Good morning AusCorp. Has anyone ever told you to speak more Aussie? Or have you ever wished someone else could speak more Aussie? This week, we got into how that bias shows up differently depending on where you're from, and how an accent can take out your top performers.
Elsewhere this week, a serious mental health claim at work now costs 4 times what a physical injury does and keeps people off for 5 times as long, and the response so far has been to make the claims harder to make rather than the workplaces easier to survive.
More than a million Australians are now working a second job, the most since records began 32 years ago, job switching has fallen to its lowest rate ever recorded, and electric cars just outsold petrol for the first time here.
THE BIG CONVERSATION
Racism takes different forms, and one of the most obvious is the bias against people with accents. If you have an accent, you only find out it’s a problem when someone’s mocking you, someone flags you as having a lack of communication skills, or your client requests someone else on the account. Most of the people getting this feedback speak English perfectly well, and since an accent is set by your twenties, being told to sound more Australian is asking for the impossible.
What that bias looks like, naturally depends on where you're from. Irish, Manchester and Kiwi accents cop the most open mockery. For some mysterious reason, people feel more safe doing the impression right to their face. Indian, Filipino and Nigerian accents rarely get joked about directly. They get mocked behind back’s in the form of frustration or escalated into a communication issue for HR to manage instead. Both kinds of bias can be damaging and research even shows that candidates with non-Anglo accents are more likely to get marked down in interviews due to "fit."
Over time it’s exhausting and it sucks to be told that your communication is a problem that you can't do anything about, so most people will find a way around it. They stop volunteering in meetings, let someone else run the training, pass on the client call. Twelve months on, those performance reviews say you’re not ready for client work, and technically that's not far off. Nobody has to raise the accent problem again because the solution is to just go mute, and now teams have lost their strong performer because they’ve become someone who lacks confidence to speak “Australian”.
If you're on the receiving end and are aware you speak with an accent, it’s worth being mindful of your pace, volume and jargon. Many cultures speak much faster than you’re probably aware of so take a second to slow down. On the other hand, if you're the one struggling to understand a colleague, have some patience and just ask them to say it again. English as a second language is extremely difficult so how you handle those colleagues says more about you than it does about them.
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Flat White lands every week. The news doesn't. 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.
THE INSIDE TRACK
Coles
THREAD OF THE WEEK - r/AUSCORP
Crazy disclosures from managers during interview
Everything went well till they asked me if I am comfortable coming into office 4 days a week. I said that I was happy and further enquired about the work hours expecting something in the lines of 8am to 4pm or 9am to 5pm. The response I got was that the manager comes in at 8am and leaves usually at 7pm. They tried to convince me that was normal and started asking me why I would like to leave earlier. They then proceeded to say that they were flexible with letting people leave early during emergencies, as if that was some sort of huge favour. The huge shocker for me was that this interaction was with two managers - one from the People&Culture team and the other was a Reporting manager - both of them locals to Sydney/Australia.
The fact they told you this in the interview is actually the best possible outcome. Most places wait until you've signed the contract to spring that on you.
Top Comment
THE BRAINS TRUST
A serious mental health claim at work costs about four times what a physical injury does, at a median payout of $67,400 against $16,300. It also takes far longer to come back from, with a median 35.7 weeks off compared to 7.4 weeks for a physical injury. Only half the people who take one are back at work within a year. For physical injuries it's 95%.
Source: Safe Work Australia, Macquarie Research, August 2026
That gap is why insurers are struggling. Serious mental health claims hit 17,600 in 2023-24, up almost 15% in a single year and 161% over the past decade, the fastest growth of any injury type. In NSW they now make up 12% of claims but 38% of the total cost of the scheme, and the state's insurer is holding only 85 cents for every dollar it owes.
"The average cost of a psychological claim in NSW nearly doubled in five years to $288,542."
The response has been to tighten who qualifies rather than address why the claims are happening so the same injury is now treated differently depending on which state you work in. NSW passed two rounds of reform in late 2025 and early 2026 to narrow the definitions and freeze premium rates, after modelling showed premiums climbing 36% by 2027-28 if nothing changed. Western Australia went the other way in mid-2024 and made psychological claims easier to make, and it's already showing up in what employers there pay.
Australian Institute of Health and Welfare: Australia's Health 2026
OFF THE CLOCK
EATING
KFC's pickle Pepsi is a cry for help
The new Picklecore menu is fine, but a pickle-flavoured Pepsi collab is the kind of decision that makes you wonder who exactly is running the ideation sessions. LINK
WATCHING
Wicker is finally coming to Aussie cinemas
The horror-comedy that's been doing the rounds overseas lands in Australian and New Zealand cinemas soon, so clear your Saturday. LINK
READING
What if you just stopped having free will
A two-week experiment in living as though free will doesn't exist, which honestly sounds like most people's Tuesday. LINK
WEARING
Perfume you wear around your neck now
Wearable scent vessels are the upgrade for people who've exhausted the atomiser. LINK
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