We recently collaborated on a joint webinar with the HR Dept.
Trudi was joined by Brad Adams, Director Lower North Shore to discuss the implications for small businesses, their owners and staff as we emerge from post-pandemic Lockdown Australia.
The discussions centred on three key elements:
Brad contended that following consultation with a number of his clients, the consensus was most employees had coped reasonably well with working home during the early stages of Lockdown, and that they'd witnessed improvements in productivity without the tyranny of travel to the office.
Employers had responded quickly to enforced working from home (WFH), by providing their staff with the tools required to carry out their duties unencumbered.
Organisations were leveraging video conferencing technologies like Zoom to connect with their teams and clients, plus Collaboration software such as Microsoft Teams to ensure staff members were able to interact with one another in realtime.
This pandemic has enabled employers to review the way their organisation is structured and consider optimising performance and output. For instance, are employees open to working fewer hours, to job share, to do shift work, or rotate between working from home and the office?
Furthermore, employers may pre-Covid19, have been turning a blind eye to excess fat in their business because they'd been making a profit, and this was a strategy that required reviewing.
Smart business owners when faced with this downturn, coupled with the time of year - EOFY and start of FY2020/21, have been reviewing their staffing requirements, i.e. their performers and non-performers, the related overheads (salaries, superannuation, et al.) and started making the tough calls.
By doing the following:
Trudi and Brad were agreed that these statistics would act as a clear frame of reference to determine staffing needs.
Further excerpts from the transcript to come...
If you're interested, the full webinar has been recorded and uploaded to YouTube. Check it out here.