Office leases & entertainment budgets cut to keep Aussie staff

August 2009

Australian businesses cut office leasing & entertainment costs to survive economic downturn

Below are the full results from the Servcorp International Business Cost Cutting Survey which was conducted in mid 2009 over a period of two weeks. The survey was commissioned to understand the areas where businesses were looking to save money in the economic downturn.

As part of the survey, Servcorp asked 7,500 international businesspeople from more than 24 nations to identify which countries they believe are surviving the crisis the best.

Office and Administration Cutbacks
The countries which have made the most cutbacks to their combined office lease and office admin costs (ranked form most to least)

Rank Country
1st United States
2nd China
3rd equal United Kingdom and Hong Kong
5th Australia
6th Singapore
7th equal Japan

Areas where the most cutbacks have been made:

Areas of International Cutbacks
The areas where businesses have had to make the most cutbacks averaged across the globe

Rank Cutback area
1 Entertaining and social activity
2 Office leases
3 Office administration costs (stationary, newspapers, equipment)
4 IT costs
5 Senior staff cuts
6 Working hours (retaining staff)
7 Junior staff cuts


Small Business VS. Big Business
What areas have small businesses made cutbacks compared to larger businesses?

Cutback area % of small businesses who made this cutback % of large businesses who made this cutback
Senior staff job losses 7.6% 12.5%
Junior staff job losses 6.6% 8.3%
General staff job losses 11.7% 29.2%
We have retained staff but have cut back our working hours (e.g. to four day working weeks) 8.6% 0.0%
Cut IT costs 11.7% 20.8%
Cut Office lease costs 26.4% 33.3%
Cut Office admin costs (e.g. stationary, newspaper subscriptions etc) 23.9% 37.5%
Decreased entertaining and social activity costs 34.5% 54.2%

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