Canberra Is Writing AI Guidance for Workplaces. Here Is What Small Business Retail Actually Looks Like
The federal government is working on Australia’s first best practice guidance for AI in the workplace. Employment and Workplace Relations Minister Amanda Rishworth is holding five consultations this month with unions, employers, small business and academics to shape it. Microsoft, Telstra, Kmart, Blackmores Group and the Commonwealth Bank were among the major employers invited to a roundtable as part of the process. ABC NewsBytes Europe
The Minister says the consultations will ensure the guide reflects the realities of modern workplaces, and that is the right ambition.
But here is my concern. When the room is full of banks and telcos, the guidance risks being written for organisations with HR departments, change managers and enterprise agreements. Most Australian businesses are nothing like that. Most are like mine.
Like most who visit here, I run small businesses. I use AI every day, hands on, not through a committee.
Here is what that actually looks like. I use AI to to discover what I don’t know and what I have missed. It is excellent at this gap work. Im my shop, I use it to load supplier invoices, write product descriptions and some blog posts for our ecommerce site, which I then edit because it’s the business publishing them. I use it to analyse sales data across multiple stores, comparing this year to last, finding the categories quietly growing and the ones quietly dying.
It’s discovering the unknown, though, that makes the biggest difference, for me.
For many retailers, it’s the time saving from undertaking repetitive mundane work.
None of this replaced a job. In a small business, the owner is often the worker. AI has not trained my replacement. It has given me back hours I did not have.
The realities of small business AI adoption are simple. There is no rollout plan. Someone tries a tool on a Tuesday, it saves time, and it stays. There is no consultation framework, because the team is four people and you talk across the counter. Trust is built by the owner using the tool first and being honest about it.
And with the pace of AI today, what we used Tuesday may well be replaced by Monday next week with a better tool.
If I could put three things in front of the consultation, they would be these. First, keep the guidance short. A 60 page framework will not be read in a shop that opens at 6am. Second, make it practical. Small business owners need examples, not principles. Show us what good looks like in a business of five people. Third, don’t let caution become a barrier. The productivity gains for small business are real and available right now, and small operators should not be frightened off by guidance written for corporates managing thousands of staff.
My newsXpress published what I think was the first AI guidebook for newsagents last year.,, It has followed this up with a prompt guide, training and free consultation on AI use.
The government is right that AI adoption should benefit workers as well as employers. In small business, that is often the same person. Guidance that understands this will help. Guidance that assumes every workplace has a compliance team will gather dust.
I hope the small business voices in those five consultations speak plainly, from genuinely real experience – not what those there think the experience is. There is a lot of lived experience out here worth listening to.