Helps andvance science and medicine https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2772963X25000109?utm_source=perplexity Gen AI can help people learn when they have learning disabilities https://acceleratelearning.stanford.edu/story/what-does-ai-mean-for-learners-with-disabilities/?utm_source=perplexity https://www.everylearnereverywhere.org/blog/how-ai-in-assistive-technology-supports-students-and-educators-with-disabilities/?utm_source=perplexity Small business support. People who can't afford a full staff can use AI to help with marketing copy, customer support drafts, bookkeeping assistance, website content, and business planning. This allows small businesses to be competitive with corporations https://employmenthero.com/uk/blog/ai-for-small-business-growth/?utm_source=perplexity In regards to the last one, we already see LLM'S out competing CEOs https://www.entrepreneur.com/business-news/ai-mostly-outperformed-ceos-in-new-experiment-study/481098

We just dropped our first episode of Employment Insiders.. Ben Knight, our Head of HeroForce Sales, sat down with Alicia to unpack something that affects pretty much every founder and HR manager — the sheer, hidden weight of employing people in 2026. Here's the uncomfortable truth he shared with Australia as an example:  That $100k salary you're offering? It's actually closer to $150k once you factor in superannuation (12%), payroll tax (4–6% depending on your state), workers comp and professional indemnity insurance. And that's before you even get to recruitment costs, HR tech, compliance consultants, and the risk of a bad hire spiralling into something worse. According to Employment Hero's internal modelling, businesses are collectively wasting up to $12.6 billion annually on duplicate employment admin. Ben describes it as an "invisible tax" — the time founders lose on interpreting legislation instead of, you know, actually running their business. So what's the answer? Ben walks through how HeroForce — Employment Hero's employment-as-a-service offering — is designed to lift that burden. Think of it like plugging into a power grid. Instead of building your own employment infrastructure from scratch, you plug into ours. Recruitment, payroll, HR compliance — all in one place, already set up across 180+ countries. The three use cases we cover in the video: **1. Seasonal scaling** — Retail or hospitality business heading into Christmas or stocktake season? HeroForce lets you hire pre-vetted candidates fast, without weeks of paperwork, all within your existing Employment Hero platform. **2. Multi-state expansion** — Opening stores in a new state? Varying payroll tax, different public holidays, additional insurance requirements — HeroForce is already set up for all of it. You just plug in. **3. Going global** — Traditionally, setting up a foreign entity could take 3–6 months and cost up to $50k before your first hire. With HeroForce, you can get someone onboarded in a new country within 1–2 weeks, without the upfront hurdles. HeroForce is only possible now because of AI. The Recruitment Agent screens candidates 24/7 and has cut recruitment time by up to 67% for businesses using it. The Payroll Agent flags inaccuracies before payroll runs. But — and this is worth noting — it's not fully AI. There's human oversight throughout, backed by Employment Hero's background in employment law, HR advisory and payroll services. Quick-fire questions:  Does HeroForce replace Employment Hero? No — you can run both. Direct employees on EH, HeroForce for sub-sets of your workforce like casuals, offshore teams, or interstate hires. Or you can bring everyone across.  Do you have to use HeroForce candidates? Nope — bring your own or find them through our platform. If you're hired through HeroForce, what do you put on your LinkedIn? Your actual employer's name. HeroForce is just the legal employer in the background. –----- Worth a watch if you're an SME founder or HR manager who's ever felt like the paperwork is growing faster than the business. And if you want to see how HeroForce could work for your business: [https://employmenthero.com/products/heroforce/](https://employmenthero.com/products/heroforce/)

[r/AustralianStartups](https://www.reddit.com/r/AustralianStartups/)•2 min. ago [I mapped 12 Australian companies actually deploying agentic AI in production right now. Here is what I found.](https://www.reddit.com/r/AustralianStartups/comments/1tm5hw4/i_mapped_12_australian_companies_actually/) Hey everyone. We spent the last month mapping Australian companies that are genuinely deploying agentic AI in production. Not chatbots. Not prompt wrappers. AI agents that reason, plan, and execute tasks autonomously. Most "best AI companies" lists online are either pay-to-play directories or assembled from press releases nobody verified. We wanted a list that did not exist yet, so we made one, so that companies chasing agentic AI solutions based on their values, requirements, timelines, and budgetary constraints can identify the right partner. **The selection criteria were straightforward:** * Australian-founded or headquartered * Deploys AI agents that act autonomously, not just respond to prompts * Verifiable public evidence (funding, case studies, press, product docs) * Operating in production in 2026, not just announced No company paid for inclusion. Full disclosure: our company (Sharktech Global) is on the list. We applied the same criteria to ourselves as to everyone else. **The 12 Companies (alphabetical, not ranked):** **1. Affinda** (Melbourne) - Agentic document processing. AI agents that read, classify, extract, and validate data from unstructured documents. Valued at $220M. Serves 80+ countries, 56 languages. Founded by Ben and Tim Toner. [affinda.com](https://www.affinda.com/) **2. Build Club** (Sydney) - Australia's first AI builder accelerator. 10,000+ members, 11,000+ shipped projects. Founded by Annie Liao. Backed by Airtree, Blackbird, AWS, NVIDIA. [buildclub.ai](https://buildclub.ai/) **3. Employment Hero** (Sydney) - AI-powered HR, payroll, people ops. AI agents handling recruitment screening, onboarding, compliance, payroll for 300,000+ businesses. Founded by Ben Thompson. [employmenthero.com](https://employmenthero.com/) **4.** [**Harrison.ai**](http://harrison.ai/) (Sydney) - AI diagnostic agents for healthcare. Processes medical scans, identifies conditions, generates diagnostic reports. Backed by Main Sequence (CSIRO fund). Founded by Aengus and Dimitry Tran. [harrison.ai](https://harrison.ai/) **5. Kasada** (Sydney) - AI-driven cybersecurity. Behavioural analysis to detect and block bots, credential stuffing, fraud in real time. Founded by Sam Crowther. [kasada.io](https://www.kasada.io/) **6.** [**Leonardo.ai**](http://leonardo.ai/) (Sydney) - Agentic creative production. Multi-step AI workflows for image generation, editing, 3D textures. Acquired by Canva. Founded by JJ Fiasson. [leonardo.ai](https://leonardo.ai/) **7. Lorikeet** (Sydney) - Autonomous customer service agents. Resolves tickets end-to-end by integrating with Stripe, Shopify, etc. $54M Series A, valued at $200M+. Ranked 8th on a16z AI spend list. Used by Airwallex. Founded by Jamie Hall and Steve Hind. [lorikeet.ai](https://lorikeet.ai/) **8. Neara** (Sydney) - AI digital twins for power grids. $63M Series D, $1.1B valuation. Australia's latest unicorn. Founded by Jack Curtis, Karamvir Singh, Daniel Danilatos. [neara.com](https://neara.com/) **9. Relevance AI** (Sydney) - No-code AI workforce platform. 100,000+ users building AI agents for sales, research, content, support. SOC 2 Type II, AU data residency. Founded by Daniel Vassilev and Jacky Koh. [relevanceai.com](https://relevanceai.com/) **10. Sharktech Global** (Sydney) - AI operating system for small and medium service businesses. Founded 2024. This is us. Full transparency. Most of the companies above are enterprise-grade, VC-backed, and priced accordingly. Sharktech Global exists because its there is a gap: small and medium businesses in accounting, real estate, construction, manufacturing, trades, hospitality, and wellness that need agentic AI but cannot justify a $100K enterprise contract or a six-month implementation timeline. Our main platform VCPility deploys AI agents for client onboarding, voice interaction, automated marketing, and integrated CRM. Here is what makes us different in the SME segment specifically: * **Open-source foundations.** We build on open-source agentic AI frameworks including [OpenClaw](https://openclaw.ai/) to keep costs low and deployments fast. Enterprise-grade AI at a fraction of the enterprise price. * **One-stop digital infrastructure.** Websites, mobile apps, web-based applications, ERP systems, and the AI layer, all built and deployed by one team. Most AI companies hand you an agent and tell you to figure out the rest. We build the entire stack your business runs on and embed AI into it. One vendor. One invoice. One team that understands the whole picture. * **Fixed monthly subscriptions.** No hourly billing. No surprise invoices. No "let us scope this for six weeks before we can give you a number." Pick a plan, start this month. [vcpility.com.au/plans](https://vcpility.com.au/plans) * **Bootstrapped.** No VC money yet. Every dollar of revenue comes from clients who pay us because the product works. Preparing for external investment under our Vision 2026 strategy, but the business runs on customer revenue today. If you are a service business with 5 to 200 staff looking for AI that actually fits your budget and does not require a dedicated technical team to manage, that is specifically the segment we built for. [sharktech.com.au](https://sharktech.com.au/) | [vcpility.com.au](https://vcpility.com.au/) **11. SafetyCulture** (Sydney) - AI-powered workplace operations. AI agents for compliance monitoring, risk assessment, incident response across 1M+ users. Founded by Luke Anear. [safetyculture.com](https://safetyculture.com/) **12.** [**Sapia.ai**](http://sapia.ai/) (Melbourne) - Conversational AI for recruitment. AI agents that run structured interview assessments and produce bias-reduced hiring recommendations. Founded by Barb Hyman and Buddhi Jayatilleke. [sapia.ai](https://sapia.ai/) **How to use this list to find the right partner for your business:** Not every company here is right for every use case. Here is a quick guide based on what you actually need: * **You need to automate document-heavy workflows** (invoices, contracts, forms): Look at Affinda. * **You want to build your own custom AI agents without code**: Start with Relevance AI. * **You need autonomous customer support at scale**: Lorikeet is the benchmark. * **You are in healthcare and need AI diagnostics**: Harrison.ai. * **You need cybersecurity that adapts in real time**: Kasada. * **You need AI creative production at volume**: [Leonardo.ai](http://leonardo.ai/) (now part of Canva). * **You want AI embedded into HR and payroll**: Employment Hero. * **You manage physical infrastructure and need predictive maintenance**: Neara. * **You are hiring at volume and want bias-reduced assessments**: Sapia.ai. * **You run a workplace operations team**: SafetyCulture. * **You are an AI builder or founder looking for community and acceleration**: Build Club. * **You are a small or medium service business (accounting, real estate, construction, trades, hospitality, wellness) that needs affordable, full-stack AI with websites, apps, ERP, and CRM included**: Sharktech Global via VCPility. [vcpility.com.au/plans](https://vcpility.com.au/plans) **Three patterns we noticed while researching this list:** 1. **Agentic AI in Australia is vertical, not horizontal.** The winners are not building general-purpose "do anything" tools. They are deeply embedded in specific industries: healthcare, customer service, document processing, cybersecurity, recruitment, infrastructure, service business operations. The companies that understand one industry deeply and build agents that fit into existing workflows are the ones getting real traction. 2. **Sydney dominates.** 10 of 12 companies are Sydney-based. Melbourne has Affinda and Sapia.ai. There is a massive opportunity for AI teams outside Sydney to serve markets and industries the Sydney ecosystem is overlooking. 3. **The gap between funded and bootstrapped is closing.** Lorikeet raised $54M, Neara raised $63M. We are building with subscription revenue and open-source tools. Both approaches are producing real agentic AI in production. The difference is speed of scale, not product quality. If you are bootstrapping an AI company, do not let the funding headlines discourage you.

Not commenter but: [https://www.frogrecruitment.co.nz/blog/wage-theft-crackdown-in-new-zealand-what-employers-and-employees-need-to-know](https://www.frogrecruitment.co.nz/blog/wage-theft-crackdown-in-new-zealand-what-employers-and-employees-need-to-know) "Recent statistics indicate that 38% of employees have reported experiencing an employer withholding wages." It is a massive problem especially in NZ and wage theft has now been made a crime as of 2025 to address, which is saying how bad it must be for a National govt to enact it: [https://employmenthero.com/nz/resources/wage-theft/](https://employmenthero.com/nz/resources/wage-theft/)

Fact check. 4.9% is driven by people leaving the labour market (9.1 million to be exact).https://employmenthero.com/uk/news/uk-unemployment-falling-hiring-hard/ Secondly, London is actually a useful counterexample to the simple framing: it's the UK's biggest immigration hub and has the highest regional unemployment rate. Youth unemployment is 15.8% — nearly 1 in 6 young people (16–24) who want work can't find it. Graduate positions fell 33% in 2025 alone, reaching the lowest level since 2018. Just 61% of 2022 graduates secured full-time work 15 months after graduation, with many in non-graduate roles. We don't have a talent shortage problem, we have a cost cutting problem.

I think you’re arguing that inflation can beat the minimum wage in the short term, if inflation was to soar but the minimum wage doesn’t increase until April? While that’s true in the short term, in April the minimum wage would (on average) rise faster than inflation, over multiple years this has compounded such that by 2026, the minimum wage is almost double what it was in 2000 (in real terms). Unless inflation averages 50% this year, today’s minimum wage has massively outstripped inflation since the year 2000. https://employmenthero.com/uk/blog/national-minimum-wage-trends/

As others have said - you are self employed so really you are invoicing them. You can send them an invoice demanding full payment for the labour you were conducted at the prior agreed-upon rate. If they refuse, then you can go to small claims court about it. You should check if this £50 reduction for late timesheet is in your contract. Also, if they are treating you like an employee, but calling you self employed then HMRC may want to know... * [Are you facilitating disguised employment?](https://employmenthero.com/uk/blog/disguised-employment/) * [What is a disguised employee?](https://www.contractoruk.com/ir35/what_disguised_employee.html) If you are truly self employed then you control the hours, tools and tasks - at least to a decent extent. If your employer is telling you what to do, when to do it and with what specific tools with no flexibility then your employer could get into hot water with HMRC. I say this as a freelancer myself.