Lifestyle

Finding the right travel accommodation to suit your company and its budget can be a challenge for any business.

There are endless opportunities in the marketplace from high end large five star hotels, those catering for the business traveller and budget hotels.

Despite jitters from retailers that Christmas spending will be down this year, Australians are expected to fork out nearly $40 billion dollars this festive season.

The estimate from the Australian Retailers Association also found that in the 6 week lead-up to Christmas, we’ll spend $3.4 billion in department stores and nearly $3 billion on apparel alone.

Pro-Bono Australia is helping you direct some of your festive spending to a good cause. Use its Ethical Giving Guide to find goodwill gift options and ways to support not-for-profit groups this Christmas.

Want to drain an extra 2 days’ work out of your staff each week? Let them set their own start times and embrace workplace flexibility.

Flexibility helps attract and retain staff, as well as boost discretionary effort by encouraging employees to go the extra mile.

 “Managers in SMEs know the cost of losing an employee and the cost of recruiting again, and building someone up. If flexibility can help you retain a person for longer than you otherwise would have, then you have to put it onto the table,” Aequus Partner Juliet Bourke says.

For Robin Powis, the clothes really do maketh the man.

A corporate image stylist, Powis helps individuals seeking to take the next career step or simply polish their “personal brand.”

“I help people create a natural confident style. Everyone, no matter what industry they’re in has to think about what image they create,” Robin Powis, founder of Defining Style says.

It’s a multi-billion dollar problem that affects more than half of Australia’s workforce. Find out how barrister Peter Gorman is acting to stamp out workplace bullying, and how you can make sure it doesn’t set foot in your organisation.

Gorman has worked with the law for more than 5 decades – first as a uniform policeman, and then detective before moving to the bar.

In that time he’s seen plenty of bad behaviour.

I’m not ready for the death of the book.

Like many, I can’t imagine a world where Kindles line the bookshelf, or the latest title is downloaded rather than carried home from the bookshop.

Apparently I suffer from a sentimental objection to progress. Read this take on the two types of digital dissenters, sparked by the construction of a library-less American school.