we have taken
your call to the State Government in our
‘Fit for the Future’ submission.
Holroyd Council’s submission to IPART proves it is ‘Fit for the Future’.
Holroyd meets all seven Fit for the Future benchmarks as a
‘Stand Alone’ Council. The proposed Mega Council would only meet
three benchmarks.
The Mega Council would take the local out of local government.
Thousands have supported the ‘Hands off Holroyd’ campaign and it is
not too late to have your say.
What you can do:
Sign the Hands off Holroyd petition at
www.handsoffholroyd.com.au or at our
Council Chambers or any of Holroyd’s libraries.
Write to NSW Minister for Local Government
Hon. Paul Toole at paul.toole@parliament.nsw.gov.au
letting him know how you feel about Holroyd being
wiped off the map or The Hon. Paul Toole,
Suite 1 & 2, 229 Howick St,
Bathurst NSW 2795
www.handsoffholroyd.com.au
14 WESTERN SYDNEY BUSINESS ACCESS SEPTEMBER 2015

NEWS
WWW.WSBA.COM.AU
All eyes on Wentworthville transformation
TOWN CENTRES
By Holroyd City Council Mayor
Clr Greg Cummings
WITH Holroyd continuing to experience
a development boom estimated
to reach $1.257 billion, I am now urging
local businesses to get involved
and have their say on the exciting revitalisation
and renewal of the Wentworthville Town
Centre.
As part of our Wentworthville Centre
Revitalisation Project, Council is working on a
planning strategy based on expert studies and
community consultation which will enable
us to identify a shared vision for the future of
Wentworthville’s Town Centre.
This includes understanding both the
challenges and opportunities for Wentworthville
over the coming years and providing
the framework to successfully deliver the
new infrastructure, amenities, facilities and
development opportunities to stimulate local
business and meet the needs of the area’s
rapidly-growing population.
Council has already completed Stage One
of the project’s community consultation phases,
which have formed the basis for detailed
work carried out by specialist consultants,
focusing on traffic and transport solutions,
urban design and economic feasibility.
We are now finalising the planning strategy
that will bring all of these elements together
and will set the direction for the future development
and revitalisation of Wentworthville’s
main centre.
The strategy will include two options for
the proposed built form of the centre, civic
improvements and open space and traffic
management measures, which will provide us
Wentworthville is set for revitalisation.
with a detailed picture of the Wentworthville
of tomorrow.
Feedback from businesses and local
residents will help Council make potential
changes to our planning controls and allow us
to attract new businesses and visitors into the
heart of Wentworthville, create new jobs and
open the door to a greater variety of housing
supply.
The strategy will be released for public
comment by the end of September and will be
able to be viewed at the Council offices, any of
the branch libraries, or on our website at www.
holroyd.nsw.gov.au
I am pleased to report that Wentworthville
is the second major urban redevelopment
project being undertaken by Council, with
current plans for the revitalisation of the Merrylands
CBD, well underway.
The objectives of the Merrylands project
are to significantly improve the retail, commercial
and residential fabric of the Merrylands
City Centre and activate pedestrian and
shopper access from the traditional Merrylands
Road shopping strip through to the
recently completed Stockland Mall development.
Under the project, Council aims to create
a modern, new city centre including parking
for 875 cars; the extension and widening of
Main Lane; the upgrading of streets, laneways,
and lighting and landscaping and improved
stormwater infrastructure.
This will transform the city square into
new, open space where the people who live,
work and visit Merrylands can meet, relax and
interact and there will be easier connections to
local bus and train interchanges.
Wentworthville township in need of rejuvenation.
The project will also create new mixed
development opportunities, in line with
Council’s Local Environmental Planning
(LEP) Policy and Development Control Plan
2013 and deliver much-needed infrastructure
to support Holroyd’s rapidly-growing population
Ṅew, sustainable developments, within
the allowable uses of the LEP will support the
ongoing revitalisation and reinvigoration of
Holroyd, potentially providing an additional
20,000 dwellings across the Holroyd Local
Government Area that will provide flow-on
economic benefits across the whole community.
That’s why it’s important that businesses
and local residents get involved and help play
a part in securing Holroyd’s future development.
Cumberland Business Chamber sponsors
WESTERN SYDNEY BUSINESS ACCESS SEPTEMBER 2015
15

COMMENTARY
WWW.WSBA.COM.AU
Step forward in Parramatta Square project
DEVELOPMENT
By Clr Scott Lloyd
Parramatta City Mayor
THE Parramatta Square development
has entered an exciting new phase following
the appointment of Walker
Corporation to undertake the two largest
stages of the urban renewal project.
Walker Corporation will develop Stage
2 of Parramatta Square – the landmark
Aspire residential tower, and Stages 5 and 6
- dual commercial towers that will provide
highly sought after A-Grade office space in
the heart of the Parramatta CBD.
Work on the two projects is set to
commence in the coming weeks following
handover of the sites. DAs for the
demolition of Council’s former administration
building and the Civic Place library
building were approved in May to enable
Council to provide the sites ‘shovel ready’
once developers had been selected.
The Aspire tower will be the tallest residential
building in NSW, rising to a height
of at least 68 levels, and could rival the tallest
buildings in Australia pending negotiations
between Walker Corporation and the
Federal Civil Aviation Safety Authority for
approval to exceed the existing flight path
ceiling.
The building will include up to 700
apartments, a hotel and retail spaces and
will be the centrepiece of the Parramatta
Square development.
The dual towers of Parramatta Square
Stages 5 and 6 will be state-of-the-art, sustainable
buildings offering premium, adaptable
office space as well as more than 3,000
square metres of high-quality retail space.
Walker Corporation will manage residential
sales and leasing arrangements for
the buildings, and is already in discussion
with prospective commercial tenants.
The combined value of the developments
is approximately $1.2 billion and
they account for around 70% of Parramatta
Square.
Development Applications for both
projects are expected to be lodged with
Council by the end of this year and construction
is expected to commence in 2016.
Parramatta City Council’s administration
offices and the Parramatta Library will
eventually relocate into Parramatta Square
once the development is complete. Tenders
for Stage 3 of the project have now
closed and Council is assessing a number of
submissions.
Council’s presence in Parramatta Square
will add to a strong portfolio of property
and investments, with our assets currently
valued at more than $5 billion.
Contrary to suggestions from some
of our neighbouring councils, Parramatta
City Council is in a very strong financial
position and in the financial year ending
30 June 2015 our revenues grew by $20.2
million, despite annual rates increases having
remained capped at around the rate of
inflation for the past five years.
At the same time, we have significantly
boosted our investment in the community
through spending increases on infrastructure
and service provision while still delivering
a budget surplus in 2014-15.
Council stands by its economic record
and our financial results show that Parramatta
is performing strongly.
We are dedicated to doing the best job
we can for our residents and ensuring that
we continue to deliver quality services and
infrastructure well into the future.
Artist impression of Parramatta Square.
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16 WESTERN SYDNEY BUSINESS ACCESS SEPTEMBER 2015

COMMENTARY
The 3 Cs - communication, capability and confidence
SUCCESS KEYS
By Hardeep Girn
Managing Director Know My Business
SEPTEMBER’S Greater Western Sydney
Regional Roundtable was recently held at
the St Leonards campus of the Northern
Sydney Institute (NSI) Part of TAFE
NSW.
This round table was the first to be held
outside of Western Sydney with most of those
participating from other areas of Sydney and
the Central Coast.
Members of the round table were from
across a number of industries, including
education, human resources, recruitment
and training, with the theme being The Future
Employer.
One of the key areas of discussion was of
training, especially beyond the immediate
skills needed to be able to do a job.
Adjunct Professor Dr. Jim Taggart probed
the panelists on whether the responsibility
on training rested on the employee or the
employer.
Alison Wood, Institute Director for NSI,
pointed out there was also the Government’s
role in making the Australian work force competitive
in the Global Village.
The round table gave considerable insights
into how the demand for better-trained staff
required commitment in allocating training
budgets.
By providing more training opportunities,
studies have shown increases in job satisfaction
and staff retention.
Further discussion followed at the macro
level, on the impact of foreign students and
overseas workers competing for Australian jobs.
Access to information and education has
been become easier for many societies, including
those in Australia.
The round table discussed the real need
to devote more corporate funding to putting
emphasis on keeping the workforce skilled
and relevant in changing industries.
It was argued, to gain the competitive advantage
with highly skilled staff and attracting
the best talent, training needed to go beyond
core skills.
During the discussion, each panelist was
asked what he or she saw as core skills employers
expect employees to have.
The pre-requisite in any role in business
are the 3 C’s, namely Communication, Capability
and Confidence.
During 2014, we saw a significant deficiency
in the ability of staff and owners of
businesses having strong levels of these core
skills. Maybe part of this has been due to the
slow down in society using face-to-face or
phone conversation to gain outcomes.
We’re currently in the Ocean of Online,
where growing emphasis is placed on social
media and other digital channels to interact
with prospects, referrals and suppliers.
Sigman research undertaken in 2009
pointed out we started spending more time
interacting with digital electronic devices than
in human face-to-face interaction in 1997.
And using this research, McCrindle Research
has commentated on the considerable
gap that has continued to grow since that time.
Back at the round table, I talked about
these soft skills being the competitive advantage
that most businesses needed.
Technical skills today are far more commoditised,
and overseas markets are building the
knowledge as well as continuing to leverage their
lower cost of labour and economies of scale.
WWW.WSBA.COM.AU
To remain competitive, we need a clear
point of difference.
So, as part of the need to stay ahead in an
increasingly competitive environment, Know
My Business has developed the Mastering
Business Introductions short course in collaboration
with the Northern Sydney Institute Part
of TAFE NSW.
Both organisations share a common vision
to help people and businesses unlock their
career or business potential.
Today, collaboration is the key to success
and together we can deliver meaningful learning
experiences, which will enhance the way
you do business in an unpredictable business
environment.
The Mastering Business Introductions
course is relevant for front line staff and senior
managers that engage with prospects, referrals
partners and suppliers. Held monthly, the
course will be delivered during a half-day
classroom setting at the St Leonards campus
of the Northern Sydney Institute. Concepts
that will be taught include how to:
• Understand the purpose and apply
the concept of ‘value proposition’
• Gain confidence through an improved
ability to have meaningful
conversations
• Be better prepared with introductions
and meetings through upfront
research
• Learn how to establish trust in relationships
through conversation
• Understand the impact of tone of
voice
• Understand and identify critical roles
in business conversations
• Learn how to make effective business
introductions.
To register for the course or more information
you can visit www.knowmybusiness.com.au/training
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WESTERN SYDNEY BUSINESS ACCESS SEPTEMBER 2015
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INTELLIGENCE
Lessons learnt from
business to the cloud
TECHNOLOGY
By Ben Shields, Lisa Stribley and
Kate Hill (Deloitte Private partners)
THE pace of change in the small business
technology space in recent years has been
nothing short of phenomenal.
Sparked by the possibilities of cloudbased
technologies and fuelled by small
business owners’ desire to create efficiency
and competitive advantage the breadth and
depth of areas that
can be accessed and
the maturity of those
offerings, is continuing
to gather pace.
The benefits
available to business
owners across their
business is to create
superior experiences
from their customers,
improve the efficiency
of their client facing
staff, make their
supply chain more
efficient or to simply
save time, lower costs,
and run their business
on data instead
of gut instinct, makes
the move to the cloud
a compelling one.
For most, it
should be a question
of which services
first and how, not if
a move to the cloud
makes sense.
Most business
owners can relate to
the desire to spend
less time on day-today
transactions,
paying staff and suppliers,
and scrambling
to balance the books
at the end of each
month.
Business owners
need access to
live and up-to-themoment
financial information to enable them
to have a real-time view of their financial
performance.
This can change the way they think about
their business and, in particular, the decisions
they make and the timeliness with which
they act to optimise the performance of their
business.
Key learnings for migrating a
business to the cloud are:
Businesses constantly change and grow
so it is important to put thought into your
architecture – that is, the combination of
software tools you might need to effectively
run the business. Consider carefully your current
business processes – and which of these
could be replaced or streamlined. Ensure you
choose the right tool for your business – the
right ones should allow you to work smarter,
more efficiently and more collaboratively with
your team, your advisors and your customers.
The beauty of an ‘open’ architecture means
that you can choose to change or upgrade
your toolkit as your business needs change.
Having a snapshot of your business performance
provides analytics and insights
which help business owners make sound
decisions – as they need to be made. Ensure
the cloud service you choose has an intuitive
dashboard and connects to your chosen software
tools or apps which allow you to review
key metrics in real time. There are hundreds
of business apps, both financial and nonfinancial,
which are compatible and relatively
easy to use. Research of the right app is also
simple as they can come ‘pre-packaged’ into
categories such as staff, customers, suppliers,
marketing, products and finances etc. And at
the core of the system, everyday transaction
management such as the processing of supplier
invoices and payments and management
of your business’s general ledger is what you
need from the cloud.
Researching a reputable software
provider is valuable. Look at what your
business needs and really think about which of
the online tools and app options are right for
your business. You may be looking at different
payroll systems for example. Understand the
pros and cons of each and apply these to your
business model – what are your ‘must haves’
versus your ‘nice to haves’? Also think about
the future add-ons you may need in addition
to your accounting ledger such as a CRM,
a specialist inventory management system,
or a point of sale system, and make sure the
choices you make as you begin building your
toolbox will allow you to integrate additional
apps and scale into the future. And of course,
data storage and security is critical. Where is
your data stored, how secure is it, who owns it
and is it accessible?
Most cloud tools have an online
subscription payments model and fixed
monthly fees. But what about the support
services you require around these tools
– bookkeeping, accounting and business
advice? The right service and software / advisor
package will make it easier for businesses
to manage their cash flow and ensure business
owners have a real-time view of their financial
position and performance anywhere, anytime
and on any device.
Don’t expect that simply moving your
current financial data set up into a cloud
environment is going to provide overnight
benefits. Take the transition as an opportunity
to really review your business processes and
financial settings, and engage the right team
to take you into your new environment. The
right advisors will have made these transitions
a core part of their advisory services, and they
will have seen the mistakes made by others
and will ensure you don’t make them again.
18 WESTERN SYDNEY BUSINESS ACCESS SEPTEMBER 2015

WELCOME
By David Pring
Welcome to this month’s family business feature. As the national gold sponsor of
Family Business Australia, KPMG was delighted to be part of their annual conference
for the 11 th consecutive year. This month’s feature includes a summary
of the conference highlights. Good communication in family businesses is the
BF
FAMILY
BUSINESS
WESTERN SYDNEY
topic of our second article this month. Following on nicely from that theme is an article
on family meetings and the challenges of getting them right so that they are effective. As
always, if you’d like to discuss any of the topics in this month’s feature please feel free to
contact me directly on 9455 9996 or da vidpring@kpmg.com.au.
Rating your FB communication
FEEDBACK
WHEN assisting family businesses to
resolve their issues, we often interview
family members and pose the question:
How would you rate the level and quality
of communication amongst family members?
Recent interviews with two brothers in
one family business elicited these responses:
“Things are only communicated on a
need-to-know basis or unless it is a personal
grievance which then manifests in an
argument or disagreement.”
“It has been difficult. I would say 6 (rating
from 1 to 10) but everyone is walking
on eggshells. If we aren’t talking about
work it is more like an 8.”
Miscommunication is a common issue in
family businesses. Sure, it can be an issue in
any business; however where family businesses
differ is the layer of emotion, familiarity and
family dynamics that come with conversations
and decision making.
When asked about communication,
family members are proud to report that “yes,
we talk all the time”. But when you scratch
below the surface, a different picture emerges.
Yes they talk, but have difficulty communicating
effectively about issues that concern
them and do not have the means of separating
family, business and ownership issues… they
are muddled together.
So what is the answer? In the interests of
maintaining harmony, some families fall into
the trap of using the ‘silent treatment’.
For example, the first generation family
owner won’t discuss leadership of the business
in the next generation of future ownership.
The issue isn’t resolved; it just simmers below
the surface, creates tension and builds to a
head over time.
“I will inherit this business but our
future direction is unclear…it’s all in dad’s
head.” (Quote from second generation family
member).
“What am I working towards? I have my
own aspirations” (Quote from second generation
family member).
On the issue of silence, many family members
wrongly conclude that silence equals
agreement.
When no one in the family voices disagreement
to an idea or plan, some family
members assume everyone else is on side.
“Things are only
communicated on a needto-know
basis or unless
it is a personal grievance
which then manifests in an
argument or disagreement.”
In this scenario different family dynamics
are at play: the first born family member
assuming they are the decision maker for the
family; the passive family members who want
everyone to be happy; the family member
seeing it as a sign of disrespect to question the
family business founder who has provided the
family with so much; or the family business
leader who is sensitive to other family members
asking questions, seeing it as a sign of mistrust.
KPMG’s role is often focused on assisting
the family to make a progressive shift from
‘talking all the time’ to effective communication.
Here is some food for thought:
Effective communication is the sending
and receiving of messages. However, often we
focus more on the sending part: ‘we need to
communicate more’ is misconstrued as meaning
‘we need to give more information’. But to
foster effective inter-personal communication,
attentive listening is paramount.
Listening is greatly facilitated when the
message is transmitted in a proper manner.
The message is often lost due to the familiarity
of family member relationships i.e. “oh they
aren’t arguing, they always deal with each
other like that”.
Mean what you say – be open and
transparent with respect to your intentions,
motivations, views and reasons for taking a
certain position on an issue.
Robust debate between family members
with differing views can be a good thing provided
it is constructive and respectful.
Engaging family members in some key
decisions not only improves the quality of the
decision, but also enhances the satisfaction
and motivation of all concerned – even when
the decision taken is not necessarily favourable
to them.
Tension and disagreement amongst
family members on family related business
issues and ownership is ‘normal’, if not
inevitable, regardless of how harmonious the
family is.
The key is how the family effectively communicates
to address the issue so it doesn’t
become deep-seated and cast a cloud over
family relationships and decision making in
the family business.
Learning to better communicate is a fundamental
element for family business success.
17 th Annual Family Business Conference
SUCCESS
THE 17 th annual FBA conference, held on
the Gold Coast last week, was attended by
over 400 delegates from across the country.
Family businesses really are the backbone
of the economy and it’s at this conference
where that fact becomes clearly evident.
The conference included a presentation
from Kirsten Grant Meikle of William Grant
&Sons, Glenfiddich Distillery – a 125 year
old fifth generation family owned business;
what an amazing success story.
Dr Lee Hausner, an internationally renowned
psychologist who works with family
businesses spoke about how to articulate a
collective vision and aspiration for the future
which can be embraced by all family members.
Sally Paech of Beerenberg spoke about
the success of the company’s rebranding
exercise and KPMG’s Dominic Pelligana gave
a great presentation with the title ‘Are you
equipped to navigate your family business in a
Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous
(VUCA) environment?
KPMG was pleased to again host the Next
Generation dinner, an opportunity for those
who will in time lead Australia’s leading family
businesses, to come together, network and
share experiences.
The conference wrapped up with KPMG
hosting the Distinguished Family Business
of the Year award dinner, this year’s recipient
was Charles Parsons.
The business, now celebrating its
centenary, was founded in 1915 by Charles
Leslie Parsons. Charles Parsons and
Company remains a privately owned 4th
generation family business with a proud
heritage and diverse expertise in textiles
and fabrics.
Commencing in 1915 supplying fabrics
to suit manufacturers, Charles Parsons has
expanded across almost every category wherever
fabric or textiles are used. Congratulations
to this iconic family business.
Thinking
Beyond
today
Are you thinking
beyond today?
So are we. Talk to KPMG.
kpmg.com.au
© 2015 KPMG, an Australian partnership. All rights reserved.
WESTERN SYDNEY BUSINESS ACCESS SEPTEMBER 2015
19

BF
FAMILY
BUSINESS
WESTERN SYDNEY
WWW.WSBA.COM.AU
Do your FB meetings add value?
MANAGEMENT
A
COMMON misconception in family
businesses is that if they can communicate
effectively amongst the family
members, they are well positioned for
efficiently managing the business and achieving
their goals.
Central to the operation of any business
is bringing the management team together to
work on the business. However, what would
your response be to the following question
regarding meetings in your family business:
On a scale of 1 to 10, rate the value the
meeting adds to the business? In what ways
does it add value?
“Zero”. (Response from a family member
when in meetings with his sibling and parents).
What we often see is the ‘one in, all in’
situation. All the family members coming
together to have their say on everything… and
I mean everything.
The ‘attitude’ of the front reception
person; why cousin Steve should be employed
in the business; the purchase of a new
commercial building; the date and location
of grandma’s 90th birthday; and the declining
trend in monthly profits.
“Our family board meetings run for
about 5 hours. There is a lot of information
but little discussion, debate and
decision making”. (Response from a family
members in board meetings involving 10 family
members)
In frustration to the situation, some family
businesses adopt the ‘us and them’ approach.
Only family members actively working
day to day in the family business meet to make
decisions on the future of the business.
But what about those family members
who are shareholders but not working in the
business? Should they be privy to what is happening
and having a say in the future?
This is where structure is an important
element to success. Structure ensures the
‘right’ people come together in the ‘right’
forum to discuss the ‘right’ things, at the
‘right’ time.
But what is structure?
It is a combination of:
• The right composition of the attendees
– the people who should be
at the table making decisions regarding
the business are those who have
been charged by their stakeholders
(if a board meeting, they are voted
by the shareholders, if a management
meeting, those appointed by the
board and CEO). Having the wrong
composition of people at the table
will destine the meeting to failure.
• Regular meetings with a clear
purpose and agenda – in the family
business we often help families
establish two meetings with clearly
different purposes. One being the
business advisory/board meetings
which focus exclusively on the business
issues and decision making. The
second is a Family Council meeting
which focuses on family issues that
relate to the family business.
• Fewer family members with a
seat at the table – in the context of
the business advisory/board meeting,
those family members with the
appropriate skills, experience and
insights discussing and making business
decisions in the best interests of
the family business, and ultimately
for the wider family. Similarly for the
Family Council, the mix of family
members who represent and make
decisions in the best interests of the
whole family, not just family shareholders.
• Tools and rules – these are important
for any formal gathering of
people to: direct the discussion; set
the boundaries (or guideposts) in
terms of what topics are discussed
and what decisions can be made; and
outline how contentious issues or
scenarios will be resolved. In terms of
a family business these take the form
of Family Rules (or often referred
to as a Family Agreement or Family
Charter).
• Leadership – to set a positive tone
and ensure the meetings are focused
and remain ‘on topic’. Often this
leadership comes from a non-family
member until the family becomes
familiar with the new structure and
meeting behaviours.
In our experience, most families need
support to make the distinction between the
role of the Family Council and the Business
Board of Directors – for many families these
bodies have always been one and the same.
Once the family understands the distinction
and embraces the new structure they
benefit from a non-family member chairing
the meetings so they run smoothly and the
“
Our family board meetings
run for about 5 hours. There
is a lot of information but
little discussion, debate
and decision making”.
Do your FB meetings add
value?
family can focus on new behaviours and new
conservations.
How receptive would your family be to
an independent and objective non-family
member chairing your family meetings?
Another challenge on a daily level is
family members understanding which hat
to wear and when to wear it. Some family
members may have multiple roles in the
family business/es (i.e. they wear multiple
hats). These family members have the added
challenge of recognising which ‘hat’ to wear
in different conversations and making decisions.
“My daughter now runs the day to day
business and I talk to her every day. I need
to stop and think before the conversation:
am I offering advice as a father or am I talking
to her as a shareholder”. (Comment from
a first generation family member).
The trick is to structure and frame the
conversation/communication before going
into it. Now thinking about you… ask yourself
before the next conversation:
• Is it a family topic or an ownership
topic or a business topic?
• Should I be making the decision as
a family member; an owner of the
asset; or an employee/director of
the business?
If family members individually and collectively
exhibit effective communication
and embrace structure then the family is well
on the way to good family governance.
Are your family meetings a one in, all in,
an ‘us and them’ or a clear structure which all
family members understand and observe?
Big business could learn lessons from f amily businesses
EXPERIENCE
BIG business could learn survival lessons
from family businesses, according to a
report.
Family businesses are less likely to
fail than big business because they are usually
made up of a well-functioning and diverse
board of directors who are able to advise effectively,
according to a report published by
researchers from Imperial College Business
School, Leeds University Business School and
Durham University Business School.
The researchers found that family businesses
were less likely to go bankrupt because they
are able to recruit and maintain an experienced,
diverse and knowledgeable board of directors.
The team also found that 80 percent of
family owned businesses are more gender balanced,
having at least one female director.
Professor Mike Wright, Director of the
Centre for Management Buyout Research
(CMBOR) at Imperial College Business
School, said: ”Running a successful business
of any size is no easy task and this year we have
already seen some high-profile businesses
such as Comet being forced to close. Family
businesses could provide lessons to larger
firms, as our findings show that a more diverse
and experienced board of directors, which are
prevalent in family firms, could be related to
reducing failures in businesses.”
The board of directors in a company provide
advice and direction to management. It is
responsible for ensuring that companies fulfil
their mission statement.
They also provide advice to executives if
they see the company drifting away from its
goals and objectives.
The study found that the diversity of the
boards of family businesses means that they
are more stable.
Surprisingly, the team found that this
limits conflict between board members. This
diversity also means that board members have
a wider skill set making them more able to address
potential threats to the survival of family
businesses. This is in comparison to other
private firms where board turnover is higher.
The team found that these boards also ensure
that family firms, which often have to rely
on internal sources for financing of projects,
are more frugal in their spending.
They scrutinise business opportunities
with greater intensity and take fewer business
risks than private firms.
The study highlighted the fact that familyorientated
goals such as preserving unity,
wealth and providing employment for family
members may also contribute to their survival.
To carry out their research, the team
analysed data of over 700,000 medium and
large private family and non-family firms with
at least 50 employees.
20 WESTERN SYDNEY BUSINESS ACCESS SEPTEMBER 2015

Thinking
Beyond
today
Positioning for continued success in a rapidly changing
environment means thinking beyond today’s business models.
KPMG’s Private Enterprise group works with family businesses
to help them envision what tomorrow might look like.
We help them harness innovation to enhance productivity, reduce
costs and develop new products and services.
We think big and we think long-term, just like you do.
Contact David Pring on 9455 9996 or
Leanne Hegarty on 9335 7397.
kpmg.com/au/familybusiness
© 2015 KPMG, an Australian partnership. All rights reserved. August 2015. VICN13132PE.
WESTERN SYDNEY BUSINESS ACCESS SEPTEMBER 2015
21

BF
FAMILY
BUSINESS
WESTERN SYDNEY
WWW.WSBA.COM.AU
De-facto or marriage?
Do you know the
difference?
CIRCUMSTANCES
By Chelsea Winter
Solicitor Watts McCray
WE have previously discussed the important
business considerations that
are necessary and essential when first
commencing a business and the importance
of pre-planning should events such
as the death of the business owner occur.
Another important consideration must be
to consider your personal circumstances and
current relationships.
Most people are unaware that important
legal consequences could follow if you are
entering into a de facto relationship, getting
married, or having an affair.
It is clear to most that marriage creates
legal consequences but this is also true for de
facto relationships and even affairs.
When clients who are married or in a de
facto relationship, and have had an affair at
work, they may come to seek legal advice as
the relationship has broken down.
However, they have not been fully
informed of the consequences flowing from
their actions, and how that impact upon the
advice they may receive as a result of the
breakdown of the relationship.
What is a de facto relationship?
So, what is a de facto relationship?
In the past, what constitutes a de facto
relationship, and the legal implications which
arise as a result of being involved in a de facto
relationship, have been widely defined and
have varied between states and territories
within Australia.
These include definitions contained in
Commonwealth or territory legislation, including
but not limited to the Family Law Act
1975 (Cth) and the De Facto Relationships
Act 2011 (NT). However, most definitions include
that a de facto relationship is a relationship
between:
• Two adults (over the age of 18 years);
• Who are not legally married to each
other; and
• Are not related by family; and
• Having regard to all the circumstances
of their relationship, they have a relationship
as a couple living together
on a genuine domestic basis.
The law that currently applies to de facto
relationships has largely rectified these past
inconsistencies in the law. Under the current
law, certain persons leaving an unsuccessful
de facto relationship can pursue property
settlements in much the same way as married
couples who have separated, relying on the
same law and using the same court systems
“In the past, what
constitutes a de facto
relationship, and the legal
implications which arise as
a result of being involved
in a de facto relationship,
have been widely defined
and have varied between
states and territories within
Australia. “
(excluding Western Australia).
This includes same sex de facto couples
and couples who may not necessarily have
lived together during the relationship.
The family law court will consider the
tenure of the relationship, the financial dependency
on the parties and the public reputation
of the relationship.
Taking all the above into consideration,
you may in fact be in a de facto relationship
which can have legal and financial consequences.
What can you do to
protect yourself?
You may wish to enter into a binding
financial agreement (BFA) to prevent future
disputes and create certainty.
By entering into a BFA, more commonly
known as a prenuptial agreement or ‘pre-nup’,
you can determine before commence a relationship
(whether to marry, or to live together
as de facto couples) how your assets will be allocated
should your relationship break down,
and you prevent any financial or property
dispute from ending up in Court.
Prenuptial agreements law can be found
within the Family Law Act 1975 (Cth). If you
and your future partner/ spouse wish to make
a prenuptial agreement in Sydney, we can ensure
that it is binding and legal in accordance
with the law.
What are the consequences
if you commenced the
relationship without a BFA?
Binding financial agreements can also be
made during a relationship/ marriage, and
upon the breakdown of a relationship/ marriage.
At Watts McCray, we specialize in
prenuptial agreements and other financial
agreements for couples who want their individual
and shared interests to be similarly
protected.
Importance of considering a BFA
For those people who have been in
unsuccessful relationships before, or who
perhaps have significant wealth prior to entering
into a relationship/ marriage, or who
simply desire the certainty of knowing they
will not end up in Court fighting over the
division of assets if a relationship does not
work out, well drafted prenuptial agreements
by lawyers can be very useful and welcomed
legal documents.
If you are a business owner, a BFA is
something that you should consider entering
into as a relationship breakdown could have
significant consequences for your business.
The business may be an asset that has to be
divided in any property settlement following a
breakup of the relationship.
Therefore, it is essential owners to turn
their mind to considering whether a BFA
is something that they should enter into to
protect the future of their business.
22 WESTERN SYDNEY BUSINESS ACCESS SEPTEMBER 2015

Legal solutions
delivered differently
Watts McCray Lawyers – legal specialists for
individuals, small to medium and corporate
enterprises that require tailored legal solutions
delivered differently.
To know more go to www.wattsmccray.com.au
WESTERN SYDNEY BUSINESS ACCESS SEPTEMBER 2015
23

PARRAMATTA’S VISION FOR
A SMART FUTURE
PARRAMATTA CITY COUNCIL HAS
ADOPTED A SMART CITY MASTERPLAN
WHICH WILL GUIDE THE INTEGRATION
OF LEADING-EDGE TECHNOLOGY AND
FUTURE TOWN PLANNING DESIGNS IN
NEW DEVELOPMENTS ACROSS THE CITY,
INCLUDING THE $2 BILLION PARRAMATTA
SQUARE PROJECT.
Council has appointed a dedicated Strategic
Project Officer to implement the blueprint
and oversee the roll-out of future Smart City
initiatives.
“With so much urban renewal taking place
across the city, Parramatta City Council is
determined to be a leader when it comes to
finding innovative solutions,” Lord Mayor of
Parramatta Cr Scott Lloyd said.
“The Masterplan will position Parramatta
to become Australia’s next great city, and a
world-class Smart City.”
Chairman of the Parraconnect Committee
and Deputy Lord Mayor of Parramatta
Cr Steven Issa said council was actively
promoting private and public collaboration
in the development of Parramatta’s Smart
City program.
“Parramatta throughout the ages has
been known as a place of major trade and
innovation. Our new Smart City program will
enable research institutions, businesses,
residents and the City Council to collaborate
on tech solutions to improve the quality of
life and accelerate economic growth in our
region,” Cr Issa said.
Previously a strategic partnerships
consultant for the National Retailers’
Association and Director of Executive
Women Australia, Tara Cheesman is
Australia’s first local government appointed
Strategic Smart City Officer.
“Parramatta’s Smart City initiatives will
enable us to become a well-connected,
prosperous and resilient city,” Ms Cheesman
said.
“Our new Smart City program will provide
us with the perfect engagement tools and
platforms to source the best ideas and
technologies to make it easier for people to
connect, share, collaborate, and innovate.
The program will allow us to evaluate
applicable technologies to improve the city’s
liveability, sustainability, and develop local
attractions.”
Parramatta’s Smart City Masterplan and
Tara’s role will ensure that Parramatta is
competing on a global stage. By joining
the global Smart City ISO standards,
Parramatta will soon be able to compare its
‘smart’ efforts against Amsterdam, London,
Barcelona, Melbourne and Brisbane.
Potential Smart City initiatives include open
data, a state-of-the-art library of the future,
a new Discovery Centre, street sign way
finders and free public WiFi.
UWS’s timely move to a vertical campus
on Parramatta Square with 10,000 ‘techsavvy’
students will also enable Council to
progress healthy discussions on the future
needs of the city.
PARRAMATTA’S STRONG
FINANCIAL POSITION
PARRAMATTA CITY COUNCIL CONTINUES TO RECORD STRONG
FINANCIAL GROWTH AS THE CITY CEMENTS ITS POSITION AS
SYDNEY’S DUAL CBD.
Announcing Council’s unaudited financial results for the year ended
30 June 2015, Lord Mayor of Parramatta Cr Scott Lloyd said revenues
grew by $20.2m despite Parramatta’s annual rates increase being
capped at 2.3%.
This is the fifth consecutive year that Parramatta rate increases have
been kept roughly in line with inflation, compared to neighbouring
councils. Parramatta’s strong financial position provides a platform
for further reinvestment in the local community. During 2014-15
Council increased its investment in infrastructure such as roads,
bridges and footpaths by more than $45m. Spending on communitybased
services increased by more than $20m, almost 10%.
“These results show that Parramatta has performed strongly,
is growing its revenue and is controlling costs at a time when it
continues to provide increased services for the community,” Cr Lloyd
said. “The growth in revenue is a result of increased investment in
the City reflecting the confidence investors have in Parramatta as
Sydney’s second CBD.”
Council’s balance sheet has grown significantly over the financial
year with investments increasing by $130m. Total assets have been
valued at more than $5billion compared to $3.9billion in 2013-14. Net
Operating Result after removing capital income and other one-off
items doubled over the previous year to finish with a small surplus
while Council’s net cash position is positive by $126m.
PARRAMATTA LANES
Parramatta City Council is determined to be a leader
when it comes to finding innovative solutions.
www.cityofparramatta.com.au
Tara Cheesman is Australia’s first local government
appointed Strategic Smart City Officer.
DISCOVER A NEW TASTE AROUND EVERY CORNER AND A WORLD
OF TEMPTING DELIGHTS AS PARRAMATTA LANES RETURNS TO
BRING FOOD, ART AND MUSIC TO THE HIDDEN CORNERS OF
PARRAMATTA FROM TUESDAY 6 OCTOBER TO FRIDAY 9 OCTOBER,
5-10PM.
Featuring eight themed lanes, you will find diverse flavours and
surprising performances from Seoul town to the hidden bazaar,
boutique beer gardens and the Italian piazza. The festival showcases
gourmet street food, pop-up bars, art installations and live music,
plus this year as part of the Sydney Morning Herald Good Food
Month we are excited to host Shoot The Chef 2015, presented by
Clique Photographers Association.
See the full program at parramattalanes.com.au
Content on this page is sponsored by Parramatta City Council in the interests of informing residents and businesses of Council initiatives and events. Any views expressed on this page are not
necessarily those of WSBA, now does WSBA accept any responsibility for claims made on this page.
24 WESTERN SYDNEY BUSINESS ACCESS SEPTEMBER 2015

Welcome to the Greater Western Sydney Regional Round
Table (GWSRR). The GWSRR is an initiative of Adjunct
Professor Jim Taggart OAM and Western Sydney Business
Access. Its purpose is to bring together people of influence to
capture and share insights about issues that shape the region.
Members of the GWSRR meet in a private board room setting.
The theme for this GWSRR was Future Employer and was
sponsored by Know My Business. Photos are by Melinda Hird
and transcription services by Ausflare. The venue was the
Northern Sydney Institute of TAFE.
FUTURE EMPLOYER
David Pring, KPMG
MY 3 CRITICAL SKILLS
Change Management,
Open-Mindedness and
Communication.
Tom Graham, Black
Financial Services
MY 3 CRITICAL SKILLS
Attitude, Interpersonal
and Analytical.
Alison Wood, TAFE NSI
MY 3 CRITICAL SKILLS
Capability,
Interpersonal,
and Analytical.
Nicole Karagiannis,
Calvary Health Care
MY 3 CRITICAL SKILLS
Communication,
Feedback and Learning.
Hardeep Girn, Know My
Business
MY 3 CRITICAL SKILLS
Confidence,
Capability and
Conversation.
Scott Henshaw,
Forsythe Recruitment
MY 3 CRITICAL SKILLS
Communication,
Team Player and
Intelligence.
Michael Walls, WSBA
MY 3 CRITICAL SKILLS
Critical Thinking,
Communication and
Adaptability.
Jim Taggart, GWSRR
Chairman
MY 3 CRITICAL SKILLS
Interpersonal,
Adaptability
and Team Player.
Jim Taggart: Well, good afternoon. A very
warm welcome to each and every one of you.
On behalf of Access I extend a vote of thanks
for you giving your time today. In particular
I would like to acknowledge Know My Business.
Hardeep, thank you for your support and
friendship in today’s event. Your support in
the community, both from a business perspective
and a community perspective, is most
welcome and does not go without us saying
thank you personally and also collectively
on behalf of people, particularly in Western
Sydney. Quite interestingly, today is National
Skills Week so it is fitting that we have this
round table at this time. Before we start, we do
a quick introduction of what we do and who
we are and how we fit into today’s events. So,
may I start with you, please?
Nicole Karagiannis: I’m Nicole Karagiannis,
National HR Manager for Calvary
Health Care. It’s a not for profit organisation
of four streams – private/public hospitals,
retirement communities and community
care. And I look after the 11 private hospitals
from an HR sense. So, quite excited to be here
today, talking about the role of the employer
into the future for my own purposes in my
profession.
Jim Taggart: Thanks Nicole.
Good afternoon everyone. My name is
Scott Henshaw. I’m a director of a recruitment
firm called Forsythe’s. We have offices in
Sydney, but also on the Central Coast, Newcastle
and in the Hunter Valley. We provide a
diverse array of recruitment solutions in both
a permanent and temporary capacity, and do
a lot in the organisational development of HR
consultant space as well.
Jim Taggart: Thank you, Scott. Michael?
Michael Walls: I’m Michael Wall, publisher
of Western Sydney Business Access.
We’ve been doing these Round Tables now for
about four years. We’ve had about 25 of them.
They’re very successful and very popular in
the newspaper. And thanks again to Hardeep
for sponsoring this one – also for David Pring
of KPMG and yourself, Jim, for chairing it.
Jim Taggart: Thank you.
Hardeep Girn: Hardeep Girn, Managing
Director for Know My Business. We help
companies get to introduced to other companies,
looking for prospects, referral partners
and for suppliers. And, today’s session is really
for us to talk about how we’ve partnered up
with and collaborated with Northern Sydney
Institute on a course that will be hosted here at
the St Leonards facility in the coming months.
So, I’m really looking forward to that relationship
forming and growing over time, and also
in discussion for today.
Jim Taggart: Thank you, Hardeep. David?
David Pring: Hi. David Pring. I lead
KPMG’s office in Western Sydney, based in
Parramatta, wishing to grow and be relevant
to companies in the Western Sydney region as
they grow, innovate and manage their risk. So,
we would help them with all of those areas.
Jim Taggart: Thank you, David. Tom?
Tom Graham: Tom Graham, Black Financial
Services. An extensive career in finance,
auditing and in financial planning. But, my
primary role here today would be more about
my/our role as a Financial Adviser for corporate
superannuation plans. We provide services
to large corporations on corporate superannuation.
And that involves us going to different
state offices and sites around Australia and
talking to employees when presenting seminars,
but also talking to them on an individual
basis. Obviously, financial planning is a very
personal thing. We end up talking to people
about debt management, budgeting controls,
are they happy in their environment – things
of that nature. So, I’m going to take probably a
little different view from a lot of you.
Jim Taggart: Great. Thank you, Tom.
Alison Wood: I’m Alison Wood. I’m the
Institute Director for the Northern Sydney
Institute. So that involves all the campuses in
the north and slightly north west for the metropolitan
region. There are four institutes in
the metropolitan region. So we’re one of four,
and our campuses include Hornsby, Northern
Beaches, Ryde and Meadowbank, this campus
and Crows Nest. And we also host and manage
Bradfield High School, which you may
have heard of. So, obviously, we’re the public
sector vocational training provider. And, you
know, our role is, as a public sector, is to build
a skilled workforce for the state. And we work
in a subsidised area, with government subsidies.
But we also do lots of other programs,
like Hardeep was talking about, where we
customise programs to meet actual targeted
needs. And we just work with clients to do
that. We’ve got lots of international students
and we also run out of Ryde, Le Cordon Bleu,
which is the largest Le Cordon Bleu training
facility in the world. And we’ve almost
doubled our enrolments in a couple of years
there. So, we’re doing very well in the commercial
space as well as in the public arena.
Jim Taggart: Can I say formally thank you
on behalf of today – and particularly, Know
My Business – thank you for your kind support
and friendship, both informally and formally,
for making today I think a real success.
Nicole, I’m going to ask you this question:
Why is today’s topic important to you?
Nicole Karagiannis: It’s important for I
guess the HR profession generally, to know
how they continue to fit in, in between the
employee/employer equation. So, today is important
for me from that perspective. But also
as an employer, it’s important to know what is
the changing landscape for – you know, from
a technology perspective, from a social media
perspective – and interesting from a not for
profit perspective as well. Questions for me
are:What is our presence in the social media
world? How does that fit into our value proposition?
Actually, what is our value proposition?
And given our footprint in regional locations, how
do we keep up with the technology changes that
make sure that we bring both our patients and
employees with us?
Jim Taggart: I’m going to challenge you
now. Two part question. First: Why, is there a
difference, and who does the employer represent?
Is it themselves or the employee when looking for
quality staff? Who’s the important person in that
equation?
Continued on page 26
WESTERN SYDNEY BUSINESS ACCESS SEPTEMBER 2015
25

GWSRR
“On the employer side the the employer doesn’t know what the business
will look like in five years.” - David Pring.
WWW.WSBA.COM.AU
“
In addition to all of the skills....is how
resilient is someone to working in an
environment of change. We all tend to
dislike change. We all like security.”
- David Pring.
GWSRR in action.
Continued from page 25
Nicole Karagiannis: When looking for
quality staff, the important person in that
equation is – firstly, if you look at it from the
consumer end, really, what do we do? We
offer a service for our patients or consumers.
So, they’re important – they’re the ones at
the heart of what we’re doing or looking for.
Therefore, to be looking for quality staff, we
need to have our patients’ needs at the centre
of that search, really. Secondly, our employees
or future employees our assets. So, if we’re
people in the business of looking after people,
that becomes very much our asset.
Jim Taggart: Scott how do you feel about
Nicole’s response there – you know, in terms
of employer/employee? You’re in the recruitment
industry – profession. Who is the significant
player in that relationship with you?
Scott Henshaw: My immediate thought
was: I don’t think either is more important
than the other. I mean, for a talented professional
in the market to secure a role that he
or she enjoys, is motivated and willing to
support their ongoing professional development,
it’s about finding the right employer
for them. To say that the employer is more
important than the candidate in that equation,
I just don’t think marries up. I think they are as
equally important components for the success
and longevity of the relationship.
Jim Taggart: David, you deal with a
number of organisations. How do you feel
about that, when they come to you and you’re
looking at their balance sheet and their profit
and loss and so on, and they say X, Y and Z,
does staff come up as an important part of that
equation?
David Pring: Certainly when you’re
looking at a business and the strengths of the
business, sure, you have a balance sheet and
assets. One of the big issues that always comes
up in determining the value of an organisation
is its assembled workforce. And that’s really
an intangible asset. It’s not recorded on the
balance sheet. It’s not recorded anywhere. But,
in terms of determining value, organisations
will look at what that assembled workforce is
and what the intangible value that that actually
brings – or part of the market value that forms
in addition to its assets.
Michael Walls: What does that mean –
the assembled workforce?
David Pring: The way staff is assembled,
and together, brings a value greater than
simply having a number of employees. So, that
workforce has the right skills for the organisation.
Jim Taggart: I want to impose a question:
Do employers really know what they’re
looking for?
Alison Wood: Well, I think a lot of employers
do know what they’re looking for – especially
small businesses – really small. I think
people who are recruiting apprentices, for
instance, usually know what they’re looking
for, and they have trouble finding it. But there
are changes that are happening over every industry
area. So, every industry area is basically
in transformation – the digital transformation,
apart from everything else. So, even working
out what is the best fit for recruitment, for
both the applicant and the company, is not
enough. It’s the transformation that’s happening
all the time, and it’s a constant rebooting
the workforce for the changes that are happening,
industry by industry. So, often employers
don’t know what could be happening
industry-wide. And I think that’s where we’ve
got a role because our trainers often do.
Tom Graham: It’s a very broad comment
on this. But, I’ll just give you an example of
a case when I’ve actually gone to talk to an
employee. We’ve done a presentation about
superannuation and we always have oneon-one
discussions. When they come and
sit down, we say: How’s it going? And sometimes
it’s: This is confidential, Tom. They find
themselves at times in a predicament whereby
they’re not all that happy in the environment
they’re working in. They’re not even telling
the boss about this. However, they’re caught
in a predicament. They’ve got big mortgages.
And I don’t know if you understand just how
high - the average is about $600,000 now. It’s
just ridiculous. So, they need the work. But
they’re not really happy with the environment
and they’re not really prepared to be a bit
more outspoken. I get that from just talking to
employees. I feel like I should go and talk to
their superior about it. But they’ve said: No,
this is confidential.
Tom Graham: I wouldn’t say it’s “normal”
and I’m not saying they’re necessarily disgruntled,
they just don’t think they can talk openly.
They feel it’s so sensitive to maintain that job,
they don’t even feel comfortable opening up
to the employer.
Scott Henshaw: It’s almost as if they don’t
feel that they should bring that type of subject
matter into the workforce.
Tom Graham: Yes, exactly they’re thinking
in the back of their mind: Gosh, if I lost
the job, how am I going to keep the mortgage
payments going?
Tom Graham: Yeah, exactly. Yes. Exactly.
Yeah. You know. ‘Cause they’re thinking in
the back of their mind: Gosh, if I lost the job,
how am I going to pay the – keep the mortgage
payments going?
Jim Taggart: That’s very interesting
because our current unemployment rate’s
around 6.3 and it’s rising, and that psychological
impact of keeping that job or all of those
things behind it is quite established in the
literature. Alison, can I ask you a question
here? And the question is: Is education the
leader or the reactionary to change in employment
skill development? I’m really interested in
how people view that.
Alison Wood: Probably there isn’t a
simple answer. But we would like to position
ourselves as a leader because for those
industry areas that are really finding it hard to
keep up. I’ll give you an example. We’ve got
a new degree course in IT network security.
And we’re adding the second strand to that
for 2016, which will be in data analysis. Now,
there’s not a business – a medium to large
sized business around that isn’t going to have
to get their heads around the amount of data
there is and how to use it to build your business.
So, we do need to be a leader in an area
like that, in building up workforce capability.
But, on the other hand, there are plenty of
times when an industry knows the direction
that it’s going in and it doesn’t have the right
workforce to assist it to go in that direction.
And, in that case, we have to listen to what
industry is saying and work with them to try
and upskill the workforce in the directions of
that. So, it’s both really.
Jim Taggart: And that’s quite interesting
in itself, if I can just make a brief comment
– because a number of associations in
industries are becoming RTOs themselves and
competing for that training dollar, if you like,
out there. I’m not saying that’s a good thing
or a bad thing. But it’s a phenomenon that is
out there in the marketplace that I think we
need to address later. In terms of that, Scott,
how do you feel about that? Are qualifications
critical? Or is it the skills? And if so, is there a
difference? And, what do you look for when
someone comes for – well, to seek an employment
that you’ve been given the brief by an
employer?
Scott Henshaw: Are qualifications
important? Absolutely. And I think more and
more becoming so. I think in a market that’s
highly competitive often the easiest and first
box to tick, I suppose, is: Does this person have
the relevant piece of paper that I need for them to
do this job?
Jim Taggart: And how do you do that?
Scott Henshaw: You is the key word
there. And Alison’s point earlier I think was
quite valid around this brief of seeing and
feeling a distinct trend towards the need for
business to better understand what it is they
actually want. You could argue that, not that
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GWSRR
“I think that’s the science of recruitment. Over years and years we get a gut feel
- that of intuition; when you meet someone.” - Scott Henshaw.
WWW.WSBA.COM.AU
Continued from page 26
long ago, it was easy to say: I want an auditor.
I think more and more, an understanding
of what sort of auditor with what sort of
qualifications, with what sort of experience,
with what sort of industry background, what
sort of motivators and drivers, with what sort
of a raft of different things come with that, is
becoming more and more important. As the
market arguably gets cluttered with communication
and information, before you can think
realistically about going out there and finding
what it is you like, you really need to distil that
down to, you know, a specific: This is what I
want to find.
Jim Taggart: So Scott, who creates that
brief? Can I just say, the first part of today is
really looking at just the employee/employer
relations and getting that. The second part
is really looking for the solutions of how, in
particular, TAFE can provide that. But, I’m
just really interested in the quality of that brief
– because quite often people say: I didn’t get
the person I wanted, or these things.
Scott Henshaw: Absolutely. And it’s
interesting. To Alison’s point earlier, I’m spending
more time with employers supporting them to
understand their exact requirements. There are
some great job analysis type tools out there
at the moment. I’m having open and frank
conversations with managing directors – leaders
of organisations – highly capable people,
often saying: “I’m not exactly sure what I want.
Hardeep Girn: So, I’ll ask the same question
from Jim, but in a different way. Imagine,
there’s a brief in terms of the specific skills are
required and the qualifications that might be
required for an individual. When does that
brief go over and beyond those core skills that
are required, where the employer would probably
choose somebody who has skills beyond
their role, such as social media? So, if an auditor
is doing an auditing job, do they need to
know social media? No. But, if it’s something
that is included in terms of extra value from
somebody who’s a great candidate, ticks all
the boxes in the role description of an auditor,
then what percentage of those candidates
are over and beyond the core skills needed?
Conversations that we’ve had with business,
indicate considerable crossovers exist with different
verticals and a good understanding of
where the organisation fits in the industry that
they’re in, is necessary.
Nicole Karagiannis: I don’t know that
I can put a percentage as such. But I guess
where we’re taking this conversation, we’re
taking it into the spectrum of technical and
non-technical skills, let alone the debate of
qualifications. And, even within qualifications,
there’s a debate of TAFE or Uni qualifications
– and that’s an interesting debate or discussion
to be potentially had separately. But, even
in the skills spectrum, I think employers are
looking for those technical skills or experience
Hardeep Girn.
WESTERN SYDNEY BUSINESS ACCESS SEPTEMBER 2015
Nicole Karagiannis and Scott Henshaw.
as a first. And the more astute as a leader you
are, the more you start to think about the nontechnical
space. So, that takes us right back
– so it’s a bit of a full circle – to leadership,
which is what we were touching on. If I’m
disgruntled with my leader, or if I’m a managing
director who knows what I’m looking for,
there’s leadership as a common denominator
in all the conversations we’ve had so far. So,
the more knowledgeable and the more strategic,
or the more really well rounded leader that
I am, the more open I will be to looking for
the non-technical skills, be it in social media
skills or be it, you know, the ability to, you
know, even build teams.
Scott Henshaw: EQ.
Nicole Karagiannis: EQ. Thank you. So,
someone with those skills around the ability
to rally the rest of your auditors, or the ability
to bring everyone to a more positive platform -
your engagement, your culture – they’re great
skills to finding in specific resources. But only
a great leader or an astute or open minded
leader is going to look for those, rather than:
here’s my checklist. I need someone who can do X
task and run this spreadsheet for me.So, we really
easily find ourselves in the leadership debate
or the qualification debate.
David Pring: Can I just jump in there for
a minute?
Nicole Karagiannis: Sure.
David Pring: I think a lot of those issues
that we are looking at are issues that we’ve
been dealing with and looking at in terms of
qualifications, etc. I think that the issue that
business is coming up with now, is: what’s
going to happen? Every business is disrupted
through technology, through automation,
through disaggregation of business. And what
business needs then is two additional things.
In addition to all of the skills, etc, is: how
resilient is someone to working in an environment
of change. We all tend to dislike change.
We all like security. We all like to know what’s
in it for me.
Michael Walls: Is uncertain.
David Pring: Dealing with that whole
uncertainty piece. And the level of resilience
that comes with that I think is one issue that
we have to deal with more and more.
Alison Wood: Which is also tied into
generational difference as well. And those
resilience indicators – and I’m sure that the
recruiters would identify the differences with
younger people not having particularly a lot
of resilience of having very different ways of
being brought up.
David Pring: So, that’s on the employee
side. On the employer side, the employer
doesn’t know what the business is going to
look like in five years. And so, having a workforce
that can deal with change, I think is critical.
And another skill that I’d look for is any
evidence that the person has had in thinking
about problems different, be it critical reasoning
– you know, coming through education
or examples of where they’ve done things or
been exposed to things.
Jim Taggart: Scott, I want to go back to
you. I want to talk about these risk profiles,
because they are a growing phenomenon
in which to measure both quantitative and
qualitative elements of people. What’s in those
documents that has not been there previously?
Scott Henshaw: I think if I could distil
it into one word, it’d be around “risk”. I think
employers more and more are looking to
de-risk the employment decision. And, you
know, the use of – and let’s just throw them
into a bundle, and there are a variety of them
for all sorts of different industries and applications
and jobs – but let’s refer to them
as psychometric assessment tools. I think it
helps employers de-risk that decision – you
know, traditionally – and they still have their
part – good screening processes, good behavioural
based interviews, reference checks
are powerful tools. We go into social media
checks now, Facebook profiles, LinkedIn,
assessment centre etc. We can find out a whole
heap of information about individuals. But I
think that the psychometric assessment tool
isn’t a decision maker. It’s not a pass or fail
thing. What it’s best used to do is confirm or
deny consistency through the process, both in
terms of what an employer was after in terms
of skill set, capability, emotional intelligence,
motivation, personality type, but also get a
good sense and feel that the messages that
this candidate has presented throughout, and
what I have felt from this candidate throughout,
match up and are consistent. I’m getting
a similar story at each of those contact points
with the candidate. It’s still a risky decision.
But if I’m doing all of these things – and more
and more employers are wanting to do more
of them – I’m happy to make the decision
– because you said it earlier: the investment
you’ve got to make to find them, the time it
costs to invest your time to induct them, the
training investment that you’ll put into and
need to put into top talent, to hang on to
them, it’s time consuming and it’s pricey. So,
we want to get that decision right. And I think,
fundamentally, de-risking the decision making
process has widely seen an increase in the use
of assessment tools.
Alison Wood: To what you’re saying,
Scott: it’s cultural fit. And that’s where the
psychometric testing, you know, has to play
a role – because the cultural fit for a not for
profit will be very, very different to the cultural
fit for KPMG, for instance. I mean this is general
– you know – they’re gross stereotypes.
But, that’s the reality, is it’s about getting the
right person.
Scott Henshaw: Well, I think it comes
back to a little bit of – and you hear a lot in
the current world – and particularly in the
social media world – about “authenticity”
and “genuineness”. And, you know, you can’t
be something in social media land that you’re
not in employment land. Therefore, if you are
genuine and authentic when we look at Facebook
and LinkedIn and all these other things
we can find, you get feelings and thoughts and
you make assumptions about what sort of person
this is, what they think, how they behave,
where they hang out. You wrap the rest of the
recruitment process around that. And, as long
as that is consistent and telling you the same
Continued on page 28
27

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“The corporation needs to take the role of ensuring that
all their employees are trained.” - Hardeep Girn.
WWW.WSBA.COM.AU
Continued from page 27
thing – they’re genuine, authentic... I get more
concerned when I’ve had an interview and I
feel ‘this’, see ‘that’ – and then I get on a Facebook
and see a different story. That’s when I
go: Whoa. What’s going on here? We’ve got to
put lots of different pieces in the puzzle to tell
this story better. Again, no right or wrong. All
different. For me, consistency.
Michael Walls: And, in your business, it’s
a skill to read social media posts, to actually
look at that and get an assessment. Is that a
specialisation?
Scott Henshaw: I think that’s the science
of recruitment. That’s what we’d like to say
that, over years and years, that gut feel, that
intuition of when you meet somebody, shake
somebody’s hand, look them in the eye. You
know. Recruiters are generally speaking particular
types of characters.
Michael Walls: What character is that?
Scott Henshaw: Oh, you know, they’re all
the good things. But, you know, the science of
recruitment will be a little bit of that gut feel.
But again part of my job is … I get a gut feel
when I meet every candidate, but that’s not
good enough. I’ve got to go away, put that biased
gut feel aside and either confirm or deny
that my gut feel was right or wrong. And we
do that through a really robust process.
Michael Walls: That’s intuition and then
you’ve got a quantitative.
Scott Henshaw: Absolutely. Some of us
are better at intuitive stuff than others. So, I
think it’s just the breadth and robustness and
depth, to ensure that that story is just consistent.
And that’s about as much as you can do
to de-risk a decision.
Tom Graham: Can you list three things,
people applying for jobs would answer to I’m
not happy with the job. Can you find me another
job? – is there three reasons you could say
which really come to the fore, most of the
time?
Scott Henshaw: So, again, if you’re an
active job seeker, the story’s pretty typical.
I’ve been made redundant. I need a job. I want a
job. Can you help me? More and more about
what we do to find these people is about the
networks in which we operate, social media
profiles that we build and how we connect and
manage relationships with people, the circles
in which we frequent to do our best to be connected
to those people who we can proactively
engage to create opportunities.
Alison Wood: Part of the challenge for us
in our role – and obviously we want graduates
– it’s a KPI for us, apart from anything else
– but, that’s why we’re here – to have graduates
who move into employment, is not with
recruiters. It’s with industries that generally
don’t use recruiters, or they’re for job roles
which don’t. And you don’t get anything
like that sophistication of what you’ve just
described in terms of matching people to jobs.
And we constantly have people – I’m thinking
someone who was at a customer experience
thing we ran not long ago, an incredibly talented
woman that had come out of the IT industry,
made redundant, with incredible skills.
And she’d been, you know, running a team
of 100. But she was really a very experienced
manager. And she retrained. She wanted to
do retraining in the travel industry and she
couldn’t get a foot in the door with any travel
companies. And you just have to look at her
skills in IT and the fact that the whole travel
industry is online. I mean you just could see
the synergies there. But a lot of issues are
around the areas that don’t use recruitment
companies and they don’t have the expertise
on seeing how those skills are transferable.
Jim Taggart: Well, I’m just trying – if you
read today’s paper, if you read reports or enquiries,
they talk about skill development. And
I somewhat get confused because I really don’t
get my teeth around what they mean when
they say “skill development”. Is it a given that
they can do Microsoft, that they can do Excel,
that they can do Pages or whatever. What are
the three skills that you would say are critical,
as a generalisation, for an employee to have?
Hardeep Girn: As an employee, I would
certainly say…there’s a phrase in the US – if
you do take on anybody, you’ve got to have them
drink the Koolade. And that phrase came out of
a cult that existed in the States where everyone
who was part of that cult, believed everything
that was told to them – that there was going
to be a spaceship coming from the other side
of the moon. But, from joining a corporation,
you have to understand that, for example as
an auditor for KPMG, there’s certain brand
values that you have to align with. And you
have to share those same kind of values as an
employee. And it starts off with the interview.
Michael Walls: That’s implicit with the
process though, Hardeep, isn’t it?
Hardeep Girn: I think it’s not reinforced
by the line manager or the HR manager. Certainly
not in any interviews that I’ve been at.
Scott Henshaw: No. And I don’t think
it is either. But we’ll probably get onto the
employee part. And we talked about the brief
of what a client wants, I can tell you candidates
have got their long list of “what I wants” as
well. And they’re not jumping ship or they’re
not going anywhere unless, to a large extent,
those conversations are had. And they are ticking
those boxes. It’s a risk for them, too.
Jim Taggart: How important is remuneration
– because Tom’s area of expertise is
in that whole retirement and remuneration
package. How important specifically is money
in that equation?
Scott Henshaw: Good question. I mean
I’ve just done a little mental survey of a decade
in recruitment. And what I reckon the three
most commonly wanted things would be:
Alison Wood.
communication skills – which probably falls a
little bit under that customer service/interpersonal.
That’s always been No: 1. I don’t know
if this is a skill. Ability to work with others
– this team player thing which I think often
is a euphemism for just: Can they fit this place
and can they get along with everybody else. And
third – intelligence. And I think this ties to the
willingness and the capability to learn. When
you unpack it, it’s the appetite to learn and
the ability to grasp new concepts and conflict
resolve and all those sorts of things. I think
they’d be the three.
Alison Wood: Randstad’s done quite a
lot of research on that. We work with them as
well. And they actually did a survey for us as
an employer. But they also have done Australian-wide
surveys and worldwide surveys. And
it does vary from country to country. But in
Australia, remuneration’s not No: 1. It’s certainly
not No: 1 in TAFE NSW. It’s No: 3 or
No: 4. So, there are other things that are more
important than remuneration.
Jim Taggart: That’s interesting. David, I
want to shift to you in that because you deal
with medium sized to large players in the
market. And also, your organisation is a global
organisation. Where does money specifically
fit in your recruitment?
David Pring: I think in terms of recruitment,
if someone feels they’re undervalued, it
will be very high on the list. If they feel they’re
undervalued by their existing employer, it
will be very high on the list. But generally,
people are joining an organisation for a longer
term view than what they’re going to be paid
tomorrow.
Hardeep Girn: Is that around professional
and personal development opportunities
as well?
David Pring: For us, it’s around career
opportunity – if people will move for a career
opportunity, where they believe and understand
the story. And quite often, you know,
we’ll have senior people who move for not
very much change in remuneration. In fact,
we’ve had a couple who will come in for less
on the basis that they have got to where they
are, but they want to do something else. And
they go: I’m prepared to come back to accelerate.
So, you know, unless someone feels they’re
highly undervalued where they are, there’s a
lot of other things that are critical.
Alison Wood: Certainly in the public sector
– not the private sector – the No: 1 is often
around making a difference or sense of community
service – certainly for women more
than men, that’s the case. And certainly for
women in leadership who regularly take what
is seen as a regression and move sideways or
downwards, they’ll often do that because of
the role and around a sense of why they come
to work every day, which is often not about
remuneration. It’s about making a difference
and changing people’s lives through learning,
as we say in TAFE. So, there will be a lot of
motivations. But, I suspect in the private sector,
remuneration is probably higher up on the
list than it would be in some other areas.
David Pring: But I think remuneration is
two things. It’s extrinsic in terms of the reward
you get for what you do. And it’s also intrinsic
– where the reward is the role, and the difference
and all of those things that you mentioned.
And we often think of remuneration
solely as being the pay cheque or the annual
salary. But there’s a lot more that people get.
And quite often, the ability to do a good job
and be valued is very highly regarded.
Jim Taggart: Nicole I’m going to go to
you. And how do you feel in relation to those
comments.
Nicole Karagiannis: Agree with all of
that. So, tying all of that back into your question
around what are the three skills, that goes
back to there’s that customer component – the
service – customer service skills. Another
skill is my ability to learn, and learning new
things. That’s a skill that I need so as in open
to learning. That’s an important skill. And
then, dealing with ambiguity – going back
to David’s earlier comments around dealing
with change and ambiguity is also a skill that,
you know, our employees need – going back
to your comments around problem solving
and dealing with change or being open – even
championing change. Going back to the
remuneration conversation, there is an article
out there that was published by Human Synergistics,
a consulting organisation. They do lots
of work in the leadership space. That article is
about the five fundamentals of human motivation.
One of them is: I’m learning something
new. So fundamentally, we all – most of us –
that’s what the work is saying – are motivated
by learning new things. Another one is: I’m
valued. And a third one is: I’m supported. So,
if I reflect on my own personal motivators, it is
that learning new things and I’m adding value
at the same time.
Jim Taggart: Thank you for that. I read a
really good line. I just want to say this in the
context of what people have been saying. And
it says: Learning has no end date. And it stays
with me all the time, when learning or studying
or doing something – no matter what it is
– that learning has no end date.
Alison Wood: Definitely. So, our average
age is around 30 now. So, most people would
identify TAFE as being a place where post
school leavers go with, you know, apprentices.
Only 10% of what we do is with traditional
trades. 90% is in other areas. Nearly 25% of
people who are enrolled with us now have
Degrees. So, they’re career changers. So, you
know, our market segments – when we segment
the market – one of our largest markets
is career changers and career progressers.
Michael Walls.
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“The work environment doesn’t have to be an office
environment as well.” - Tom Graham.
WWW.WSBA.COM.AU
Continued from page 28
And just coming back to that learning, we’re
learning the organisations that we work
most closely with that are willing to invest in
their workforce really are identified as high
performing organisations, and they take that
lifelong learning and they take that learning
– the importance of growing and developing
and changing and learning – back to us to a
point where we can assist them.
Jim Taggart: Ok we are doing a little exercise
now, can each of you think or write down
three critical skills that you consider important
to you and then we’ll go around the room
and share. Hardeep, we’ll start with you.
Hardeep Girn: So, I’ll say the 3Cs, that
are around the Mastering Business Introductions
course that we’ve got with TAFE,
Confidence, Capability and Conversation. I
think those skills are significantly lacking in
any area of business whether you’re talking to
internal customers or you’re talking to external
customers. I think customer service as a whole
requires quite a bit more of an upgrade. I think
that the conversations that most industries
have is very much: Well, these are the products
and services that I have. I’m an auditor. This is
what I do.
Jim Taggart: Great. David?
David Pring: I think it’s change, openmindedness
and communication.
Jim Taggart: OK. Interesting.Tom?
Tom Graham: Well I’m not sure you’d
call it a skill. I’ve always said: attitude before
aptitude. That’s been one of my expressions.
How do you put that into an actual skill, you
know? Interpersonal skills is another, which
you touched on. And then analytical skills. It
doesn’t matter what the job is. It can be auditing,
accounting orHR. Just to be able to analyse
an issue or problem and find a solution.
Jim Taggart: Thanks Tom. Alison?
Alison Wood: Very similar. So, technical
skills relates back to capability. So that’s about
actually having the technical skills to do the
job. And the interpersonal skills relates back to
the emotional intelligence, and it comes back
to the customer experience too – because all
of that really is around thinking about the customer
at the centre of the journey. And then,
the last one was critical thinking, problem
solving or, you know, how to – innovation.
Again, it’s your analytical skill. So, there’s quite
a lot of similarity between what we’re saying.
Jim Taggart: That’s interesting. Thanks
Alison. Nicole?
Nicole Karagiannis: I’ve changed mine
in the last 10 seconds. They’re not very similar.
So, to me, active listening. So, that bit around:
seek first to understand before being understood.
So, it’s all really under the banner of communication
and conversation. The second one
is taking feedback. And really, from an HR
profession point of view, it’s often you know
Jim Taggart.
WESTERN SYDNEY BUSINESS ACCESS SEPTEMBER 2015
Hardeep Girn and Jim Taggart.
people like me are the middle man going: You
are not a good leader, or, you are not a good...
You know. Having those really painful, difficult
conversations. If we empowered our leaders
and employees to have them themselves, how
good would that be? And the third one is back
to my bit around learning. So, having the appetite
to learn – not walking in saying: I know
it all already. So that appetite’s very important.
Jim Taggart: Thanks Nicole. Scott?
Scott Henshaw: Good question. I mean
I’ve just done a little mental survey of a decade
in recruitment. And what I reckon the three
most commonly wanted things would be:
communication skills – which probably falls a
little bit under that customer service/interpersonal.
That’s always been No: 1. I don’t know
if this is a skill. Ability to work with others –
this team player thing which I think often is a
euphemism for just: Can they fit this place and
can they get along with everybody else. And third
– intelligence. People always ask me it. And
I think this ties to the willingness and the capability
to learn. When you unpack it, it’s the
appetite to learn and the ability to grasp new
concepts and conflict resolve and all those
sorts of things. I think they’d be the three.
Jim Taggart: For me….interpersonal
skills. One that’s critical is adaptability. Is it
really important with regards to people. And
the third one is team players – being part of a
team is really critical for me. You don’t have
to like the person, but you have to have the
respect to say: Look, you don’t like me; I don’t
like you; but we’ve got this job to do – or task.
Getting the job done is critical. That’s what’s
brought us together. And I’ve got to handle
that the best way I can. I can either get caught
up in that melee or move back. If I move back
and do the task, I’m at least going to get some
reward. Anyway, I didn’t want to go on. But
that’s my three.
Michael Walls: Ok so I’ve got critical or
analytical thinking, which is the capacity to
frame a problem or an issue, second would
be communication and people skills and
the third would be adaptability and cultural
awareness; so, you’re aware where you fit into
a culture and can adapt and still be successful.
Jim Taggart: Ok I really now want to look
at the whole area of skills and what’s happening
out here. And I want to ask this question
– and it’s a statement. Employers should pay for
training and development of their staff. Yes?
Alison Wood: What a loaded statement?
Nicole Karagiannis: It depends on the
applicability. But if I say to my manager: I
want to do my Diploma in Fitness – becoming a
personal trainer, and I’m in the HR profession
– it depends on whether you’re thinking about
something not relevant to my profession or to
my organisation. I should pay for that myself.
Whereas, if it’s something that’s going to add
value to the organisation, and I need to put
that case forward, then they should either cofund
it or pay for the whole thing. That’s sort
of how I see it.
Tom Graham: Can I come back a step?
Somebody is applying for a job – probably
right down your track Nicole. They say: OK,
I’m going to go for this job now. I think this looks
good. But what are my career opportunities?
How am I going to develop? What’s my next step?
How do I get there? There must be a corporate
plan in place which includes training of the
individual moving into higher positions - a
management training programme. Imagine
some of these managers have not been trained
about their responsibilities like how to handle
staff and things of that nature. I mean there
has to be a corporate vision and the Company
should be paying for it.
Hardeep Girn: I agree with that as well.
The corporation needs to ensure employees
are trained to the correct level to do their job.
If they’re not capable of doing their job, then
they are not best representing the products or
services that they’re looking to sell. So, I think
it comes down again to Nicole’s point – value.
They have to be adding value. If they want to
take a course in personal fitness, you can argue
whether that’s going to add value to the organisation
if they’re a healthy individual and know
about first aid and various other aspects. But I
think it has to be that 80% of typically what an
employee wishes to do has to be related back
to what is the core services and products that
are sold by that organisation and how it can be
applied to grow value for that organisation.
David Pring: I think there needs to be
a change in the mindset of employers. We
talked before the break around: do employers
know what they want. And I’m not sure how
employers at the moment can know what they
want from employees because their businesses
are being disrupted and changed so much.
And there’s so much change – you know, automation
etc – that’s happening. And if a business
is looking for its niche, its differentiator,
for its ability to become globally competitive, I
think it must take on a bigger responsibility, or
recognise that there is an ongoing need for additional
training as the business itself morphs
and evolves. The right people and then adaptability
and change in skills have got to become
more and more important, I think.
Scott Henshaw: I think back to your
point earlier, the employee expectation is
certainly that “the organisation I join trains
me and invests in me”. I think we talked earlier
about the key variables that candidates look
at in making their decision around, you know,
what employer they go with – and we talked
about money and all sorts of things. But I
think you guys nailed it – that the surveys that
we’ve conducted and a lot of the survey stuff I
read in and around our industry – professional
development and training are the No: 1 things
consistently around “what my organisation
give me”. So, whether there’s a right or wrong
to it, at the moment the way the market stands
is employees have the expectation that “my
employer will train me – and if they don’t, I’m
going to go to an organisation that does”.
Alison Wood: A lot of employers don’t,
though. I mean there’s real variability amongst
industries and how much they’re willing to
take on that role. My view is that employers
have the role of workforce capability and
development. And a lot of that is on-the-job
training as we were talking during the break.
Continued on page 30
29

GWSRR
“Only a great leader or an astute or open minded
leader is going to look for those qualities.” - Nicole Karagiannis.
WWW.WSBA.COM.AU
Continued from page 29
The 70/20/10 rule. So, 70% will be on-thejob.
And that’s going to have to be led by the
leadership in the organisation. There is a role
for government. You didn’t include government.
But I think it’s a kind of three way
responsibility between the individual and
industry and government – because government
has a responsibility to be building the
workforce that’s needed, not now but in 5 to
10 years time. And, you know, as we were all
talking about 40% of the jobs that are current
there today won’t be there tomorrow – and
so, there is a role for government to identify:
what are the areas where there’s skill shortage,
where it’s going to hold back the economy of
the state or the economy of the nation, and
invest in – you know – it’s an investment, just
like infrastructure, to invest in the skills of
its people. And clearly, when we benchmark
against other OECD countries, we usually fall
short in the level of skills and qualifications in
the workforce.
David Pring: What are the top countries
that lead?
Alison Wood: The Scandinavian countries.
Singapore. Singapore has got an unbelievable
record in training. Yeah, a number
of European countries. Germany is pretty
well out there. And they’ve all got different
approaches as to how they educate. But – so,
there is that role as well. There’s the question
of what proportion does each take. And the
individual does need to have some responsibility
too. I don’t think that we can live in a
completely sort of socialist world where, you
know... And I don’t think that’s the way to get
the best. I mean we know that people who pay
fees have higher – like, cohorts are fee paying
groups at higher completion rates than cohorts
that are all on commissions. And they’ve
invested – and they want to see a return on
their investment.
Jim Taggart: I’ll come back to that question
in a moment. David, in the financials,
do many companies – now, bear in mind I
think somewhere between 85% and 91% - the
exact amount, it’s a big number – employ less
than 20 people – in fact, employ less than 10
people. So, I’d like to dwell on that argument
about how do they afford that. But, in your
experience – and it’s vast experience – is there
a provision in the financials for training and
so on by firms? Is it a conscious decision by
them?
David Pring: I’m just trying to think if
I’ve seen any profit and loss budgets that don’t
have a provision for training. I can’t think of
any. The question always becomes the effectiveness
of training. How do you get more
for the same? How do you get more for less?
Those types of questions. But I don’t think
there’s an organisation that doesn’t recognise
the need for training.
David Pring.
Tom Graham: It might not have a budget.
Jim Taggart: So it’s budgeted for?
Tom Graham: It may or may not be, but
it’s done.
Jim Taggart: It’s done. Would that be 3%,
5%? And so, I’m trying to ask from the point
of view – and I know it’s going to be difficult
to measure and so on – but I’m just trying to
get an idea because I would think that it’s a
reasonably low figure. I guess that’s what I’m
trying to tease out. Is it?
Hardeep Girn: I’ve seen 10% in a firm
that I worked. It was 10% of the department’s
budget spent on training staff, year on year.
But certainly, within Australia, I think it’s less.
But that’s just based on personal experience.
I’m not sure whether that’s something that any
of you guys have picked up across the medium
to large sized firms or even in smaller firms.
Scott Henshaw: No, is the answer, mate,
to be honest.
Jim Taggart: Well let me ask you, Nicole?
Can we ask you – because you employ a vast
number of people and training is significant.
I don’t want to know the exact amount, for
privacy reasons and so on.
Nicole Karagiannis: Yes. It is a small
percentage. However, it’s linked back to talent
management and succession planning. So, it
might be a lot more – a larger amount for a
high potential employee or a high performer
– and a conscious decision that, if someone
who’s in the high potential program or a high
performing individual that you know, you’re
grooming or you’re preparing that person for
the next step – and you know that they’re a
future leader or a future expert in XYZ, as an
organisation you consciously do spend on
them, even getting their Masters Degree for
example – and what’s that these days? 30K –
as opposed to the 1,000 per annum that other
organisations budget for, for example. So, it’s
consciously there – budget per individual. But
it’s different amounts and different approaches
per the person requesting.
Jim Taggart: Joe Hockey this morning
spoke at an accounting seminar/breakfast,
and he was speaking about the impact of tax
– what we call tax (inaudible)... on take home
pay. I want to say to you, Tom: remuneration
– how critical is that going forward for
employer/employee relationships?
Tom Graham: It’s still going to be a major
concern while they’ve got big mortgages,
obviously. There’s no way we can get away
from that. I will go back to what I said earlier
on – when I think about the future employer,
there’s two things I kept coming back to: what
the employer needs to be is more flexible and
a better communicator.
Jim Taggart: I’m going to challenge you.
When you say “more flexible”, what do you
really mean by that? I might come to work
tomorrow?
Tom Graham: I think it’s a very important
issue – the work environment. The work
environment itself does not necessarily have
to be an office environment as well. We talked
about technology – and improved technology.
And we know people work more than
the standard hours. That’s a given. So, if that
person says, Look, I can’t come in today, my son’s
sick. Or, so other reason whatever it is. Is that
such a big thing particularly if they say– but I
will get the job done, it will be done from home.
I would say “yes”. I believe the employer of
the future - who’s going to retain those really
quality people will to have to be more flexible
from the work environment point of view.
I really do. I think it’s already here now. You
look at some of the major companies – and we
touched on it very briefly earlier – they have
day care facilities for children. That’s going
to be more and more, you know. I can see it
as a real growth area; and an opportunity to
be different. That really does psychologically
wonderful things for the women, particularly
– but even the men – because, you know, they
have the same concerns. I’ve actually had an
employee of mine years ago who took two
years off to look after the children, so his wife
could resume her career. Employers of the future
need to be more caring and understanding
of employees changing priorities.
David Pring: I just think there’s a real opportunity
for employers as we all grapple with
what our businesses are going to look like,
to have a more flexible workforce because –
whether it’s part time workers, older workers,
younger generation who want to do things
differently – as we can assemble a workforce
that can expand and contract very flexibly,
then we’ve got a much better way of competing,
than if we’ve got a fixed workforce that the
only way we can expand it is to employ more
people. Now if you’ve got people that work
two days a week, if you’ve got a really exciting
project, they’re going to want to work three
or four. And, when you don’t have an exciting
project, they’re quite happy to go back to two.
It gets the attention of the Gen Ys who come
in and say: I’m going to do this work. And if you
can provide me more interesting stuff, then I’ll
pick it up and then go back. So, I think there’s a
real opportunity for employers to have a more
flexible workforce, rather than to say: I have to
change the way I want to work to suit the workforce.
I think there’s a real opportunity there to
say: We can actually change our business model
to be more flexible and more competitive.
Alison Wood: Yeah, there’s a bulge at the
top end of the workforce at the moment. And
there’s a gap at the bottom end of the workforce
with young people. And what it means
is that younger people – good younger people
– are going to be able to pick their jobs. So,
companies in the future are going to have to
provide the sorts of things that that generation
wants, because there’s going to be few of them
taking care of us in our old age.
Tom Graham: Some companies will have
to change their attitude about grey power and
aging – there are some out there who he says,
you know, you’re over 55 and that you’re past
your “use by” date. I can never understand
that attitude because all that knowledge and
expertise is walking out of the door.
David Pring: But if you can tap into that,
and have more or less of it on tap, then you’ve
got a much more flexible workforce – you
know, more and more grey power – a different
mix of workforce – and all happy to expand
and contract.
Jim Taggart: One of the questions I’d
like to throw open to everyone is there has
been very little discussion – and perhaps even
thought – and I’d like to suggest this to you to
consider. One of the things that we’ve omitted
from our dialogue is the whole area around
what I call “the global village”. And I really
think that that concept has been ignored in
the whole employer/employee relationships.
For example, a very good friend of ours was in
the Philippines last week doing business tied
to his business in Australia. So, the point I’m
really trying to make is not just international
students or anything like that – just simply
that production process – that all what I call
end-to-end solutions, has taken on a very
different dimension. I just thought a bit of
concept around that. The traditional what we
call “the invisible hand” – Adam Smith’s invisible
hand and things happening in the local
area and so on, I think has been dismantled.
And I’m just interested in that – in the production
process taking place at a global level. I just
thought your comments on that.
Tom Graham: They’ve already got that
medical technology. That is, you can have
inserted a device that tells you while you walk
around how you are functioning and sends
out warning signs.
Alison Wood: Because, in the future, it’s
true: job roles will change – so that there’ll
be a whole lot of things that can be done by
artificial intelligence or by computers that
are currently being done by people. There’ll
still be the hands-on things. But even a lot of
the hands-on things – things that you’d really,
really believe you need a person in, in the
future you probably won’t. So, we’re having
to change a lot of our training around those
kinds of changes. I’ll just give you an example
from my own industry – from education. So –
and it comes back to your point: there’s a huge
middle class in China. We’ve got training partners
in China. We deliver in China with six different
colleges over there and we do in Korea
as well. There is a huge, huge middle class
in the whole of South East Asia and China
that want to learn Australian qualifications in
English. That makes them global citizens. That
makes them completely portable. And what
Tom Graham.
Continued on page 31
30 WESTERN SYDNEY BUSINESS ACCESS SEPTEMBER 2015

GWSRR
“I read a really good line. It says: learning has no end date. And it stays
with me all the time.” - Jim Taggart.
WWW.WSBA.COM.AU
Nicole Karagiannis.
Tom Graham and Alison Wood.
Continued from page 30
that means is that a whole lot of stuff that’s
currently being done onshore will be done
offshore at a fraction of the price, which has
already been happening for years anyway. But
it will, you know, escalate. And it means that,
you know, anybody – English is the passport.
So people want that training.
Jim Taggart: Yeah. It’s the currency.
Alison Wood: And in ASEAN countries,
they’re starting to develop up their qualifications
which are portable across ASEAN
states. And the qualification framework
they’re using is the Australian one because
it fits. So, you know, I mean in the future it
really is going to be – which is why in TAFE
– and certainly I know with kids in University
too – my daughter’s one of them – every
second person studies International Studies
and have an opportunity to study abroad for
a year. So, my daughter’s off to Japan next
year. And that is how those kids are going to
maintain their employability – having that
global experience.
Jim Taggart: And thank you for sharing
that, because that’s really where I was
going down with the “invisible hand” and
Adam Smith – that the global village now
– knowledge, skill development is a much
wider passport and things. It’s quite interesting.
In a number of schools, Mandarin and
other language – sorry – in NSW language
is declining. This is important because it’s
dealing with skills. It’s skill development. And
yet, in a number of schools, they’ve taken that
on as a mandate within their curriculum and
so on. And particularly in primary schools.
That’s critical in terms of employer/employee
development. And that’s why I started leading
with a question, by saying: it is the employer’s
role to pay for training – or is it? Where does it
become the ownership of the individual to do
that? And I think Scott you were talking about
that. But it’s really interesting – that whole
migration and change.
Hardeep Girn: Can I just say these couple
of points? One is going back to the previous
comment on the global village, but also
the role of the government and the role of the
employer. If there is going to be economic
success at the state level, at the national or
at an international level, then certainly the
government and the employer needs to put
their hand in their pocket to ensure that the
employees get what they need to develop
not just the organisation, but where they’re
entering into new markets – be it that they’re
going to be learning a new language or a new
skill or a new craft. I think that employees do
have to consider that they can’t have a fully
flexible work environment because there’s a
lot of other forces at play where there’s a lot
of labour, a lot of people who are talented,
there are a lot of people who are, applying for
the same type of job. So, I wouldn’t want to
figure a guess on what’s the average number
of applicants per job. But I would imagine
it’s quite significant across most sectors at
the moment given the low unemployment
rate. So, with overseas students as well, the
education is delivered more online. There is a
global demand for that type of education. I’m
interested to hear more on what TAFE are
doing in other markets – not just in China,
but in India...
Alison Wood: Yeah. It’s huge. It’s huge.
There are a lot of opportunities there. Just one
other point there. And that maybe again, it’s
a difference between the tertiary sector – the
Universities and vocational education and
training – has been is that we are moving vocational
training into a marketised system where
the student chooses what they wish to train in.
We weren’t like that previously. When we were
mainly subsidised by the government, the
government set the areas. Well, we assisted in
using you know data access – economic data –
and we would say we need this many people in
this industry area and this many in this – and
that’s what we were paid to deliver. So, we had
a performance agreement and we delivered.
So I know when I worked at Ultimo, we only
ever offered 70 places in fashion design. We
always had over a thousand applicants. So, the
system that we’ve moved into now is it’s a student
driven system – the same as the Universities.
So, that’s why there are enough journalists
being trained by Universities every year as the
number of positions in Australia. The same
with lawyers. And the same in our area. Now
we have got ekes of people enrolled in fashion
design because that’s the student demand and
that’s how – it’s an entitlement system. That
is an issue. On a personal level I think that
there needs to be more engineering around
how subsidies are used and how governments
direct subsidies to be used. And I believe it
should happen in Universities as well as in
vocational training, because at the moment
we’ve got a lot of unemployed graduates. 40%
of University graduates are still unemployed
after six months of completing their Degree.
Michael Walls: Is that across all Degrees
– all different types of Degrees? All over the
place?
Alison Wood: That’s a high level statistic,
so it varies. But I know that there’s far too
many law graduates at the moment.
Tom Graham: Exactly.
Alison Wood: So, you know, we’ve got
a huge skill shortage coming up in construction,
plumbing – any of the traditional trades.
No parents want their kids to go into those.
They’re all aspirational. They want them to
have the University Degrees and go into those
areas. But in fact there’s going to be huge skill
shortage areas where we’re not going to have
enough.
Hardeep Girn: And even the migrant test
has those skills at the top – the carpentry, the
plumbing, etc.
Alison Wood: That’s right. That’s why.
Hardeep Girn: It’s not the lawyers that
the country needs.
Jim Taggart: Ok We are coming to the
end of our session here today so I’m just going
to call on Hardeep to sum up what this has
meant for him. Hardeep, please?
Hardeep Girn: It’s around the value
proposition. For employees as well as employers.
And it comes back down to the key
skills. So, in changing times, you do need to
be able to communicate well. You do need to
be able to have the confidence. And certainly,
the capability internally and externally is so
important. I think there is an abundance of
technical knowledge out there. And I think
our competitive edge as a society and as a
country is what we develop as individuals
through personal development. That’s the
reason we put this course together in the
first place, to ensure that those skills that are
slowly declining around communication,
confidence and capability, aren’t forgotten.
The danger is, as more people see technical
knowledge as a commodity in what they’re
selling and doing, that you don’t have a point
of difference. And you have to have a point of
difference in business; otherwise, we won’t be
successful.
Jim Taggart: Hardeep, on behalf of Access,
a very huge vote of thanks to Know My
Business, one of your very successful businesses.
It’s been a great time of interaction. I
think it’s been very real and very timely. All
of you have come together with intelligent
comment. And I say that most sincerely. And
that’s the first time that I’ve said that. David’s
been at many of those. So have you and so has
Michael. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed listening
and reflecting upon what each of you have
said. So again, on behalf of Access and Know
My Business, Hardeep, thank you so much for
your attendance and support this afternoon.
Thank you.
The GWSRR in action.
WESTERN SYDNEY BUSINESS ACCESS SEPTEMBER 2015
31

32 WESTERN SYDNEY BUSINESS ACCESS SEPTEMBER 2015

PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT
Why encourage informal learning?
Research realigns the role of
performance appraisals
FEEDBACK
MOST employees, from any profession
or sector, will spend time talking
about their job with friends, family
and colleagues.
In most cases, if they are in the same job
area with any consistency, they will pick up
and read articles and books that relate to
their profession, either casually in an ad-hoc
way, or even in a more structured approach,
with some self-improvement goals in mind.
All this is called informal learning, and
while it clearly has the potential to have a
positive impact on a person’s performance
in the workplace and their long-term career
development, its formal role has never been
fully acknowledged and has certainly never
been rigorously measured or quantified.
Traditionally, the development of
employee knowledge has been considered
a top-down practice, where senior leaders
determine the learning needs of employees
and create and deliver structured development
programs.
This is despite the acknowledgement that
employees choosing to engage in informal
learning tend to have high levels of confidence
in their own ability and competence.
“It has had a little bit of a negative definition,
for no good reason really, but informal
learning is everywhere and in so many things
we do,” says Karin Sanders, a professor and
head of the school of management at UNSW
Business School.
“Even if you have a dinner, you are talking
with your friends and that can be a part of
informal learning. You hear something, you
share knowledge and you are keeping up to
date.
“Informal learning had a place in the
development part of HR, but also it was not
measured, and if you want to know more
about it, and its impacts, then you need to
measure it in a community of practice.”
Link to formal functions
Informal learning was the focus of a recent
research project by Sanders and former
UNSW Business School colleague Timothy
C. Bednall (now at Swinburne University
of Technology), in collaboration with Piety
Runhaar from Wageningen University, The
Netherlands.
Taking a sample of 238 employees from
54 work teams in six Dutch vocational education
training (VET) schools, the researchers
looked at informal learning with the goal of
understanding how it might receive more
formal recognition within an organisation’s
human resource management (HRM) practice,
and how the HR system could further
encourage employees.
More specifically, the study looked at the
effects of perceptions of performance appraisal
quality and HRM system strength on
three informal learning activities: reflection
on daily activities, knowledge sharing with
colleagues, and innovative behaviour.
“We also made a distinction between
keeping up to date, also known as the reflecting
on your own behaviour,” says Sanders.
“These things, you can do by yourself, but
other informal learning activities are more
done in a team situation. Knowledge sharing
– you can’t do that by yourself. And there is
an element of reciprocity, because you are
giving and taking feedback.”
The study collected two waves of survey
data from respondents a year apart. The
only selection criteria was that employees
had to work at one of the six schools, and
so the breakdown was between teachers
(84.9%), teaching assistants (8.8%), team coordinators
(2.1%), with the remaining 4.2%
classified as “others”.
Data was collected via self-filling software,
with response rates just over 50%. The
questionnaire measured informal learning
activities by the respondents in four areas:
reflection on daily activities, knowledge sharing
with colleagues, innovative behaviour
and also performance appraisal quality.
The idea behind the inclusion of performance
appraisal was to see if this link to the
formal HR function could be a practical way
of integrating informal learning in a positive
way into the HR system.
The results bore this out, revealing that
the quality of performance appraisal from
line managers had a positive association with
all three informal learning activities in the
second wave, and with reflection in the first
wave.
This article was first published in BusinessThink,
the online business analysis
journal of UNSW Business School.
WWW.WSBA.COM.AU
New hub
offers training
options
SOLUTIONS
PARRAMATTA College is one of regions
most established names in adult training
and education. Backed by over 25 years
of experience, the College has launched
a new training facility that caters for the
demand for professional development and
workplace training courses in Sydney’s West.
The Western Sydney Skills Hub assists businesses
to meet the training needs of their staff
locally, providing the ideal learning environment
for business leaders, managers, staff and
individuals who wish to further their careers.
Focused on training that is of exceptional
quality, the College has established a learning
hub that provides the local business community,
and individuals, with the opportunity to
maximise organisational outcomes or their
career through learning.
The Western Sydney Skills Hub can work
with you or your business to develop a custom
corporate training solution through our
work skills assessment process.
The Hub offers flexible training opportunities,
and the venue is also available for
hire. Rooms can be utilised for training or
planning sessions, corporate presentations
and off-site events. The facilities include a
computer lab, Wi-Fi, kitchen and breakout
areas and catering.
Contact the Parramatta College on
9687 2072 or visit www.parramattacollege.com.au
WESTERN SYDNEY BUSINESS ACCESS SEPTEMBER 2015
33

END OF YEAR FUNCTIONS
WWW.WSBA.COM.AU
Range of options close to Blacktown CBD
MULTI-PURPOSE
EVENTS@FIFTY5 has a range
of fully functional rooms to suit
your upcoming conference, exhibition
or business function.
The venue is located close to the
Blacktown CBD and offers quiet,
comfortable and private surrounds
- perfect for meetings, corporate
or private conferences, seminars,
presentations, product launches,
training sessions and special events!
Multi-functional rooms are
available which can be fully catered
and equipped to suit your requirements
and budget. Offering the
latest in audio visual equipment our
functions centre also has a specialist
onsite audio/v isual team to ensure
all equipment is operational for that
important presentation.
The dedicated professional functions
team can assist in all aspects
Marana Room
Jack Robinson
of your successful corporate event.
Various room options are available
including:
Marana Room
The Marana Room with its
sophisticated and elegant surrounds
offers features such as crystal
chandeliers and the old world charm
of timber panelling and private
bar facilities, creating a wonderful
atmosphere for your event. With a
capacity to hold up to 110 people
this room is perfect for any occasion.
Equipped with data projector
and screen.
Jack Robinson
This intimate function room is
ideal for your next business meeting
or smaller more intimate social
function. This room offers a 64inch
LCD TV for easy laptop set up.
Wattle/Waratah
With the capacity to hold up to
120 people The Wattle/Waratah
Room is a great venue for conferences
and seminars as well as other
special events. With its modern decor
and separate break-out area, it is
versatile in that it can be utilized as
one or two separate function rooms.
Wattle/Waratah
The Wattle function room is
ideal for your next business meeting
or smaller more intimate social
function.Equipped with data projector
and screen.
The Waratah is function room is
ideal for your next business meeting
or smaller more intimate social function.
Equipped with data projector
and screen.
Max McKenzie
The Max Mackenzie room is the
perfect venue for your next conference
or seminar, or for that intimate
social gathering. This room offers
a 64inch LCD TV for easy laptop
set up.
The Max McKenzie / Jack
Robinson room is versatile in which
it can be utilized as one or two
separate function rooms. With its
fresh and modern décor it is a great
venue to host your next conference
or special event.
Ballroom
The Ballroom is a multi-purpose
room with the capacity to hold up
to 220 people. With its stylish decor,
large dance floor and stage area,
the Ballroom is the ideal venue for
presentations, dinner dances, weddings,
theatre restaurants and other
special events. The Ballroom comes
equipped with a data projector and
screen.
Diamond Showroom
Renowned for its award
winning facilities, the Diamond
Showroom is the ideal venue
for Seminars, product launches,
major events and conferences.
The Diamond Showroom can seat
870 and can be themed for any
occasion.
For details contact events@
fifty5.com.au, phone 02 9830
0673 or visit 55 Campbell Street,
Blacktown NSW 2148.
34 WESTERN SYDNEY BUSINESS ACCESS SEPTEMBER 2015

END OF YEAR FUNCTIONS
WWW.WSBA.COM.AU
Functions at sea so much fun
EXPERIENCE
WITH adventures in team building on
Sydney Harbour for between 4 and
400 people, Sydney Princess Cruises
(SPC) is a great option for your next
team building event. SPC can tailor make your
event, with flexible times, pickup and drop off
points and food and beverages options for every
need. SPC host many different team building
activities, ranging from casino themes and
laser clay shooting to trivia and karaoke.
They can host a corporate Christmas party
cruise, complete with decor and entertainment.
SPC aims to provide you with an event,
that will build team morale, increase productivity
and create a happy and positive team
environment for your employees once they
are back in the office.
EVENT CENTRE
@PANTHERS
The perfect backdrop
Most birthday parties are arranged at
home. While they can be great, they are rather
simple. Imagine a birthday on a boat, where
your guests enjoy views of the beautiful Sydney
Harbour as they enjoy the festivities and
feel the cool breeze on their skin.
Your guests can enjoy a slice of delicious
birthday cake as they experience the majesty
of Sydney Harbour from a luxury boat.
Finally, Sydney Harbour Bridge in the
background, the breeze in your hair and/or
the nightlight of Sydney Harbour makes for a
breathtaking birthday backdrop. What more
could you want?
With delicious food, an incredible backdrop
and a beautiful cruise through Sydney
Harbour, you and your guests will enjoy an
unforgettable birthday cruise. That’s what
makes a perfect birthday and it can all be done
at Sydney Princess Cruises.
The Event Centre at Panthers
the ULTIMATE corporate playground.
Organise your next private
function on a boat
Great savings are available if you need
to book your corporate function, romantic celebration
or birthday party cruise to take place
within the next four weeks.
Have you or someone you know got
a special birthday or event coming up?
Consider SPC special event options, including
birthday party cruises on Sydney
Harbour:
• All age birthday party cruises.
• 21st & 18th birthdays.
• Social functions.
• Hens and bucks parties.
• Reunions.
• Transfers.
• Dance parties.
• Corporate.
• Weddings and much more.
You could also spend New Year’s Eve on
Sydney Harbour, enjoying a prime view of the
fireworks with your family, friends or colleagues!
When you have your next event on-board
with us you will automatically get included
any 2 of the following options absolutely
FREE.
• Chocolate fountain with delicious
marshmallows.
• Helium balloons.
• Unlimited hot chocolate, tea or coffee
for the duration of your event.
• Upgrade to Diamond beverage
package if you have opted for a Gold
(standard) package*.
• Sensational dessert upgrade consisting
of cake with message.
• Karaoke to add to the fun when you
book a DJ.
For enquiries call 9518 7813. Offers are
not valid in November or December.
WINTER MEETINGS
SUMMER REWARDS!
YOURS TO WIN
1ST PRIZE: A FIVE NIGHT GETAWAY TO PORT DOUGLAS
2ND PRIZE: A TWO NIGHT ESCAPE TO GOLD COAST
3RD PRIZE: ONE NIGHT AT MERCURE PARRAMATTA
Escaping the conference room is a must, so surprise your delegates with the
ultimate team building and conferencing experiences in the Event Centre at
Penrith Panthers!
Our unique setting on 80 hectares offers the perfect blank canvas for creative
corporate events and team building. Penrith Panthers features Western Sydney’s
largest Exhibition Marquee based onsite, free car parking for over 2000 vehicles,
10 event venues, aqua golf and the indoor skydiving experience, iFly. It really is
the “World of Entertainment” and offers unlimited experience potential for your
delegates and guests!
The Event Centre at Panthers is the ultimate destination for your delegates to
Meet, Eat, Stay and Play.
For more information or to book an upcoming conference package from $68pp
or your corporate Christmas Party from $95pp, contact the ECP Team now!
Contact the Event Centre at Panthers team on T: 02 4720 5511 or by email E:eventscentre@panthers.com.au
FREE WIFI
MULGOA ROAD PENRITH NSW 2750
1800 061 991
PENRITH.PANTHERS.COM.AU
FACEBOOK.COM/PENRITHRUGBYLEAGUECLUB
WESTERN SYDNEY BUSINESS ACCESS SEPTEMBER 2015
PENRITH PANTHERS PRACTICES
THE RESPONSIBLE SERVICE OF ALCOHOL
HOW TO ENTER
Simply book and hold your meeting at Mercure Parramatta
between 1st June and 30th September 2015, with a minimum
$1,000 spend and receive an entry in the draw. For every
$1,000 spent, receive one entry!
For a quote or to book your next meeting, contact Skye on
02 8836 1004 or email h2123-sl1@accor.com
BONUS: MENTION “SUMMER REWARD” WHEN BOOKING A MEETING
ON A DAY DELEGATE PACKAGE, TO RECEIVE A COMPLIMENTARY
HALF-HOUR DRINKS GATHERING AT THE END OF YOUR MEETING.
Conditions apply. Full terms and conditions and details of prizes can
be obtained at www.mercurehotelparramatta.com.au
Permit number: NSW: LTPS/15/034 ACT: TP 15/05828
MERCURE SYDNEY PARRAMATTA 106 Hassall Street Rosehill. Phone 02 8836 1000
35

END OF YEAR FUNCTIONS
Have you been to the
Fiddler lately?
DAZZLING cocktails, frothy pints, tasty
nosh and great atmosphere? Where else but
The Fiddler! If you’ve been put in charge
of organizing your end of year celebrations,
The Fiddler is the perfect venue. The all-new
Fiddler has created some fabulous new and
unique spaces catering for long lunches on
the Verandah to private functions in The
Greenway or The Grange. How about sipping
cocktails in the all-new Lounge or sharing the
fun around the long tables of The Courtyard?
Whatever the size and style of your event, we
have the space for you. Have you been to the
Fiddler lately?
Contact the Fiddler on 9629 4811 or visit
www.thefiddler.com.au/
Your Next Event on Sydney Harbour
Make your next function one to remember
> Corporate functions
> Xmas parties
> Pre and Post Conference Cruises
> EOFY parties
> Private birthday parties
> Weddings
> Boxing Day
> New Years Eve
FREE
bottle of
MOET
with every
booking!
Call 9518 7813
www.sydneyprincesscruises.com.au
info@sydneyprincesscruises.com.au
36 WESTERN SYDNEY BUSINESS ACCESS SEPTEMBER 2015

Wedding Packages
Complete Packages | No Room Hire | No Additional Costs
Dreams & Delights Package
Adults $99 Children $49
30 min pre-dinner drinks & Hors D’oevres on arrival
5 Hour room hire
4 Course meal
4.5 Hour alcohol package - VB, Tooheys New, Hahn Light, Lilys white & Lilys red wine
Unlimited soft drinks, juices and water for the duration of the function
Standard centerpieces on all guest tables, choice of 4 options
Wishing well
Decoration for Bridal Table
Engagement photo shoot including one small wall print size 10 by 15 inch
Exclusive menu tasting for 2 with the Executive Chef
Full use of bridal suite prior to entrance into reception
Champagne for toasting
Setting of your place cards & bonbonniere
Full skirted bridal table
Cake table with cake knife and toasting glasses
Table linen, glassware and cutlery
Cutting and serving wedding cake
Tiffany chairs or white chair covers plus coloured sash of your choice from our range
Use of microphone for speeches
Professional DJ and MC
Professional wait staff
Espresso coffee and tea served to all guests
Experienced Events Coordinator
Complimentary on-site parking
*Minimum numbers for the Dreams and Delights package is 70 otherwise room hire charges will apply.
We will make your dreams come true
02 8818 5555 | 5 Quinn Ave Seven Hills | www.lilys.net.au
WESTERN SYDNEY BUSINESS ACCESS SEPTEMBER 2015
37

INDIAAUSTRALIA
Business Connect
WWW.WSBA.COM.AU
How A R Rahman brought Bollywood
soundtracks to the Western world
CULTURE
By Anna Morcom
Reader in Ethnomusicology at Royal Holloway
WITH record sales of more than 200
million albums worldwide, A R Rahman
has composed the soundtracks
for over 100 Indian films and is credited
with more or less single-handedly revolutionising
Indian film musi c.
On August 15 Rahman will be performing
a one-off “Greatest Hits” show at The O2 arena
in London. He has brought Bollywood music
to the Western world, with a style that is both
new and familiar at the same time.
The son of a film music composer and
conductor in the Tamil and Malayalan film
music industries, Allah-Rakha Rahman got his
big break as a music director doing the songs
and background score for the Tamil film Roja.
In India, film music reigns supreme, and Rahman’s
soundtrack took the country by storm.
A R Rahman recording with fellow artist Orianthi Sreejithk.
Bollywood on tour
India has produced many giants of film
music. But the key difference with Rahman,
compared to earlier star music directors such
as Naushad, Shankar-Jaikishen, R D Burman or
Ilaiyaraaja, is the level of international acclaim
he has gained. It is Rahman’s conquering of the
Western world that makes him so remarkable.
By the 1950s, Indian cinematic music had
a dominant influence from the Malay world
to Greece, Russia, and the Middle East. In the
West, however, Hollywood held sway, and
Indian cinema, with its melodrama and song
and dance interludes, was typically seen simply
as bad.
The new sounds and style Rahman created
changed the image of Indian film music in the
West. His albums broke through into Western
charts in the late 1990s and he has since engaged
in a range of high profile collaborations
in the West.
His most famous work of late has been
his soundtrack for Danny Boyle’s 2009 film
Slumdog Millionaire, which added two Oscars,
a BAFTA, a Golden Globe Award and two
Grammy Awards to his already dizzying array
of awards back home in India. As an Indian
music star in the West, he has only been rivalled
by the likes of Ravi Shankar.
AR Rahman’s ‘Jai Ho’ from the 2009 film
Slumdog Millionaire
New fusions
Rahman’s acclaim is largely down to his
use of fusion. East-West fusion is hardly new
in Indian film music – by the 1950s, film songs
sported extraordinary mixtures of Indian classical
and folk music elements, large Western or
Hollywood style orchestras with added Indian
instruments, and global pop styles from the
West and Latin America. Yet Rahman’s fusion
marks a distinct break with earlier film music.
He is particularly known for his use of lush
string sounds, often married with computergenerated
bass.
Overall, his timbres are more mellifluous
and soft compared to the older film music,
where treble frequencies dominated.
New recording technologies have allowed
Rahman to create a layered and expansive
soundscape, contrasting with earlier film music
where the orchestras were recorded in unison
or near unison, the sound more of a block.
In older film music, Indian and western
instruments and styles were orchestrated into a
whole, a close amalgamation. T
he violins, for example, hardly sounded like
those in a Western orchestra, or the sitars like
those in actual Indian classical music.
This is part of the reason why the older film
songs were seen in negative terms by Western
critics as kitsch. But in Rahman’s music, the
characteristic style and sound of diverse instruments
and genres is distinctly heard, and often
showcased.
In the song Hai Rama from the film Rangeela
(1995), for example, he opens and ends
the song with the sound of the tambura, the
drone instrument used to accompany Indian
classical music.
The song also incorporates South Indian
and other percussion, strings, bass, and a
virtuosic flute solo that manages to be Indian
classical, beat box and slightly jazzy all at once.
In other songs Rahman uses Sufi singing,
or the harmonium (played as in North Indian
classical or light classical music), or background
chants in regional Indian languages,
and an assortment of other Indian styles and
instruments.
His music appeals to the “world music”
and “world beat” sensibility that is growing in
popularity in the West.
At the same time, Rahman incorporates a
solid basis of mainstream Western pop, rock
and jazz styles (even just through a prominent
bass groove).
He uses a range of singers and vocal
timbres, avoiding the idealised, high-pitched female
vocal sound. For these reasons, Rahman’s
music appeals to western ears more than older
film music, and also to the upper end of Indian
middle class society.
THIS ARTICLE WAS FIRST PUBLISHED AT WWW.THECONVERSATION.COM.AU
New sports bar at Maharaja’s Haveli
ATTRACTIONS
IF you thought Maharaja’s Haveli only offered
the best regional Indian Cuisine around,
you’re wrong.
Regular patrons would have recently
witnessed a new bar emerging in the Haveli
Vedah next to the famous Punjab Truck.
Maharaja’s Bar is fully stocked with all the
best liquors and beers beautifully featured in
oversized bottles.
Maharaja’s Bar has been thoughtfully
furnished providing comfort in the form
of leather lounge chairs and allowing close
mingling and laughter around high tables and
bar stools.
A striking portrait of Maharaja Ranjit
Singh adorns the wall opposite the bar and beside
it a collection
of glasses dating
back centuries. As
with the rest of the
Haveli, Maharaja’s
Bar is befitting of
a king.
Maharaja’s
Haveli is the ideal
place to join in
drinks with friends
and enjoy the excitement
of a footy
match whether
it’s AFL, league
or union, cricket,
Ashes or soccer
from around the
world or any other
big sporting event on the big screen.
Watch all the action of the Rugby World
Cup and the finals of the footy season at the
new Maharaja’s Sports Bar.
SPECIAL FOR THE MONTH OF SEP-
TEMBER: Buy one drink get another free,
available with the latest bar menu - kebabs
and snacks.
38 WESTERN SYDNEY BUSINESS ACCESS SEPTEMBER 2015

A New Sports Bar at
Maharaja’s
If you thought Maharaja’s Haveli only
offered the best regional Indian Cuisine
around, you’re wrong. Regular patrons
would have recently witnessed a new
BAR emerging in the Haveli Vedah..next
to the famous Punjab Truck. Maharaja’s
Bar is fully stocked with all the best liquors
& beers beautifully featured in oversized
bottles. Maharaja’s Bar has been
thoughtfully furnished providing comfort
in the form of leather lounge chairs and
allowing close mingling and laughter
around high tables and bar stools. A
striking portrait of Maharaja Ranjit Singh
adorns the wall opposite the bar and
Haveli
Inauguration of Maharaja’s Bar by famous Punjabi singer Harbhajan Mann
SPECIAL
FOR THE
MONTH OF
SEPTEMBER
Buy 1 drink get
another free,
available with
the latest bar
menu (kebabs
& snacks)
A local Sports Bar showing big Sporting events on Big Screen
beside it a collection of glasses dating
back centuries. As with the rest of
the Haveli, Maharaja’s Bar is certainly
befitting of a KING. Maharaja’s Haveli
is the ideal place to join in drinks with
friends and enjoy the excitement of a footy
match whether it’s AFL, League or Union,
Cricket IPL or Ashes, Soccer Leagues
from around the world or any other big
sporting event on the BIG SCREEN.
Watch all the action of the Rugby World
Cup and the Finals of the Footy season at
the new Maharaja’s Sports Bar.
Celebrating the first drink from the bar Mr. Neni Tiwari and Mr. Anil Berri
14 Douglas Rd, Quakers Hill NSW 2763 P: 9626 1913
E: info@maharajahaveli.com.au www.maharajahaveli.com.au
Skywise-Sept 2015
Enjoy the
BIRYANI
FESTIVAL
19th-20th September 2015
at Maharaja’s Haveli
WESTERN SYDNEY BUSINESS ACCESS SEPTEMBER 2015
39

PEOPLE
WWW.WSBA.COM.AU
Revamped restaurant an ideal destination
PROFILE
THIS September, Novotel
Sydney Parramatta invites
you to try 350 Restaurant
and Lounge, their newly revamped
food and beverage outlet.
This area will be decked out
with a new identity from branding
to furniture and appearance.
With a great atmosphere and
friendly staff, 350 Restaurant
and Lounge makes the ideal
destination for anyone wanting a
fantastic dining experience in the
heart of Eat Street Parramatta.
Executive Chef Kiki and team
have created a wonderful new
menu to match this new identity
that is sure to delight the most
discerning palate.
Guests have the choice of
either casual dining in the lounge
area with a cocktail or two or
private dining in the restaurant
with many wonderful options to
choose from.
When dining at 350 Restaurant
and Lounge, you will be
greeted by a friendly new face,
Lucas Lees, Food and Beverage
Team Leader who joins Novotel
Parramatta with a wealth of
knowledge in restaurants and
bars.
Lucas joins Kristiana Terkes
and Adam Jones’ team after working
in various restaurants and bars
in Sydney and around the world
including Chef hatted restaurant,
The Cook’s Garden, popular
Tetsuya, Jordan’s Seafood and the
renowned Pattison’s Patisserie.
Lucas’ outgoing personality
makes him a perfect fit for the
new direction of 350 Restaurant
and Lounge.
From working in Germany
and Canada, Lucas developed
a passion for travel and starting
in hotels was a natural progression
for advancing his hospitality
career. Originally from Western
Sydney, Lucas sees a future in
Parramatta and the direction of
hospitality in the region.
Further attracted by the
global Accor brand and their
people- ology philosophy ‘people
want the real deal’ represents his
genuine and outgoing customer
service and how Lucas leads by
example for his team.
Combining his personal
philosophy of wanting to leave
a mark fits in with the vision for
350 Restaurant and Lounge and
where Novotel sees it positioned
amongst Eat Street Parramatta.
Pop along to 350 Restaurant
and Lounge to meet Lucas and
try out the new menu or just have
a conversation with him about
his other passions, sports and
photography.
Visit www.novotelparramatta.
com.au to keep up to date with all
their offers and upcoming events.
Accor Plus members dining
discounts welcome, call 02 9630
4999 to secure your booking.
Lucas lees at work at Novotel Parramatta.
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40 WESTERN SYDNEY BUSINESS ACCESS SEPTEMBER 2015

MUSIC
WWW.WSBA.COM.AU
U2’s continuing quest for authenticity
JOURNEY
By Susan Fast
Professor of Cultural Studies, Director,
Graduate Program in Gender Studies and
Feminist Research at McMaster University
WE wanted to make a very personal
album,” U2’s Bono told Rolling Stone
upon the release of the band’s most
recent album, Songs of Innocence.
“The whole album is first journeys…geographically,
spiritually, sexually. And that’s hard. But
we went there.”
Those first journeys also include some
of the band’s formative musical influences,
including The Ramones and The Clash, who
are examples of stripped-back rock and roll par
excellence.
Now, the band is slated to embark on its
iNNOCENCE + eXPERIENCE tour in support
of the album.
For this tour, the band is certainly scaling
back: they’ll be performing in the relative
intimacy of arenas.
It’s a stark contrast to the record-shattering
production of the band’s last tour – called U2
360 – which was seen by about seven million
people in huge, open air stadiums and grossed
over US$700 million.
On the surface, it may seem as though U2
is suddenly seeking a return to the simpler
times of its early years, both in their sound and
their performances.
But for those who have followed the band’s
career closely, talk of returning to “roots” of
some kind when a new record is released is
nothing new for U2.
If anything, it reveals the well-worn strategy
of a band that seeks to remain relevant even
as it ages – a pattern of alternating between
radical experimentation and mining the myth
of authenticity.
Two poles – sometimes blurred
The first time this trope was invoked was
with 1987’s The Joshua Tree and the follow-up
album and documentary film Rattle and Hum.
For those albums the band, weaned on
1970s punk, turned back to the American triumvirate
– blues, folk and gospel – the deeply
“authentic” music they felt they’d missed out
on growing up.
In interviews from this time, they began
their tendency to, off and on, romanticize
“stripped-down” rock and roll.
This backward turn came in the wake of
the band’s first project with producers Brian
Eno and Daniel Lanois, 1984’s The Unforgettable
Fire.
Interestingly, that album’s atmospheric,
experimental sound was enthusiastically
embraced by the band as an attempt to switch
gears from the hard-driving, guitar-oriented,
stripped-down rock that characterized 1983’s
War.
U2 360 Tour
U2 360 Tour
WESTERN SYDNEY BUSINESS ACCESS SEPTEMBER 2015
The live shows that have supported the
band’s more experimental albums have
been suitably mammoth endeavors, often
taking place in outdoor venues, with every
technological bell and whistle imaginable
in tow.
But the sound of the group’s music doesn’t
swing quite as easily between these poles as
their discourse around it would suggest.
For example, the atmospheric, experimental
influence is present on Songs of Innocence
(The Troubles). Meanwhile, the stripped-back
sound can be found on the most “out there”
album in U2’s oeuvre – 1997’s Pop – in tracks
like Wake Up Dead Man and The Playboy
Mansion.
The tension of fame
So why frame the process of making an
album as a kind of recurring existential crisis?
One that seems to require a radical rethinking
of musical and thematic direction?
One answer to this question comes from
what counts as “authentic” in rock culture: the
quest narrative – the constant search for “realness,”
for what is perceived to be “genuine.”
Led Zeppelin, for example, “reinvented”
themselves on their third album, turning to
acoustic folk music.
The infamous battle between Mick Jagger
and Keith Richards over whether to stay true
to the band’s blues roots or move in a more
contemporary direction began with their 1983
album Undercover.
But U2 is particularly committed to this
narrative. Their need for reinvention, the casting
off of what came before, the re-examination
of directions, the restlessness, can be viewed as
part of a discourse that helps construct U2’s
rock authenticity.
I’m not suggesting that their quest is disingenuous.
But one only has to look at musics
other than white rock to see that the terms
of authenticity vary with genre, among other
things.
In fact, it could be argued that there’s no
such thing as authenticity, except in the minds
of those who construct the idea.
For the band, however, there is more to
this discursive struggle. Rock authenticity is
premised on a revolutionary sensibility – a
rejection of authority. And rock musicians who
become commercially successful often struggle
with how to remain true to these ideals.
The strategy of forever searching for a new
sound becomes especially important in these
circumstances: there’s nothing that shatters
respectability like a commercially successful
rock band that rests on its laurels.
Returning to one’s “roots,” though, or being
on the cutting edge of contemporary music
becomes part of the strategy to maintain credibility
and relevance in the wake of unprecedented
commercial success – to demonstrate
that the ideals on which the band was formed
are still driving them.
Could this explain why U2 recently made
an (intially) covert busking appearance in a
New York City subway station? U2 recently
performed – initially, in disguise – in a New
York City subway station.
After all, busking is perhap the quintessential
authentic performance genre – live, unmediated,
accessible, risky and non-commercial
(if you don’t count the pennies collected in the
guitar case).
Glitzy can be compatible
with authentic
Interestingly, three out of U2’s last four records
have been premised on the idea of “going
back to roots” or “stripping down the sound.”
And ironically, these albums have been
more commercially successful than the last
two attempts at sonic experimentation (Pop
and No Line on the Horizon).
So one wonders – perhaps a bit cynically –
if the “returning to roots” discourse is not only
a means of reaffirming rock authenticity, but
also a way to sell more records.
This is as much an observation about critics
and fans (for whom the discourse of rock
authenticity is religion), than it is about the
band.
For my part, I’ve always found U2’s experimental
records and some of the gargantuan
tours more interesting and more true to the
spirit of rock and roll than their trips back to
the past.
Pop is a sonic masterpiece, as are Zooropa
and Achtung, Baby. The last of these,
incidentally, was also a very personal album,
chronicling, among other things, the shattering
effects of divorce (Edge’s) and the complications
of being in love.
In fact, the mammoth Zoo TV Tour that
supported Achtung, Baby and Zooropa was
one of the band’s most politically astute and
successfully mounted social commentaries. In
a (self-referential) commentary on celebrity,
Bono took on the character of the bloated,
leather-clad, shade-wearing rock star. And the
main premise of the show was a harsh critique
of the desensitizing effects of contemporary
media.
Thus, contrary to the well-worn dualism in
rock between “small and simple equals good”
and “big and glitzy equals bad,” some of U2’s
most incisive music and social commentary
have come out of the latter.
It seems that “small and simple” (if arena
shows can actually fall into this category) is
where they’ll land on this tour, but there’s
already a hint of where the band is going for
the next album.
In a New York Times essay written on the
eve of this tour, Bono had this to say about
Songs of Experience, the album that will follow
Songs of Innocence:
We’re keeping the discipline on songs and
pushing out the parameters of the sound….
One of the things that experience has taught
us is to be fully in the moment. What’s the moment?
Pop music. And so the quest continues.
THIS ARTICLE AS FIRST PUBLISHED AT WWW.THECONVERSATION.COM.AU
41

MONEY
WWW.WSBA.COM.AU
Your goal the only one that matters
MARKETS
By Sheila Cabacungan
Certified Financial Planner
BY the time this article goes live our superannuation
funds and our share market
investments would have survived another
roller coaster ride reacting to the fear and
greed of people all round the world.
The good thing is that what drives the
share markets annually and in the long term
are more rational factors like company earnings,
quality businesses making products and
services we all need to survive and thrive in
this world.
When it comes to money, what animal are you?
We use the Money Personality Questionnaire to help you understand yourself and how you make money decisions.
People with Dolphin preferences
like harmony, peace and purpose. Dolphins
are more interested in “what could be” than
“what is”. The Dolphins core needs are
possibility, purpose and authenticity. Oprah
Winfrey displays Dolphin preferences.
People with Monkey preferences like spontaneity and
flexibility. They act on their impulses and find highly
structured plans and situations restricting. Monkeys like
to take advantage of new opportunities quickly.
Donald Trump displays
Monkey preferences.
Financial Planning
Financial Planning is about delivering 3 things for every client:
Hope
for a better future
Peace from financial uncertainty and a sense of
Plenty, knowing that you have “enough” to live the
way you want to.
Our Clients
Carnegie Financial Planning specialises in providing advice and
financial solutions to:
• Business Owners,
• Professionals and
• Private Clients.
We work with clients who seek our advice to help them build,
protect and manage their money now and in the future.
Our Clients choose to work with us on an ongoing basis or to
resolve a specific financial issue.
Find us on Facebook
Like us and Join our Community
People with Owl preferences like
knowledge, possibility and analysis.
Like the Dolphins, Owls are more interested in
“what could be” than “what is”. The core needs of
Owls are competence, possibility and maximising
opportunities. Bill Gates displays Owl preferences.
People with Labrador preferences like order,
closure and stability. They excel in managing
and maintaining proven structures and
systems. Labrador’s core needs are loyalty,
responsibility, and belonging. Warren
Buffett displays Labrador preferences.
About Us
You’ll be working with Sheila Cabacungan and her team.
She’s a Certified Financial Planner with 19 years’ experience.
She established Carnegie Financial Planning in 2009 as an
independently owned Australian Financial Services Licensee.
This means that your advice and product recommendations
aren’t in conflict with the influence of financial institutions.
Our vision is to empower our clients with the tools and
strategies to achieve their life and wealth goals.
To do we need to know and understand what’s important to
you and what you value.
We get to know what drives you to work, to spend, to save, to
borrow, to risk, to laugh and cry. All of these things signpost
your Wealth Journey. Knowing these motivators allows us to
tailor our advice to you.
Let’s work together to give
you Hope, Peace and Plenty
Visit our website
www.carnegiefin.com.au
Carnegie Financial Planning Pty Ltd ABN 94 128 285 110 is an Australian Financial Services Licensee No.389528
The causes for this current roller
coaster ride are:
• Chinese economy that is slowing
down from the exponential
growth of the last 20 years.,
• The US Economy slowly recovering
and catching up with the over
enthusiastic US Stock Market
(remember that Share market sentiment
is almost always ahead in
either enthusiasm or gloom) and
• The Greek Debt Crisis which on a
global scale had no impact on how
the world’s markets and money
run, it just made Investors feel the
fear of how interconnected markets
and money are.
For Australian investors the interconnections
of share markets and money create
a ripple effect with a real impact on our
superannuation balances and our wealth.
Here’s the thing… share markets are
volatile they go up and down like rollercoasters
because what drives share markets
daily are the investors who push the
buttons to buy and sell. And what drives
these people in the short term at least are
two very primal emotions, fear and greed.
Fear will make a person do one of two
things fight or take flight. When faced
with a physical threat to our safety we
will either take steps to defend ourselves
or run like the wind and try to escape the
threat.
Share market investors scared out of
their wits will cash up, sell out and turn
their paper losses into an actual loss of
wealth. They will abandon whatever
discipline or process they had in selecting
companies to invest in surrendering to the
fear.
Greed or the pursuit of pleasure will
make people to one of two things stay and
do more to get more of what they desire.
The will see the fear driven selling, rub
their hands together and start bargain
hunting.
Not only will they stay invested they
will take the cash they have reserved for
occasions just like this and start buying
shares.
So how does an investor deal with the
share markets and the fear and greed?
Fact: share markets don’t come with
crystal balls and forecasts are just a best
guess based on a set of numbers, more
facts and opinions.
The only way to deal in this world of
uncertainty is to know what your investment
goals are and to focus your investment
strategy on meeting those goals. It’s
easier said than done. But going through
the process will provide you with the
framework to deal with the fear and the
greed.
So get clear on your life and wealth
goals. It might be to save $100,000 over
the next seven years for a home deposit.
It might be to grow your superannuation
to $1,000,000 over the next 10 years
to retire well.
The thing you notice about these goals
is there’s a time frame and a dollar value.
Having a time and money refined goal
means that you can work through these
roller coaster share markets keeping your
own fear and greed in check with your
eyes on the prize.
If you are setting aside a regular
amount of surplus cash, put that cash to
work so it can either protect your wealth
(with insurance) or grow your wealth with
an investment strategy.
It’s the investment strategy that will
keep you honest, focussed and able to ride
the share market roller coaster.
A Financial Planner can help you work
out how to get there by opening their tool
kit of strategies, investment and insurance
products to get you the target return you
need.
It’s that target return and that investment
strategy that will keep you focussed
and get you to look through the next share
market roller-coaster.
42 WESTERN SYDNEY BUSINESS ACCESS SEPTEMBER 2015

WOMEN IN BUSINESS
WWW.WSBA.COM.AU
Outdated views shut entrepreneurial
women out of capital markets
ENTREPRENEURS
By Andre Sammartino
Senior Lecturer in International
Business & Strategic Management
at University of Melbourne
DESPITE considerable success in the international
arena, many female entrepreneurs
still struggle to raise capital. New
research suggests that lenders may have
an outdated concept of what an entrepreneur
looks like.
We recently surveyed 416 Australian
female businesswomen, and complemented
the survey with focus groups.
Of survey participants, 183 were female
business owner-operators – what most of us
would call entrepreneurs. We found that over
a third (35%) of these female entrepreneurs
who operated internationally had recorded
sales growth of more than 40% over the previous
12 months.
The growth is even higher among those female
owned and operated businesses that had
internationalised in the past five years, with
52% reporting sales climbed by more than
40% in the past year. Employment growth
paralleled sales growth, indicating promising
gains for the Australian economy.
There was, understandably, a strong
appetite for more growth. Most of these entrepreneurs
(74%) were looking to expand the
number of countries in which they operated in
the near future.
Unfortunately, our data point to some
substantial constraints to these internationalisation
ambitions, which we view as a possible
handbrake on future growth of the Australian
economy.
Australian capital markets
The most significant is shortcomings – and
possible discrimination – in the Australian
capital markets.
As this is the second time we have run this
survey (see a discussion of the initial report
here), we were able to track some respondents
from year to year.
Of the women in our first survey who
indicated an intention to expand, 60% did
so. This longitudinal panel also allowed us to
track changes in perceptions of barriers over
the past 12 months.
Internationalisation should become
easier over time for any given businesswoman
through experiential learning, mentoring, support
networks and the like.
However, this wasn’t the case for many.
Over half (52%) of the entrepreneurs reported
“lack of alternative sources of capital” was a
greater barrier to their international expansion
than it had been 12 months earlier.
So how do female entrepreneurs fund
their start-ups and their expansion?
Most women we surveyed rely primarily
on personal savings and reinvested profits to
fund expansion. Only 21% of the entrepreneurs
we surveyed had attempted to borrow to
fund internationalisation.
Of these attempts, only 27% were successful.
A tiny proportion (4%) of the owneroperators
who are yet to internationalise have
tried to borrow to fund international business
opportunities. None have been successful.
We asked the 78% of internationally-engaged
owner-operators, and 96% of not-international
owner-operators who had not sought
funds for international business expansion
why this was the case.
Risk of borrowing
Around a quarter of these women (23%
of the internationally-engaged, 28% of the
not internationally engaged) said they were
discouraged by an inadequate track record or
insufficient security.
An additional 17% of internationally engaged
owner-operators viewed the risk of such
borrowing as too high.
The sophistication of Australia’s banking
system, and our low cost of capital relative to
many emerging economies, should be a source
of advantage to Australian entrepreneurs.
Despite weathering the GFC relatively unscathed,
Australia’s institutions appear excessively
conservative and risk averse. Among the
internationally-engaged female entrepreneurs,
23% rated the level of ease in accessing finance
for international expansion as very difficult,
and 32% assessed it difficult. Only 2% graded
it as very easy, and 8% as easy.
Slightly more than a third of owneroperators
(36% for both the internationalised
and not-yet-internationalised groups) claimed
financial institutions did not offer an environment
in which they felt at ease discussing their
financing needs.
Around half the respondents advocated
better information about funding options
available to entrepreneurs. Many also called
for simpler processes and streamlined paperwork,
and for lenders to explore offering more
flexible loan terms.
Many female owner-operators appealed
for more face-to-face contact with lenders and
consistency of personnel, and for financial
institutions to employ staff who better understand
running a business.
Lenders and gender
Almost two fifths (39%) of the internationally
active entrepreneurs felt their
gender made a difference to their access
to finance. This number was considerably
higher (52%) for those who were yet to
internationalise.
Of the internationally active female
entrepreneurs, 62% are more than 50 years
of age – certainly not the stereotypical entrepreneur,
who is typically depicted as an
assertive, outspoken young man.
However, the banks might want to consider
what they’re missing out on.
As debtors, these entrepreneurs are safer
bets than most. The women in this entrepreneurial
group are very well-educated (78%
hold a bachelor degree or higher). They
have more life and business experience
than their junior competitors and 50% have
international business experience, typically
for five or more years.
In focus group discussions, a number
of the owner-operators pointed the finger
not just at lending institutions, but also the
regulatory constraints on other potential
funding sources such as superannuation and
managed funds.
Tellingly, venture capitalists and angel
investors were almost completely absent
from any funding arrangements. Most
of these start-ups were solely owned, or
partnerships with spouses and long-term
partners.
Without a more proactive capital market
that recognises the promise of female entrepreneurs
(whatever their age), Australia’s
international business performance will be
constrained.
THIS ARTICLE WAS FIRST PUBLISHED AT WWW.THECONVERSATION.COM.AU
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WESTERN SYDNEY BUSINESS ACCESS SEPTEMBER 2015
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WESTERN SYDNEY BUSINESS ACCESS SEPTEMBER 2015
45

Ph: 1300 207 122
www.mitronics.com.au
enquiries@mitronics.com.au
46 WESTERN SYDNEY BUSINESS ACCESS SEPTEMBER 2015

ENTERTAINMENT
WWW.WSBA.COM.AU
Wharf review celebrates 15 years
COMEDY
CELEBRATING 15 years of hilarious
political satire, everyone’s favourite lampoonists
return to Riverside Theatres
from September 9 to September 13 for a
special edition of Sydney Theatre Company’s
The Wharf Revue.
Written, created and performed by
Jonathan Biggins, Drew Forsythe and Phillip
Scott, this year’s line-up also includes Amanda
Bishop (At Home With Julia) who has performed
in The Wharf Revue seven times.
The 2015 cast is set to deliver their signature
style of side-splitting silliness and musical
mayhem.
The Wharf Revue cleverly mixes music,
comedy, satire and political jest in a uniquely
Australian way. There will be up-to-the-second
sketches on whichever cultural malaise or
governmental gaffe is news of the day.
Across 15 years and 21 shows, The Wharf
Revue has mercilessly mocked all the usual
suspects, from the politicians to the celebrities.
This year’s show will feature a parade of
these past indignitaries – a who’s who of 21 st
Century embarrassments. Who will make
the cut? Who has the numbers in the caucus
room? It is anyone’s guess.
Riverside Theatres has presented The
Wharf Revue since 2002 and in that time it has
never failed to amuse, with audiences clapping
and shrieking with laughter!
Dates: Wednesday 9 September 8pm,
Thursday, September 10 8pm, Friday, September
11 8pm, Saturday, September 12, 2pm
(Close Captions) & 8pm
Tickets: Adult $62 / Conc $57 / 30 and
Under $48 / School Students $35
Bookings: From the Box Office
(02) 8839 3399 or www.riversideparramatta.
com.au
Venue: Riverside Theatres – Corner of
Church and Market Streets, Parramatta
*The Wharf Revue will also be showing at
The Joan Sutherland Performing Arts Centre
from Thursday September 3 to Saturday,
September 5. For more information and
bookings, please visit http://thejoan.com.au/
whats-on/wharf-revue-2015/
WESTERN SYDNEY BUSINESS ACCESS SEPTEMBER 2015
47

CHILDSCENE
WWW.WSBA.COM.AU
Kids prefer maths when you let them
figure out the answer for themselves
CLASSROOM
By Peter Sullivan
Professor of Science, Mathematics and
Technology Education at Monash University
A
COMMON view is that students learn
maths best when teachers give clear
explanations of mathematical concepts,
usually in isolation from other concepts,
and students are then given opportunities to
practise what they have been shown.
I’ve recently undertaken research at
primary and junior secondary levels exploring
a different approach. This approach involves
posing questions like the following and
expecting (in this case, primary level) students
to work out their own approaches to the task
for themselves prior to any instruction from
the teacher:
The minute hand of a clock is on two, and
the hands make an acute angle. What might be
the time?
There are three ways that this question is
different from conventional questions. First,
it focuses on two aspects of mathematics
together, time and angles.
Contrasting two concepts helps students
see connections and move beyond approaching
mathematics as a collection of isolated facts.
Questions posed to students as part of the
research are different to conventional math
problems.
Second, the question has more than one
correct answer. Having more than one correct
answer means students have opportunities
to make decisions about their own
answer and then have something unique
to contribute to discussions with other
students.
Third, students can respond at different
levels of sophistication: some students might
find just one answer, while other students
might find all of the possibilities and formulate
generalisations.
The task is what is described as appropriately
challenging. The solutions and solution
pathways are not immediately obvious for
middle primary students but the task draws on
ideas with which they are familiar. An explicit
advantage of posing such challenging tasks is
that the need for students to apply themselves
and persist is obvious to the students, even if
the task seems daunting at first.
Sharing insights and solutions
After the students have worked on the task
for a time, the teacher manages a discussion
in which students share their insights and
solutions.
This is an important opportunity for students
to see what other students have found,
and especially to realise that in many cases
there are multiple ways of solving mathematics
problems.
It is suggested to teachers that they use
a data projector or similar technology to
project students’ actual work. This saves time
rewriting the work, presents the students’
work authentically and illustrates to students
the benefits of writing clearly and explaining
thinking fully.
Subsequently, the teacher poses a further
task in which some aspects are kept the same
and some aspects changed, such as:
The minute hand of a clock is on eight, and
the hands make an obtuse angle. What might
be the time?
The tasks given to students are appropriately
challenging.
The intention is that students learn from
the thinking activated by working on the first
task and from the class discussion, then apply
that learning to the second task.
The research aims to identify tasks that
not only are appropriately challenging but
can be adapted to suit the needs of particular
students. For example, there may be some
students for whom the first task is too difficult.
Those students might be asked to work on a
question like:
What is a time at which the hands of a
clock make an acute angle?
The intention is that those students
then have more chance of engaging with the
original task. Of course, there are also students
who can find answers quickly and are then
ready for further challenges. Those students
might be posed questions like:
With the minute hand on two, why are
there six times for which the hands make an
acute angle? Is there a number to which the
minute hand might point for which there are
not six possibilities?
There might even be advanced students
who could be asked: What are some times
for which the hands on a clock make a right
angle?
The combination of the students’ own engagement
with the problem and the different
levels of prompts means the students’ work
contains rich and useful information about
what the students know. Teachers can use this
not only to give the students feedback but also
to plan subsequent teaching.
Students welcomed the challenge
The project found that students prefer to
work out solutions and representations by
themselves or with other students.
The project found that, contrary to the
preconceptions of some teachers, many students
do not fear challenges in mathematics
but welcome them.
Rather than preferring teachers to instruct
them on solution methods, many students
prefer to work out solutions by themselves or
by working with other students.
The project also established that students
learn substantive mathematics content from
working on challenging tasks and are willing
and able to develop ways of articulating their
reasoning.
THIS ARTICLE WAS FIRST PUBLISHED AT WWW.THECONVERSATION.COM.AU
48 WESTERN SYDNEY BUSINESS ACCESS SEPTEMBER 2015

CHILDSCENE
Five things every guilty
parent needs to know
UNDERSTANDING
By John Pickering
Head, Triple P Innovation Precinct at
The University of Queensland
Margaret Crane
Research and Innovation Officer at
The University of Queensland
IT’S the guilty secret many parents are
reluctant to admit aloud: no matter how much
you love your kids, being a parent can make
you feel bad.
But Google knows you’re not alone. Look
up the phrase guilty parent and you’ll get
more than 70 million results. Unfortunately,
most of that advice is based on opinion, folklore
or individual experience; it’s rarely based
on evidence.
So what exactly do we know about the
causes of parental guilt? And how can you turn
feeling bad into a change for the better?
Don’t worry – it’s normal
The first, and perhaps most important,
thing to know about parental guilt is that, at
some point, every parent will experience it.
One of the best parts of our work is
running parenting classes, where complete
strangers from all walks of life come to learn
evidence-based strategies to increase their
confidence and skills.
We start each new class by asking parents
why they’ve come. And in every class, as we
work our way around the room, one parent
after another admits that they are not sure
what to do – they’ve read the books, Googled
the answers, listened to their neighbours, tried
the old wives’ tales, and whatever they try still
isn’t working.
As they share their stories, the mood in
the room lifts. People start to smile in recognition;
maybe they’re not the only ones who
are struggling with life’s greatest gift – their
children!
ABC TV’s The Checkout satirises the
endless ways mothers are guilted into buying
things they don’t need.
Understanding the guilty brain
People feel guilt when their actions or
thoughts don’t match their standards for themselves.
It is considered a moral emotion that
helps us regulate our interactions with others.
Guilt can be useful when it enables us
to be self-reflective and to pay attention to
other’s emotions. When a person feels guilty,
they experience an increased activation of
brain areas involved with taking another
person’s perspective and being empathic. As
a result, guilt often motivates people to make
amends.
However, guilt can be a harmful emotion
– especially because not everyone who
feels guilty takes action to decrease their guilt.
When people feel guilty, they are likely first to
withdraw from the situation. Guilt has been
described as a way to punish oneself.
One study even found that parents cited
guilt as a barrier to exercise. There is evidence
that supports the common saying that people
feel “weighed down by guilt”.
Common causes of guilt,
from work to play
Balancing a career and a family is a great
source of guilt for both men and women. Research
has also shown that women can feel a
sense of guilt and failure about having lowered
levels of libido and subsequent intimacy with
their partners following childbirth.
An annual check-up with the paediatrician
can be another source of guilt for parents,
especially if they find out that their child may
be at risk for obesity.
Then, as children grow and other siblings
come along, parents can feel guilty about
favouring one child over the other.
WESTERN SYDNEY BUSINESS ACCESS SEPTEMBER 2015
Discipline is another common source of
guilt. Parents will often say they feel guilty
about being too lenient with their children
and “caving in”; they can feel equally guilty
about becoming aggravated and resorting to
yelling or smacking.
Then there’s techno-guilt: worrying about
phone use in the playground and feeling
unease about using phones and other devices
to distract toddlers and pre-schoolers.
Five tips for parental guilt
Given these and many more potential
causes of parental guilt, how can you avoid
becoming overwhelmed?
1. Remember – parental guilt is normal
The next time you’re feeling like the worst
parent in the world, remember: every parent
feels like that at times. Sometimes, simply
reminding yourself of that can be enough to
get you through the day.
2. Let go of perfection
Having realistic expectations of yourself
and your children can make a big difference.
At the end of a long day, dealing with a toddler
who refuses to go to bed will never be
easy. Be realistic about your capacity to solve
every problem effortlessly and without stress.
It’s not always possible. Nobody’s perfect. Not
you, and not your kids. And that’s OK.
3. Channel your thoughts and feelings
into action
Guilt can weigh you down and hold you
back – or it can be the start of a change for
the better. While guilt can be harmful, it’s also
associated with positive traits, such as being
more empathetic. Let the knowledge that
guilt is linked to a desire to do something differently
motivate you to change what’s making
you feel guilty.
4. Seek out reliable, evidence-informed
parenting advice
Look for programs that have evidence of
their effectiveness, including evidence of scientific
success in actually resolving the issue
at hand. And consider what form of help suits
you best: are you looking for resources online,
in a group setting or one-on-one in person?
If you’re looking for places to start, some
good options to check out include the Raising
Children Network in Australia, Blueprints for
Healthy Youth Development in the United
States, or the UK government’s Department
of Education.
5. Create a network of encouragement
with other parents
You can build your own network of encouragement
with other parents. Share your
stories – not just the highs, which are natural
to want to talk up, but also the lows – and offer
positive feedback.
The goal is to create a connected group of
people who prompt one another to share ideas
and access evidence-informed information.
And whenever you need to, go back to tip 1:
remind yourself and your friends that feeling
guilty is a normal part of being a parent.
THIS ARTICLE AS FIRST PUBLISHED AT WWW.THECONVERSATION.COM.AU
49

TECHNOLOGY
WWW.WSBA.COM.AU
What human emotions do we want of AI?
INTELLIGENCE
By David Lovell
Head of school at Queensland
University of Technology
FORGET the Turing and Lovelace tests on
artificial intelligence: I want to see a robot
pass the Frampton Test.
Let me explain why rock legend Peter
Frampton enters the debate on AI.
For many centuries, much thought was
given to what distinguishes humans from
animals. These days thoughts turn to what
distinguishes humans from machines.
The British code breaker and computing
pioneer, Alan Turing, proposed “the imitation
game” (also known as the Turing test) as
a way to evaluate whether a machine can do
something we humans love to do: have a good
conversation.
If a human judge cannot consistently
distinguish a machine from another human by
conversation alone, the machine is deemed to
have passed the Turing Test.
Initially, Turing proposed to consider
whether machines can think, but realised that,
thoughtful as we may be, humans don’t really
have a clear definition of what thinking is.
Tricking the Turing test
Maybe it says something of another human
quality – deviousness – that the Turing
Test came to encourage computer programmers
to devise machines to trick the human
judges, rather than embody sufficient intelligence
to hold a realistic conversation.
This trickery climaxed on June 7, 2014,
when Eugene Goostman convinced about a
third of the judges in the Turing Test competition
at the Royal Society that “he” was a
13-year-old Ukrainian schoolboy.
Eugene was a chatbot: a computer program
designed to chat with humans. Or, chat
with other chatbots, for somewhat surreal
effect (see the video, below).
And critics were quick to point out the
artificial setting in which this deception occurred.
The creative mind
Chatbots like Eugene led researchers to
throw down a more challenging gauntlet to
machines: be creative!
In 2001, researchers Selmer Bringsjord,
Paul Bello and David Ferrucci proposed the
Lovelace Test – named after 19th century
mathematician and programmer Ada, Countess
of Lovelace – that asked for a computer to
create something, such as a story or poem.
Computer generated poems and stories
have been around for a while, but to pass the
Lovelace Test, the person who designed the
program must not be able to account for how
it produces its creative works.
Mark Riedl, from the School of Interactive
Computing at Georgia Tech, has since proposed
an upgrade (Lovelace 2.0) that scores
a computer in a series of progressively more
demanding creative challenges.
This is how he describes being creative:
In my test, we have a human judge sitting
at a computer. They know they’re interacting
with an AI, and they give it a task with
two components. First, they ask for a creative
artifact such as a story, poem, or picture.
And secondly, they provide a criterion. For
example: “Tell me a story about a cat that
saves the day,” or “Draw me a picture of a man
holding a penguin.”
But what’s so great
about creativity?
Challenging as Lovelace 2.0 may be, it’s
argued that we should not place creativity
above other human qualities.
This (very creative) insight from Dr
Jared Donovan arose in a panel discussion
with roboticist Associate Professor Michael
Milford and choreographer Prof Kim Vincs at
Robotronica 2015 earlier this month.
Amid all the recent warnings that AI could
one day lead to the end of humankind, the
panel’s aim was to discuss the current state of
creativity and robots. Discussion led to questions
about the sort of emotions we would
want intelligent machines to express.
Empathy – the ability to understand and
share feelings of another – was top of the list
of desirable human qualities that day, perhaps
because it goes beyond mere recognition (“I
see you are angry”) and demands a response
that demonstrates an appreciation of emotional
impact.
Hence, I propose the Frampton Test, after
the critical question posed by rock legend
Peter Frampton in the 1973 song “Do you feel
like we do?”
True, this is slightly tongue in cheek, but
I imagine that to pass the Frampton Test an
artificial system would have to give a convincing
and emotionally appropriate response to
a situation that would arouse feelings in most
humans. I say most because our species has a
spread of emotional intelligence levels.
I second that emotion
Noting that others have explored this territory
and that the field of “affective computing”
strives to imbue machines with the ability
to simulate empathy, it is still fascinating to
contemplate the implications of emotional
machines.
This July, AI and robotics researchers
released an open letter on the peril of
autonomous weapons. If machines could have
even a shred of empathy, would we fear these
developments in the same way?
This reminds us, too, that human emotions
are not all positive: hate, anger, resentment
and so on. Perhaps we should be more
grateful that the machines in our lives don’t
display these feelings. (Can you imagine a
grumpy Siri?)
Still, there are contexts where our nobler
emotions would be welcome: sympathy and
understanding in health care for instance.
As with all questions worthy of serious
consideration, the Robotronica panellists did
not resolve whether robots could perhaps one
day be creative, or whether indeed we would
want that to pass.
As for machine emotion, I think the
Frampton Test will be even longer in the passing.
At the moment the strongest emotions I
see around robots are those of their creators.
Acknowledgement: This article were
inspired by discussion and debate at the
Robotronica 2015 panel session The Lovelace
Test: Can Robots be Creative? and I gratefully
acknowledge the creative insights of panellists
Dr Jared Donovan (QUT), Associate Professor
Michael Milford (QUT) and Professor
Kim Vincs (Deakin).
THIS ARTICLE WAS FIRST PUBLISHED AT WWW.THECONVERSATION.COM.AU
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ARTS
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Frightfully good school holiday fun
GALLERY
HAWESBURY Regional Gallery, Windsor
is offering some great school holiday
workshops for kids, inspired by Halloween
and the Day of the Dead.
Whether it’s making a calavera or ‘sugar
skull’, or learning to perform Michael Jackson’s
80s hit, Thriller, these workshops are
designed for kids who like to have fun while
being creative and trying new things.
Wednesday 23 September
10 am - noon
Design and make a decorative calavera or
‘sugar skull’ like the ones made in Mexico to
celebrate the Day of the Dead. $15 - includes
all materials. For 5 years+.
Thursday 24 September10
am - noon
Get back to the ‘80s with Michael Jackson’s
iconic ‘Thriller’ album. We learn some
easy dance steps, add a touch of scary face
paint, and finish with a polished presentation.
$15 - includes all materials. For 5
years+
Friday 25 September 10 am - noon
Explore cyanotypes, one of the earliest
photographic techniques, using light sensitive
materials to create your own beautiful
images. $15 - includes all materials. For 10
years+
Wednesday 30 September
10 am - noon
Learn how to paint the scariest faces for
Halloween.
$10 - includes all materials. For 5 years+
Michael Jackson© Basheeradesigns | Dreamstime.com
Thursday 1 October 10 am - noon
Create a brightly patterned acrylic painting
of a skull, inspired by the centuries-old
tradition of the Day of the Dead. $15 - includes
all materials. For 5 years+
Decorated skull by Taryn Malzard
Friday 2 October 10 am - noon
Get ready for Halloween by making some
creepy, realistic looking eyes using pebbles and
special painting techniques. $15 - includes all
materials. For 10 years+
TO BOOK: Phone 4560 4441 (payment
in advance required). Please wear clothes
suitable for working with paint. Children
under the age of 10 must be accompanied by
an adult.
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MAKING GBBC ONE OF THE BEST VALUE BUSINESS NETWORKS IN SYDNEY
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WESTERN SYDNEY BUSINESS ACCESS SEPTEMBER 2015
51

HEALTH
WWW.WSBA.COM.AU
FUTURE OF HEALTH CARE
Technology and skills shortage drive a new era of wellness
TRENDS
FUTURE predictions of skill shortages in
massage therapy have influenced the trend
towards higher education.
So much so, that the health funds demanded
change with diplomas and above qualifications
to address the situation of untrained
practitioners treating patients.
Projections in Australia show an expected
short-medium term shortage of skilled, qualified
workers for allied health positions.
Expansion of allied health to accommodate
the growing ageing population will require
years of experienced practitioners to fill the
void.
The practitioners performing massage
therapy at Health plus Chiropractic already have
years of extensive experience.
The decision was made long ago by this
business to only engage the best in their field
with the top tier of qualifications in massage
therapy.
Professional development programs
While some other professions moved toward
mandatory continuing education, Health
plus Chiropractic also committed to continuous
improvement by a range of ongoing professional
development programs
Current trends, particularly for chiropractic,
are focusing on functional and rehabilitation
programs and customized solutions for musculoskeletal
conditions.
As more of the population is taking responsibility
for their own health, making the right
choice and keeping fit, educating the importance
of regular maintenance and looking after
yourself has increased the need of having health
partners.
Using other approaches in the past has had
a redirection change to chiropractic, massage
and podiatry as being the choice of preferred
treatment.
Patient education and understanding the
treatment program is the key to wellness.
Some of the most notable changes in
podiatry locally are occurring here at Health
plus Chiropractic includes new and emerging
technologies, in addition to the usually high
standards of general care.
New dimensions for podiatrists
Podiatrists have been able to add a few new
dimensions to not only how they diagnose conditions
of the lower limb, but also how they can
implement more effect treatment programs.
Podiatrist Mark Palmer is at the forefront of
these developments.
Extracorporeal Shockwave Therapy
(ESWT) is the newest way of attacking some
common, and often stubborn, soft tissue
complaints.
Whilst it can be used successfully all over
the body, Shockwave Therapy is used in Podiatry
to treat plantar fasciitis (heel spurs) and
Achilles tendonitis.
These new machines use a repetitive sound
wave (or shockwave) to basically stimulate
components in the body which can heal
inflamed tissue.
How technology is helping
Traditionally, treatment of these types
of chronic and painful conditions consists of
massage and stretching in conjunction with
anti-inflammatory techniques (such as Rest/
Ice/Compression/Elevation).
By combining traditional approaches with
shockwave it is possible to accelerate the healing
process, and breakdown tissue that may
have scarred from long-term inflammation or
even calcified (in the case of spurs).
There are little to no side-effects and the
machine intensity can be adjusted to the comfort
of the patient.
Another new technology utilised is a 3D
foot and ankle scanner. Replacing the older
technique of taking casts or moulds of feet to
then make orthotic innersoles, the scanner creates
a 3D model of the foot.
The type of #D scanner used by Mark
Palmer operates on a digital mapping process
that takes into account the entire foot, not just
the sole.
Extremely lightweight and portable, the
scanner connects wirelessly to a handheld
tablet that the Podiatrist uses to initiate the scan
and upload and view 3D, 360 degree images of
the patient’s foot.
They can be shared immediately with the
patient and sent wirelessly to the orthotics
company, cutting the waiting time for customdesigned
orthotics in half, while enabling a
“better fit.”
In conjunction with the new technology
available, advances in research have led to a
new understanding of how our foot and ankle
functions in motion and interacts with the rest
of our body.
The older theories were based around
“forcing” the foot into a pre-determined best
position to improve function and reduce pain.
New theories are much more dynamic,
realising that there are many different foot types
and whilst there is still an overall template for
movement and function, everyone is different,
therefore the treatment plans need to be
customised to the individual patient.
The result for the patient is a much wider
variety of treatment options, orthotic designs
and better long-term outcomes.
The role of footwear
Footwear has changed greatly in the last decade
or so as well. Manufacturers have worked
with the various Podiatry Associations around
the world to bridge the gap between orthopaedic
(or medical grade) footwear and what is
available in a retail setting.
Footwear companies are embracing the use
of orthotic technology and designing shoes that
make it easier for the consumer to follow the
advice of their Podiatrist and still end up with a
shoe which is stylish, practical and affordable.
This trend extends across most footwear
types from running and sports shoes, to safety
and work footwear, and even into the fashion
sector.
It certainly makes our job easier when
we can explain to our patients that they can
purchase a shoe that they like to wear, from a
shop that is easy to get to, at a price that doesn’t
require a second mortgage
Safety footwear, formally restricted to big,
heavy boots, now cater to men and women,
can be lightweight and usually offer the same
cushioning materials found in a pair of running
shoes.
Who needs a podiatrist?
So who goes to see a Podiatrist these days?
Little old ladies with thick toenails and corns?
The answer now is: everyone with a pair of feet!
General foot care will always be a big part
of podiatric practice, but with a combination
of cutting edge technology, new and refined
techniques and some good old-fashioned
experience, everyone will benefit from seeing a
Podiatrist.
From elite athletes trying to overcome a
chronic injury or improve their technique, to
whole companies sending through their valued
workers who stand on their feet all day, it is
possible to assess, advise, and improve the way
your most important asset (your feet) functions.
So whilst many of the tried and tested
“hands on” techniques will always be there, the
profession of Podiatry is certainly ‘keeping up
with the Joneses’ in the technology stakes.
Video Gait Analysis, 3D Scanning and
Shockwave are already part of everyday treatments
at Health plus Chiropractic and with
advances in 3D printing and Laser Technology
for Fungal Nails, who knows what may be
around the corner?
It is considered that the greatest projected
change in Podiatry in the coming years will be
more formal specialisation.
Currently, most podiatrists fill a “jack of all
trades” role in foot and lower limb care, providing
care for those with diabetes, arthritis, kids
through to the elderly, biomechanics and sports
injuries as well as general foot care (toenails,
corns and calluses).
We already see some podiatrists labeling
themselves as “Sports Podiatrists,” while others
will position their practices to cater for particular
groups like aged care or paediatrics.
Then there are those who work within
the hospital system will specialise in high risk
diabetic care. At the moment though, all of
these specialties are simply a choice made by
the individual Podiatrist.
The push is on to make these specialties
a more formal qualification, this will mean
further education for those who choose to
follow this path and make it easier to direct
patients to those clinicians who can best help
their problems.
Don’t despair though, the local Podiatrist
who can look after every foot need will be
around for many years to come, but like all
good things in life, the profession needs to
continually evolve to provide the best care for
patients!
52 WESTERN SYDNEY BUSINESS ACCESS SEPTEMBER 2015

HEALTH
WWW.WSBA.COM.AU
Five reasons to have a cup of tea
HEALTH CHECK
By Clare Collins
Professor in Nutrition and Dietetics
at University of Newcastle
GROWING, tea drinking was reserved for
my grandmother’s visits.
Making it followed a strict and
fascinating ritual. Take scalding hot water.
Warm the tea pot. Add one spoon of tea leaves
for each person and one for the pot. Cover with
a tea cosy. Turn the pot three times to the left,
three to the right, then three to the left. Leave
to brew. Warm the cups; milk in first, pour
through a tea strainer.
My grandmother could taste any attempt
you made to shortcut the process. Once
Grandma approved the tea, pressure eased and
conversation flowed.
In Australia 38% of the general population
and 67% of those aged over 70 are tea drinkers.
Our median intake is two cups a day, about
400mls.
By world standards we rank 55 for tea
consumption, compared to the United States at
69, New Zealand 45 and the United Kingdom,
number five. Turkey takes out the number one
spot, consuming more than ten times the per
capita intake of Australians.
1. Tea and survival
Around the world, tea is the most common
drink after water. Popularity increased in the
1800s because the practise of boiling water to
make the tea meant water-borne pathogens like
cholera and typhoid would be killed, making it
safer to drink.
Tea comes from the leaves and buds of the
plant Camellia sinensis. Black tea, green tea,
white tea, and oolong varieties all come from
the same plant, but are processed into dried
leaves differently.
Science has muscled in on our tea drinking
habits and started to unravel what makes us
love our “cuppa”. There is a large group of bioactive
components in tea called polyphenols,
which include catechins and tannins.
Concentrations of these compounds vary
depending on how you make the tea, including
the amount of tea leaves per cup, water
temperature and brewing time.
Catechins have anti-oxidant properties and
are most abundant in green tea. Tannins, which
inhibit non-haem iron absorption in the gut,
are most abundant in black tea. So if you have
iron deficiency, avoid drinking tea with meals.
But if you have the excessive iron storage condition
haemochromatosis, drinking tea with
meals will help reduce iron absorption.
2. Tea and your brain
Components of tea that can boost brain activity
include caffeine, catechins and the amino
acid, L-theanine.
In a systematic review of the effects of tea
on mood and cognitive function, the combination
of L-theanine and caffeine was shown to
increase alertness and attention-switching accuracy
up to two hours after consumption. The
researchers also found small enhancements in
accuracy of visual and auditory attention.
Catechins and the amino acid, L-theanine,
can boost brain power.
P reliminary evidence also suggests catechins
may have a calming effect during the
second hour post-cuppa. The authors called for
further research using a greater dosage range of
catechin and L-theanine to help separate any
effects due to caffeine intake.
At this stage however, there is no clear
evidence that drinking tea will protect people
from developing dementia.
3. Tea and weight loss
There has been a lot of interest in whether
tea, particularly green tea, can increase energy
expenditure and help with weight loss.
Two Dutch meta-analyses have examined
the evidence in studies comparing catechinplus-caffeine
mixtures versus caffeine-only
supplements on energy expenditure and fat
oxidation (breaking down fat). They found
that compared to placebo and caffeine-only
groups, people who had catechin-plus-caffeine
mixtures were more likely to break down fat.
They also evaluated whether green tea
could improve body weight regulation. Their
meta-analysis found the group consuming catechins
from green tea had a 1.3 kilogram greater
weight loss and were more likely to maintain
this loss; although there were some differences
based on ethnicity and usual caffeine intake.
4. Tea and diabetes
Last year, a pooled analysis of 12 cohort
studies compared tea drinking with risk of
type 2 diabetes. Researchers found that among
those who drank three to four or more cups per
day there was a 16% lower risk of developing
type 2 diabetes, compared to those who usually
drank just one or no cups of tea.
But when they drilled down into the studies,
the lower risk was only found in women
and those of Asian ethnicity. We need to keep
in mind that associations found in cohort studies
do not prove causation.
In a meta-analysis of ten randomised controlled
trials that lasted eight weeks or more,
totalling 608 adults with type 2 diabetes, researchers
found mixed results for the impact of
drinking tea, or consuming various tea extracts,
on blood markers of diabetes control.
While there were improvements in fasting
blood insulin and waist circumference, there
was no impact on other markers, including fasting
blood glucose, LDL (bad) or HDL (good)
cholesterol, body mass index or blood pressure.
Researchers are now focusing more closely
on the phenolic components in tea to try and
develop compounds that could be used to
prevent or manage type 2 diabetes.
5. Tea and heart disease
A Cochrane review evaluated 11 randomised
controlled trials that ran for at least
three months and were aimed at preventing
heart disease in healthy adults or those at high
risk of heart disease.
Pooled results showed that both green tea
and black tea significantly reduced blood pressure,
with black tea lowering LDL-cholesterol
and green tea lowering total cholesterol. The
small number of studies to date though means
these results need to be interpreted with caution,
but they do look promising.
Meanwhile, for a host of other reasons it
seems that my grandmother was right: a good
brew does more than than just warm you up
(or cool you down). So put the kettle on, get
out your best tea cups, create your own tea
making ritual, gather the clan and relax with a
cuppa.
THIS ARTICLE WAS FIRST PUBLISHED AT WWW.THECONVERSATION.COM.AU
Health plus Chiropractic
is proud to announce its relocation to
Shop 10, 459 Church St
(corner Pennant Hills Rd & Albert St)
North Parramatta.
Our team of long experienced and highly skilled chiropractors, massage therapists and
podiatrist are here with outstanding levels of expertise, service and technology to serve you.
Phone 9631 8944
www.healthpluschiropractic.com.au
WESTERN SYDNEY BUSINESS ACCESS SEPTEMBER 2015
53

TRAVEL
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Supporting children with special needs
THE CHALLENGE
IF you’re a business keen to give back to your
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Join forces with other Western Sydney
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You can Run, Ride or Walk in one of the
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