Victoria’s return to work plans will resume from Monday while mask rules will also be eased.
Plans for the return of 50 per cent of Melbourne’s private sector and 25 per cent of the public sector had been put back a week, however on Thursday, Victoria’s Premier Daniel Andrews said no there was no evidence of local transmission across Victoria giving the green light for the return to work provided social distancing is adhered to.
Managing Partner of Moray & Agnew Lawyers Melbourne, Bill Papastergiadis OAM, who is also President of the Greek Community of Melbourne is expecting that many of the firm’s employees will be making a dash to get back into the office.
“Immediately prior and immediately after Christmas break we were at 25 percent capacity in accordance with the lawful requirements in Victoria, but that number was being achieved very quickly,” Mr Papastergiadis said.
“What we would do every night do is post a table for people to fill and once we got to 25 percent then we’d advise our staff that was it. I would be filled in minutes. What it revealed was that a portion of our workforce wanted to leave home and wanted to work in the city.”
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Mr Papastergiadis and his team will be adopting the same process as of Monday for 25 percent more employees hoping to make their way back into the city.
Flexibility however will not go amiss, despite the hope that workspace will eventually be able to welcome a full capacity.
“It’s been a change on my view pre-COVID, that flexibility has to be the mantra in terms of working life going forward. In support of that I’m going to invest a significant amount of money in refurbishing our office fit out to accommodate a flexible work life in the office,” Mr Papastergiadis explained.
The return is welcomed by businesses across the CBD who rely heavily on office workers to bring in revenue, however it will not be enough to match profits made before the pandemic hit.
Managing Director of Southern Cross Chauffeur Drive George Kapnias has been feeling the impact of the pandemic since 13 March when the Melbourne Grand Prix was cancelled.
“Our business literally went into freefall. We took about 500 cancellations on that day, on the 13th and we operated between three to five percent of our normal trading volumes for seven months,” he tells Neos Kosmos.
Despite more workers entering Melbourne CBD for work, the company will still be taking a hit.
“With regards to large corporations and senior management, because that’s a lot of what we do, they are the most risk averts. That means they will play it the safest. Bigger businesses have been the least affected. It’s the small business, it’s the businesses that rely on people to travel; restaurants, event, airlines, hotels and the people who link them up to all these places like chauffer and taxi companies have been shot in the head basically,” Mr Kapnias said.
Many big bosses will opt to continue working from home because as Mr Kapnias explained, they have “crossed the Rubicon” and adopted a strong digital model that does not require them to “come back in a hurry”.
MPC Moss Property Consultants licensed estate agent James Moss is disappointed that the increase of workforce return only applies to private sectors and not to public sector employees.
“We need to get people back in offices, we need to get them back into the rhythm of working in offices so we can give the economy in the CBD a kickstart. There are a lot of traders in the city, who even though they’ve opened their doors, still rely on these numbers,” he said.
Mr Moss has seen firsthand the effects the pandemic has had on businesses, with an ongoing rise of commercial properties reentering the market for lease and sale. He noted those most impacted were “fashion retail” and “food services”.
“We manage a lot of commercial properties, offices, which were really hit hard, especially the CBD ones. The attitude was ‘we’ve now realised we can work from home so we don’t need this much office space to run our business’,” he explained.
Mr Moss also explained how many landlords have realised they too need to bite the bullet and reduce their rent fees because if their tenants leave, it will be just as hard to get new ones in.
The real impact of business losses, Mr Moss believes, will be seen in the months between May and July well after JopKeeper has been cut.