COVID 19 has wreaked havoc through our lives over the past 3 months like nothing else I can remember in my lifetime. It’s impact has been brutal and swift, yet it’s consequences for individuals, businesses and economies will have repercussions that last for years.

For almost 3 months, most family businesses have been running a management by fire strategy. COVID 19 hit hard and when Australia went into lockdown, businesses needed to adapt quickly to a fast changing situation. It was what most businesses needed to do to get through a period of complete uncertainty.

If your business is trades based, you’ll know what a Toolbox Talk is. If it’s not trades based, you’re about to find out.

Over the past 9 weeks, the world has changed like it has never changed before in my lifetime. Who would have thought that a virus could create more havoc in the lives of people and businesses across the globe than any war or natural disaster?

There’s no denying the past 8 weeks have been a whirlwind of life and business disruption like most of us have never experienced in our lifetimes. For me, it has been the closest feeling that I have had of being at war when I consider the conversations I was fortunate to have with my mother-in-law and father-in-law when they were both alive. 

Very early last Wednesday morning, in the pitch black of the pre-dawn, I had a premonition about my father. I somehow found myself at his front door, him holding it open. Whether it was a dream or that sort of in-limbo state, it was short and somewhat odd as we have not spoken for a very long time.

Yesterday afternoon, the Reserve Bank Governor, Dr Philip Lowe, gave his sober assessment of the impact of the coronavirus outbreak on the Australian economy:

As we head into our third week of Australia being mostly shut, it has me reflecting on the big and small things in my life that I’m grateful for right now that, previously, I may have taken for granted, or not given enough thought to.

We’re now two weeks into this period of lockdown in Australia. When it was first mentioned by the New South Wales and Victorian Premiers as a possibility on Sunday 22nd March, 2020, I can honestly say I was both shocked and concerned for the many family businesses across the country.

As Australia moves into a situation that the Prime Minister and Treasurer are referring to as Economic Hibernation, and as my own state, New South Wales, moves to restricting movement outside the home to very limited circumstances, the effects of the COVID 19 virus continue to be felt far and wide.