It likely comes as no surprise to learn that the past few years have been difficult for Australian businesses. From the starting days of the 2020s, business owners have needed to navigate the uncharted waters of lockdowns, looming recession concerns, and rising inflation, all whilst dealing with a landscape that has been irrevocably changed by COVID-19 and global political instability. Naturally, this has changed the priorities of many business leaders, who have the task of attempting to forecast potential issues and opportunities in this time of widespread upheaval.

So, what is it that concerns business leaders? Well, KPMG has set out to answer just that, surveying 300 Australian business leaders between 22 September and 16 October 2023 on what their priorities and concerns are over the next 3-5 years. This has culminated in Keeping Us Up At Night 2024, an insight into how the 2020s have shaped the business world’s direction moving into the next few years.

So, let’s take a look into the concerns and plans of Australia’s business leaders, and see where the business world is likely to be heading in the coming years.

Protecting and dealing with cyber risks

43% of businesses said that it was a top 5 concern of 2024

35% of businesses said it was a top 5 concern in the next 3-5 years

As businesses have shifted more of their infrastructure and data onto digital platforms, there has never been more need for vigilance when it comes to a business’ cybersecurity. With the Australian Government in the process of introducing its first-ever standalone cybersecurity bill as of October 2024, the threat of cyber risks is one that businesses have had reason to be concerned about for many years now.

This comes at a time when many high-profile cases of attacks on websites and platforms have successfully leaked data and led to massive shutdowns of servers, such as in the case of Archive.org, and its service The Wayback Machine. Beyond just DDoS attacks though, there are many ways in which businesses may be impacted by cyber attacks, such as:

• Stealing hardware, or accessing hardware directly through local servers, mobile devices, or computers.
• Uploading or spreading malicious software within the business’s systems, such as malware or viruses.
• Directly attacking third-party systems that may offer hosting or storage for your company’s files.
• Directed spam attacks on your emails and online communication.
• Gaining access to sensitive information through your employees, or in some cases, your customers.

What this shows is that cyber-attacks are a concern for both businesses and customers and as digital systems get more advanced, so too do the tools to hack and/or damage the infrastructure that hosts this digital information. After all, as far back as 2007, university studies were reporting that websites were being targeted by hackers every 39 seconds, with most online MBA courses now covering cybersecurity as an integral part of the business leadership experience.

Talent acquisition, retention and re/upskilling to meet a digitised future

42% of businesses said that it was a top 5 concern of 2024

35% of businesses said it was a top 5 concern in the next 3-5 years

Whilst talent acquisition has always been an issue for businesses, several factors have made the 2020s especially difficult for those looking to create a resilient workforce. With the current fears of recession making hiring staff a more risky proposition, coupled with debates over junior worker rates for businesses, employers are becoming a lot more selective regarding the skillsets required of employees, both existing and future.

Even for businesses that have managed to avoid the digitised future, with more services and more opportunities being shifted entirely online, the need for digitally savvy staff is clear, placing significant pressure on all involved. On the employee side, it has often meant having to upskill considerably in digital fields for roles that only a few years ago wouldn’t have required any level of digital comprehension. On the business owner side, this has meant having to hire for skills in emerging industries, often without knowledge of what would make an applicant a good fit for that role.

This uncertainty has led many businesses to upskill their own workforces, but with this being a time-intensive and often quite costly endeavour, it has pushed many business owners into undesirable territory. To quote the Keeping Us Up At Night Report 2024:

“In the People area, hiring staff that are already digitally savvy and able to take the business forward in an increasingly computerised world is critical.”

So, it is unsurprising that the upskilling and reskilling of staff has become such a hot-button issue for businesses, but it’s not the only thing that is troubling business leaders regarding Australia’s shift towards a more digital future.

New technologies and the use cases and ethics that arise during implementation

27% of businesses said that it was a top 5 concern of 2024

32% of businesses said it was a top 5 concern in the next 3-5 years

Over the past few years, new technologies have been emerging that have become inescapable topics in the world of business. With talks of a new step in digital evolution and debates on how influential these innovations will be for businesses moving into the future, a number of questions have been raised about the efficacy and ethics of these technologies. Artificial Intelligence and machine learning especially have been poised as some of the most divisive issues of the modern age, with questions over intellectual property and copyright for work generated by AI, and as early as 2023, lawsuits claiming that all works created by Artificial Intelligence are plagiarism.

To put it bluntly, most businesses are just trying to avoid stepping in it. The allure of AI and Quantum computing is obvious, with the promise of being able to cut costs, cut time spent on projects, and most divisively, cut employees. According to Forbes, 60% of employees who have used AI as part of their workflow have concerns about how it may impact their job prospects. However, at the same time, research suggests that customers may be turned off by the perceived inclusion of AI or machine learning in a product or service.

This is not the first time that a promising technology has been seen as both a boon for productivity and a detriment in the eyes of workers and the broader public, and the balance of how to implement these technologies in an ethical way that doesn’t turn off customers or disenfranchise employees.

Digital transformation and optimisation, and extracting organisational value from it

38% of businesses said that it was a top 5 concern of 2024

30% of businesses said it was a top 5 concern in the next 3-5 years

As we go through this article, you’re likely seeing trends in the issues that most concern business leaders in Australia. Namely, they all revolve around the concern of adapting to a growing digital ecosystem that few businesses feel fully prepared for. This is why digital transformation has been at the forefront of many businesses’ forecasts, with plans to adopt and embrace shifting technologies for their organisational value being essential in weathering the storm that is the late 2020s.

One issue that many businesses are facing is that, while they may need time to adapt to digital technologies, those digital technologies aren’t waiting for them to catch up. Even as businesses embrace online marketing, they are coming into fields that are already being dominated by eCommerce businesses that adopted far more effectively than they did. Digital transformation and adapting to shifting online behaviours is simply no longer optional, and over the next few years, the pressure will be further compounded by aforementioned emerging technologies such as machine learning and quantum computing.

Dealing with evolving regulatory processes, reporting changes and impacts

41% of businesses said that it was a top 5 concern of 2024

29% of businesses said it was a top 5 concern in the next 3-5 years

Of all the concerns Australian business leaders have, this one is the least directly related to digital, and likely one of the more familiar concerns for businesses over the past few decades. Regulatory changes are something that businesses always have to adapt to, whether it’s changes to legal requirements for employees, client relationships, or how your company reports to government bodies, ensuring compliance can be complicated and time-consuming.

This is especially true for smaller businesses or businesses with fewer employees, as even just updating impacted policies and procedures can take a large amount of time away from other business obligations. The Victorian Government offers guidelines for creating compliance management systems and other regulatory process management, but unless you have a service managing these regulatory changes for you, it will be up to your business to deal with evolving processes, reporting changes and impacts.

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Being a business leader in 2024-25 means remaining constantly adaptive to new changes and shifting tides both on and offline, and it’s not a surprise to learn that the majority of issues for these businesses revolve around digital upheaval. Nevertheless, if the past decade is any indication, we can say that this is not a passing trend, and the future is likely to continue moving faster for developments and innovations in technology. So, it’s best to start adapting to these systems now to avoid being left behind.

By Samuel Shepherd