Tag: lockdown

As Shakespeare said: 'all the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players.' Today, COVID-19 is the world's dominant player, and it is wreaking havoc.

At the core of our work and social lives, connectivity and online functions like email, e-commerce, apps, and instant messaging, seem to dominate everything we do in the modern world. Made even more apparent by the lockdown and its restrictions, few businesses can trade effectively without connectivity, and a reliable data network has become a must-have for all businesses, regardless of size or sector.

The COVID-19 lockdown has battered the already ailing South African economy. Despite the pending lift of the lockdown, companies will likely battle to stay afloat as the full impact of the pandemic plays out. Companies with insufficient liquidity face a high risk of collapse.

Employees returning to work from the COVID-19 lockdown will need to show reasonable justification if they halt work on the basis that they are exposed to the virus. Legal provisions allowing employees to withdraw from a hazardous working situation could, in the context of COVID-19, be open to abuse by unprincipled employees or trades unions.

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought the global economy to its knees, and inevitably many employers will need to contain costs by cutting salaries. Being hit with a salary cut or a retrenchment is something every employee dreads, but it’s important not to panic and to manage the situation as responsibly as possible.

COVID-19 has taken the world by storm, so much so that plunges in global stock markets are making history in terms of the low levels being hit, as well as the speed at which the collapses are occurring. For the first time in history, the US oil prices fell below zero. From travel bans and cancelled sporting events to national lockdowns, COVID-19 has influenced global and personal realities.

South Africa’s medium-sized businesses have generally proven to be more resilient to the prolonged weakness in the economy, and now are more likely to weather successfully the fall-out from COVID-19 lockdown, than their smaller or larger counterparts.

Read our exclusive cover story titled COVID-19 | RESET... REDEFINE, REFINE, REBUILD ...RESTART! by Dr Ivor Blumenthal, CEO, ArkKonsult, as well a host of other topical management articles written by professionals, consultants and academics in the June/July 2020 edition of BusinessBrief.

While lockdown inadvertently helped to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, it is critically important that sustainability of the environment is at the heart of post-COVID-19 recovery efforts. This is where the much-talked about Green New Deal (GND) becomes crucial and while it’s no panacea to economic challenges, harnessing its benefits can help grow the economy and create jobs in a post-COVID-19 world.

Having worked in the commercial property sector for many years, let me state a truth universally acknowledged, but often overlooked: we will come through this, and the sector will recover from the significant knocks its faced recently as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.