The effects of COVID-19 are increasingly apparent across the retail and tech sectors, with 10 per cent of staff affected at JB Hi-Fi, and 11 per cent across Harvey Norman.
CEO and founder of software tech company Deputy, Ashik Ahmed, is seeing the damage first-hand, with daily stories from major retail, hospitality and healthcare customers about their struggles.
“I’d heard from customers who have had a couple of hundred employees, and they were having 20 to 30 people resigning per week,” he says, adding that businesses that, before COVID, would have 400 applicants for 20 positions have swung to 400 roles and just 20 applicants.
Ahmed says survival as a business is all about adapting, and making the most of any hand you’re dealt, even the bad ones.
“You can always innovate,” he says. As such, Deputy has launched a new, automated, staff on-boarding tool, while finding new verticals to expand into, with healthcare a new focus, in addition to retail and hospitality.
Likewise, logistics tech company Shippit have been assembling a taskforce to tackle the challenges brought on by supply chain disruptions.
CEO Rob Hango-Zada says the taskforce “meets daily and sends out proactive communications to our retail community, and we have daily discussions with our largest retailers.”
Shippit has now built multi-carrier shipping software used by companies such as Sephora, General Pants, Cotton On, which provides logistics services, whereby management earns a fee for deliveries.
They have seen an 11.4 per cent increase in carrier bookings, with pet food and supply shipments rising 110 per cent and computer and electronics up 26 per cent.
Meanwhile, Australia’s retail sector are increasingly in favour of the government mandating booster vaccine doses in the industry, though it’s still only a minority that will unilaterally demand employees get the booster jab.
An Australian Retailers Association survey sees 80 per cent of members agreeing to a government mandate, though only 17 per cent say they would mandate booster shots for their own workforce.
Omicron is having a huge impact on retail staffing. On top of JB Hi-Fi and Harvey Norman, last week Bunnings said absenteeism attached to the pandemic was “impacting the ability to deliver stock to stores in line with consumer demands”.
They believe their earnings will now be likely be lower at Kmart and Target stores.
A survey of retailers found up to 65 per cent had up to half their staff in isolation, with 62 per cent rating trading conditions as “poor” or “terrible”.
One retailer in Sydney’s east – Ainslie Curran of boutique LoveDuck – describes the current wave of infections as the “toughest yet”, and believes booster jabs should be mandated for retail workers, as they are in the front line.
“If it wasn’t mandatory the impact could be very much that businesses would have to close if you did unfortunately catch COVID,” she says.
