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Small Business
Many working parents are now in the overwhelming position of balancing a career and caring for their children full-time. This shift requires flexibility and patience, not only from parents but from their managers. While there is no single approach to working remotely as a parent, here are some ideas to assist.
In these disruptive times, it’s almost impossible to claim business as usual.
Once the crisis is in-hand, however, small business owners and startups will want to resume regular trading as quickly as possible. To best position your business for a strong recovery, you’ll need to retain your existing customers throughout this global disturbance. Most businesses won’t have money to waste on repairing or rebuilding their customer base.
Here are some tips to help you stay connected to your customers.
The outbreak of COVID-19 has impacted businesses—small, medium, and large. As unemployment rates rise, consumer confidence drops, but if you can, it’s important to keep marketing your business.
In addition to all the financially-able consumers who want to help the economy by supporting small business, the Australian government’s coronavirus stimulus package for low-income earners is being rolled out from March 31st, delivering $750 into the accounts of many Australian households.
Since the outbreak of COVID-19, there’s been a push for businesses to transition their team to remote working. In Australia, large companies have transitioned their staff to working from home, including Ernst & Young who moved its workforce of more than 8,000 to remote working in mid-March, and Telstra, who instructed 20,000 staff to work from home for at least a month.
However, not everyone has the option to work remotely.
Millions of Australians simply can’t do their job from home and are considered “must-show” employees. They have two options: stay at home and miss out on money or go to work and risk getting sick or making others sick.
For small businesses or startups with must-show employees, there are management strategies you can put in place to protect your employees (and customers) from COVID-19.
Russ Wood, long-term co-worker at MIC Northcote, is currently on a business tour in the U.S. With scheduled meetings in Los Angeles, New York, and Boston, he and his business partner are taking their clients to learn more about a new approach to delivering social and health service outcomes.
Russ and his business partner Dale run Latitude Network, a consulting firm that advises on performance-based contracts between service providers and government. We recently sat down with Russ to better understand what this means.
“At the moment,” Russ explained, “our social and health service system is contracted on an activity and output basis. Mental health, family violence, hospital funding and so on. Contracts are based on providing numbers—office opening hours, crisis accommodation occupancy rates, hours of mental health appointments delivered—not long-term change.”
Our coworkers bring diverse professional skills to MIC Greensborough, working collaboratively within MIC's shared working spaces contributing to our start-up and small business community.
This month, we’ve featured five coworkers.
