It’s been 3.5 months since I went into Quarantine after arriving home from overseas. Within a few days my team was also working from home and our business as we knew it was about to change dramatically.

Not as busy filling jobs as I normally am, I have instead spent the past few months speaking directly to business owners in our creative, digital and marketing community and thought I’d share some key points.

 
What we now know is that surviving a global pandemic has brought different challenges than those we faced during the GFC.  

 
Over and above the immediate financial concerns was the responsibility of employee mental health along with the challenge of ensuring teams remained creative and productive in isolation.

 
Businesses, large and small, were very quick to adapt and embrace new technology and different ways of working though, and it is common to hear that team productivity has in-fact increased exponentially.

 
Since March, business confidence has certainly taken a massive hit, no surprises there.

 
Around 80% of those I spoke to experienced an immediate 20-30% decrease  in revenue, due to projects being immediately put on hold.

 
Only 20% of those I’ve spoken to had to let staff go, with others reducing the hours/days of their existing team; some still on full pay but many on reduced pay.

 
Unfortunately JobKeeper will be nothing other than a bandaid if the Government does decide to stop it in September, so it’s agreed that we are unlikely to really know the impact of COVID-19 until then. 

 
Breaking-even has been the absolute common financial goal of business owners who decided to keep their teams.  

 
Satisfied to focus on break-even goals the decision by many was  they would ride it out and focus instead on new ways of winning projects for when we’re on the other side of this.

 
The good news is, this week I can hear optimism returning and a more strategic focus is at the forefront of business planning.  I'm hearing that permanent employment strategies are being replaced replaced with freelance hiring strategies which comes as no suprise as this is actually what happened during the GFC.

 
The most obvious has been the strategic advantage business owners see at being able to secure highly sought after Talent that have found themselves on the market. 

 
If you’re keen to have a conversation with me about my other observations within the Talent Market then feel free to give me a call on 0413 453 563.