Billion-Dollar Grab: how your business can maximise its revenue

If someone said you could be granted up to $50,000 for making a couple of phone calls, you might not be alone in thinking, ‘What’s the catch?’, but one savvy businesswoman is making that a reality for hundreds of Australian businesses.

RevMax Chief Executive Officer, Janelle Paterson, has the uncanny ability to see what others cannot when it comes to finding financial opportunities that maximise revenue streams for her clients.

Her secret weapon strategy has been proven to be wildly successful for many businesses over the past seven years and has been touted as being “potentially limitless in its value”.

RevMax is a Sydney-based company that works with more than 75 external agencies, and specialises in helping them uncover government incentives that provide alternative revenue streams and opportunities they might not otherwise have been privy to.

“We remove the unknown for clients and are often referred to as the ‘missing link’ when businesses

are looking for new ways to maximise revenue and operational capability in employing new personnel,” Janelle said.

“Essentially, we work across three key aspects: supporting candidates to get off benefits and into long-term sustainable work; helping businesses identify available revenue streams to source staff, and working with businesses to write the application materials.

“Compliance is another pain point for many of our clients, and we have been able to remove some

of that burden by exploring the full suite of available incentives they may be eligible for.”

Janelle began her human resources journey as a consultant with one of the major firms in Sydney and said it wasn’t long before her ‘eye opener’ moment which saw her subsequently move

into job-seeker work.

“The Australian unemployment rate was very high at that stage – it was a time when it rained money in recruitment if you saw the opportunity early,” she said.

“If you weren’t working, it was a really difficult time. It was like having an indelible mark against your name, and no one would touch you. “I started hearing about the government’s push to get people back to working sooner, and realised the wealth of the opportunity in doing real good, for really good money.

“The government was handing out money in droves to anyone able to get people off benefits and into sustainable and meaningful roles.

“It was the first time out-of workers were actively sought after as it was a revenue generator for businesses, and the result of that completely changed the way the industry worked and, of course, the employment rate dropped.”

From there, Janelle was head-hunted and moved to London where she focused on expats and helping refugees to find work.

“For many, English was not their first language and so they were more limited by the kinds of jobs they could do until their command of the language was strengthened,” Janelle said. “This opened us to huge opportunities in filling roles that Australians didn’t want.

“There was a vast, relatively unexplored market, needing support and we were able to help many First Nations people, refugees and people with disability or limited capability, find opportunities where previously they might not have been fairly represented.

“Some people were visa holders, and others were more senior Australians wanting to access new opportunities. “No matter their background, these applicants were grateful and tended to stay in roles for longer.

“Turnover went down in many businesses with a lot of them moving from low margin status to

some of the highest. And that was before the days of offsetting funds.” Flash forward to today, and you can find Janelle and her seven agents-of-good uncovering tens of thousands of dollars to improve the viability of her clients’ businesses.

She said there was no part of the incentive journey her team did not support.

“We look at the whole picture from pre-employment courses to drug and alcohol testing for certain

roles and consider the whole lifecycle of what will be needed from finding funds to creating people

solutions and providing long-term support to the client,” Janelle said.

Her team have been tasked with finding the best candidates, and many times over, they turned out to be people who weren’t always the obvious choice.

“Lots of our clients employ people with a disability, and more often that not, you wouldn’t even know they were living with a limited capacity,” Janelle said.

“There is still a common misconception that a disability is obvious to see, but we work with many people experiencing anxiety, epilepsy and even depression, and they aren’t obviously affected day-to-day.”

Janelle’s team were asked to source candidates who might be a good fit for forklift driver positions.

Her client had interviewed several people who were properly credentialed but lacked the vital attention to detail when they were put to the test on the factory floor.

“We had a gentleman with a limited learning capability, and we knew this role could be a great fit as he demonstrated great attention to detail,” Janelle said. “We put him forward knowing the company would put him through all the proper training and he took to it naturally.

“Months on, he’s still working there very happily and is an important part of the team and his manager has really taken him under his wing taking extra time to teach him about the ins and outs of scaffolding and broader operations.

“The company understands he needs a little more attention and makes sure instructions are few and clear. “Whenever he feels overwhelmed by too many instructions, he knows to say, ‘ask my boss’, and he’s given the breathing room to continue being successful in his role.

“They have come to deeply appreciate him for his work ethic and his cultural fit acknowledging that he goes out of his way to fit in with everyone.”

Janelle has helped hundreds of senior Australians, underprivileged and minority candidates with some clients reaping multiple payroll incentives for the one recruit.

In one example, she placed an over 50s client as a part-time clinical receptionist and was able to attract more than $15,000 in combined incentives.

In other cases, Janelle’s team has leveraged varying boost schemes to funnel up to $50,000, sometimes capitalising on parenting payments, training schemes and wage subsidies.

“It comes down to being open-minded enough to see the opportunities and knowing a client

well enough to discern all the incentive packages they might be eligible for,” Janelle said. “We know our clients will keep coming back and referring us to others for the capital injection we are able to find, and in supporting them to keep up with the administration of change.”

Janelle said many companies struggled to find subsidies because there was no one place to source them as they could be listed by state or federal government, and from varying departments that each had their own criterium.

“My best advice to industry is to tap into conversation and actively listen to what is, and isn’t working, and to be open to new ideas and pain points,” Janelle said.

“Find an avenue to become the missing puzzle piece for those unsure of what to do.”

More than 100 incentive and schemes are currently on offer to eligible Australian businesses.