One Mahurangi – Strange times

These have been times that no one in a business or a personal sense, could have planned for, and I know from talking to friends that some have handled it better than others – some people have really enjoyed working from home, others have not. I must admit, I have struggled with the lockdown. One of the best parts of my role is being able to get out and talk to you all, so I have found staying at home very difficult. Walking has been a great stress relief though.

As a business association it has been a strange time; most of our members have stopped operating and their staff have been suddenly forced to work from home, some taking a drop in income at the same time. We have over the last few weeks fielded dozens of calls from business owners asking Covid-19- related questions, predominantly about the wage subsidy and what their legal obligations are when it comes to HR, tax and more. We have done our best to answer these questions and appreciate the input we’ve had from local experts like Tanya Gray from ConsultingHQ to provide the right advice. Now we need to move into a much more positive phase as we start planning how to get back to normality.

To replace our usual networking events, One Warkworth is planning over the next couple of weeks to run a series of webinars around the steps that can help you get back to work when we reach level two. These will cover topics like cashflow planning, marketing and HR.

A One Warkworth survey has been circulating over the last few days so that we can get a better understanding of your needs as we move through the various levels and hopefully back to normality soon. If you haven’t yet, please complete this survey, which you can link to on our dedicated Covid-19 website page. This page is being regularly updated with business information, links and contacts.

Through lockdown a lot of businesses have been using online meetings to keep in touch with staff – this may be a good way to involve all your staff in a brainstorming session to look at new and different ways of kick starting your business. The positives that will come out of this will be new and innovative ways of doing business and a much stronger local business and community spirit. Remember, for us to survive we need to Buy Local, Support Local, Employ Local and Love Local.