Read the room

Good morning AusCorp. Your Teams chat is not private. It never was. We had several HR professionals confirm that reviewing staff messages was a standard part of their role, and yes, people have lost their jobs over GIFs.

In this week's edition, we're unpacking which companies are actively monitoring your Slack and Teams messages (and what triggers a flag), why the Australian economy is somehow overheating and shutting down at the same time, and why “sleeping” your laptop is bad for it.

Plus PwC cut a 40-person consulting team to six in the name of AI, Canva has rebuilt itself as a conversational AI workspace overnight, and Chobani opened a cafe in Melbourne where everything is free.

AUSCORP STRESS INDEX

The Pulse edged up this week, but don’t read too much into it. The macro noise is loud right now with another rate hike set for May, the RBA warning about 1970s-style inflation and the IMF trimming its global outlook. An ANU survey has found Australian life satisfaction has fallen to a record low of 6.22 out of 10 as 34.9% struggle on their current income.

The signal that actually moved the needle this week was a modest pullback in layoff news. The underlying restructuring has not reversed. SEEK job postings slipped again quietly and PwC saw a 40-person consulting team reduced to six through AI. If you are in a team that touches anything a language model can approximate, the question is not whether your firm is running that calculation. It is how far along they are.

THE BIG CONVERSATION

Your Teams chat is not private. It never was.

Most employment contracts include a clause giving your employer permission to monitor all company systems and equipment. That includes Teams, Slack, email and anything else running on a company device or network. The difference between companies isn't whether they can read your messages. It's whether they bother.

Some do. Regulated industries like banking and insurance run keyword monitoring that flags language automatically. At Macquarie, staff have been cautioned on more than one occasion for language used in what they thought were private Teams and Slack messages between colleagues. One person got flagged for calling someone a moron in Slack. At one general insurer, any bad language in chat triggered an automatic flag and repeat offences went straight to management.

It's not just swearing. Slack messages have been cited as the reason someone was deemed a "poor cultural fit" and dismissed at the end of probation. One person got pulled up for sending a movie quote GIF, and the two people they'd sent it to were also spoken to for not reporting the "misconduct and poor online behaviour." Even companies that don't actively monitor still have full access when they need it. If you're ever under investigation for anything, HR and IT can pull your entire chat history across every platform, and an ex-HR professional confirmed that reviewing messages was a standard part of their role. People have lost their jobs over it.

So if you wouldn't be comfortable seeing it printed on the front page of the AFR, don't put it in writing on a company system. Your Teams group chat is still company property. Your "private" Slack DM is still sitting on a company server. You can pray that your banter might never get flagged but if someone in that chat ever gets investigated for something unrelated, every message in the thread becomes fair game.

PICK & SCROLL BY THE AUSSIE CORPORATE

Flat White lands every week. The news doesn't. While you were looking forward to the weekend, Canva rebuilt itself into an AI workspace, Victoria is now getting half fare public transport, and 6 tricks for those who overthink.

If you missed any of that, we’ll keep you in the loop even if you live under a rock.

Every weekday morning at 8:00am, we send you everything that happened across Australian business and corporate news in a 2-minute read. Same team. Same voice. Just daily.

TOP PICKS FROM LAST WEEK

• Comcare has launched an investigation into 2 suicides of NAB workers that occurred weeks apart, as Victorian Police prepare a coroner's report on one death. LINK

• Canva has rebuilt itself overnight as a conversational AI workspace. Not an update, but a full relaunch. New interfaces, new models, new pricing. It now says it competes directly with ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini, not Adobe and Figma. LINK

• The Victorian government has extended free public transport across May and will offer half price fares until year-end as a $400M election sweetener responding to Middle East conflict. LINK

• ACCC has launched a formal investigation into several retailers after a November 2025 sweep found around half of 50 Black Friday advertisers used potentially misleading sales tactics. LINK

• Australian diners are rapidly cutting back by choosing cheaper menu options, skipping extras and trading wine for tap water as surging fuel prices erode consumer confidence. LINK

THE INSIDE TRACK

THREAD OF THE WEEK - r/AUSCORP

Why are companies suddenly so obsessed with office days and tracking attendance?

Unless your contract specifies a fixed place of work, your employer is within their rights to direct where you perform your duties, and attendance policies are legally enforceable. The smarter play is to comply quietly while documenting your output, because the person who makes the return-to-office fight their personality tends to become the first name on the hit list. Read the thread.

And just in case you missed it, here are some compilations from across our community re who’s office tracking HERE.

THE ECONOMIC SCOOP | INFLATION

The Australian economy is simultaneously overheating and shutting down. Inflation is surging, consumer confidence has collapsed and the RBA is almost certain to raise rates again in May.

Petrol spiked 37% in March alone, pushing headline CPI to a forecast 4.8% year-on-year. But strip out fuel, electricity and holiday travel entirely and underlying inflation still ran at 1.1% for the quarter. This isn't just a petrol problem sitting on top of an otherwise healthy economy. Prices are rising broadly - medical costs, electricity, insurance and groceries, and rising fuel is just accelerating something that was already moving in the wrong direction.

Then the Geelong Refinery caught fire. It supplies roughly 55% of Victoria's fuel and is the country's only producer of jet fuel. With the Strait of Hormuz still effectively closed, there's no quick way to replace that supply. Qantas had already flagged a $700 million increase in second-half fuel costs before the fire, and analysts expect its earnings to fall roughly 24% this year as a result. Flying is getting more expensive. So is everything that moves by truck.

For households, this is three rate hikes since February adding hundreds of dollars a month to mortgage repayments. Grocery and freight costs are feeding through to food prices. The fuel excise cut helps at the pump but it expires in June, and the May Budget is expected to add roughly $40 billion in spending over two years - which economists expect will push prices and rates up further, not down.

The cruelest part is that almost none of this inflation is caused by Australians spending too much. It's petrol, electricity and supply chain costs doing the most. Rate hikes can't produce more oil or reopen the Strait of Hormuz. What they can do is slow the economy enough that businesses stop passing costs through and workers stop asking for pay rises. That will take months, which means the cost of living shock will just land today.

OFF THE CLOCK

EATING
Chobani's Melbourne café is completely free

Chobani has opened a café on Little Collins Street where everything is free, which is either a generous brand moment or the most effective way to get Melburnians to form an opinion about yoghurt. LINK

WATCHING
Everything hitting Netflix Australia in April

Esquire has done the work of cataloguing April's Netflix arrivals so you can spend less time scrolling the homepage and more time watching something you'll abandon after twenty minutes. LINK

GOING
Sydney's Backyard Ultra is on this weekend

The Backyard Ultra at St Ives Showground asks participants to keep running four-mile loops until only one person is left standing, which is either a profound test of human endurance or a very long way to go to lose. LINK

WEARING
The Frank Green x Laneige bottle is back

The collaboration that attached a lip balm holder to a water bottle sold out immediately, which says something about either product design or the Frank Green customer base. LINK

READING
226 venues worth knowing about

The Australian Interior Design Awards shortlist is out, covering 226 hospitality, commercial and public spaces, a useful reference whether you're genuinely interested in design or just need somewhere better than your usual client lunch spot. LINK

AUSCORP EVENTS

SPORTS
AusCorp Pickleball | Sydney | $0 Tickets + Free Lunch Included HERE
Thursday 30th April | 11:30AM - 12:30PM & 12:30PM - 1:30PM (FULL)

Ditch your client lunch and grab a paddle - our pilot AusCorp Pickleball event is here and we promise it's more fun than whatever's in your calendar for a Thursday.

SPORTS
AusCorp Singles Event 👀 Coming Soon
End of May

ODD PICKS FROM LAST WEEK

• If you're guilty of just snapping your laptop shut and tossing it in your bag at the end of the day, experts say it might be worth thinking twice. LINK

• After being told to act professionally, the pilots promptly followed up with "meow, meow, meow" and "ruff, ruff, ruff." You can listen to the 'conversation' here. We suspect the pilots will soon be looking for a new profession. LINK

• The proven path to doing meaningful and unique work that can boost career fulfilment. LINK

• 6 simple tricks for people who overthink everything. LINK

• Officer having anxiety attack took ambulance sent for man dying from police shooting. LINK

FEEDBACK LOOP | SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS

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