Covid challenges staffing in local small business retail

Not being reported anywhere with accuracy, because it is impossible to track, is the days lost each week in businesses, including local retail businesses, due to Covid.

With financial support almost all closed off now, businesses and employees (depending on employment status) are left carrying the cost.

What magnifies the cost of Covid to businesses is late detection, which has come about because in the change in narrative focus by state and federal governments. Whereas in the past, early detection was key, today, the approach is casual, with no pressure. This adds to infection, especially in close proximity settings, like in retail.

The situation is also exacerbated by softening messages around masks, sanitiser and those steps early in the pandemic that were considered crucial to reducing the infection rate.

In our businesses with a small labour pool, the cost of an infection within the team can be considerable. This leaves us to apply our own rules, like continuing to use masks even when they are not mandated, maintaining acrylic screens at the counter, encouraging the use of hand sanitiser and keeping surfaces clean.

While I get that vaccines have reduced the impact Covid can have on many, it continues to be a risk to those unable to be vaccinated. It is also a risk to the vaccinated in that a diagnosis with Covid means you’re off work for a week, and that has a cost to you or your employer. In some business settings with no spare labour capacity, it can cause the business to close.

I was in Dubai last week and talking to some of the locals, they are happy that masks continue to be mandated outside, in all settings. A couple of retailers I spoke with said this was a key factor in them not being affected.

Here in  Australia, the noise of people demanding freedom has won and we are is a situation where the infection rate is higher, and the costs for business, individuals, and governments, are higher.

Looking at data, in the UAE, with a mask mandate, the current infection rate is 87,000 per 1M population. In Australia, that number is 151,000 while in the US, with a noise freedom chanting group, the number is 243,000.

As a business owner carrying the cost of employees being diagnosed with Covid, I wish this was happening less, that the impact on people on our team was less, that the costs hitting the business were less.

Freedom is more expensive that the measures we all took early in the pandemic.

In the meantime, in my own businesses, I encourage as much as I am able team members to wear masks and take precautions for themselves and their own loved-ones.