Do you have a plan for when JobKeeper ends?

Malcolm Peak is the Director of Employer Branding and HR Advisory group Peak Corporate Solutions, providing advice to small business owners to help them grow and manage their businesses.

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IMAGINE tomorrow is 28 Sep 2020. Today is the last day of JobKeeper.

You didn’t really have a plan for this. You hoped the economy would pick up, the borders would open, and some additional government assistance would come your way. It didn’t.

You try and call your accountant, but they are busy with all their other clients wanting the same advice…what do you do now?

This is not good…you have no prospect of earning revenue, you now need to pay your employees (now that JobKeeper has gone), pay your rent in full (now the rent reduction period is now finished), and your creditors are still wanting to be paid.

Did you also realise that during JobKeeper, employees have still been accruing all their entitlements such as leave? If you need to let them go, and if you are a larger business, you will also be liable for redundancy payments.

This problem just got a lot bigger than you might have realised.

The above scenario is something I am trying to help my clients avoid. The travel industry is not the only industry impacted by government directions on movement and travel, however it is the industry bearing most of the burden. Travel businesses simply can’t earn revenue, and the JobKeeper program provided a payroll service for businesses in the hope that they could stay buoyant enough so when the economy started to recover, they could recover too.

The problem is the travel and tourism industries can’t recover until travel restrictions imposed by governments are lifted. Travel bans are likely to be in place for some time, and many locations are in countries (or even states) with closed borders, or at least with a 14-day quarantine period at each end. This makes a holiday or business trip simply too expensive in time and money.

If you want to avoid the type of catastrophe I outlined above, here are steps I am taking with clients which you can also follow:

1. Ensure you are complying with the legislation and the requirements to consult with your employees during this period.

If in doubt, visit coronavirus. fairwork.gov.au which sets out the obligations of employers during the Coronavirus Pandemic and JobKeeper wage subsidy scheme.

2. Review your business strategy & do some post-COVID planning. If you think you don’t need to do this then you are planning to fail.

3. Make any difficult decisions in relation to your structure and business model early, so that you have the best chance to operate when the travel restrictions ease both locally and globally.

The COVID-19 pandemic and the economic devastation in its wake are like nothing we have ever seen before, and simply “waiting and seeing” is not an option. Yes, there are still more than three months of the JobKeeper program, but do you want to be one of those zombie businesses that simply folds in September?... Or would you like to take control and give yourself a better chance of seeing this crisis through to the other side?

“Would you like to take control and give yourself a better chance of seeing this crisis through to the other side? ”

Malcolm is currently offering a free 20 minute consultation for Travel Daily readers - email malcolm@peakcorporatesolutions.com.au or call 0418 416 769.