Vaccination proof required for Business in WA
Every small business owner must be prepared for disruption in their business during any crisis – just like the ongoing outbreak of COVID-19 happening all over the world. Also, in the workplace they need to be prepared to protect their employees and customers’ health and safety.
As Dr Tedros Adhanom Gehreyesus Director – General of WHO said, “Vaccine inequity is the world’s biggest obstacle to ending this pandemic and recovering from COVID-19”, vaccines could save your life, it will protect against severe disease, hospitalization, and death.
Now in Western Australia, businesses require vaccination proof, meaning, all businesses should take a reasonable step to ensure that their employees/customers (age 16 years and above) are double dose vaccinated or have a medical exemption. From 31st January 2022, they will need to have at least a first dose to continue to work and on and from 28th February 2022, your employees have to be fully vaccinated, unless medically exempted.
The following business will be required to ask the customers to ask for the proof of double dose vaccination.
- All hospitality venues: Restaurants, dine-in fast food, café, bars, pubs, clubs/night clubs, taverns, licensed commercial boats. However, food and non-alcoholic beverage takeaway; food courts; roadhouses, and petrol stations are excluded
- Some entertainment venues: Casino, the Crown Perth complex other than any part of that complex providing accommodation, gaming or gambling house, galleries and museum, theater, concert hall or other Live music place, Perth convention and exhibition center, major stadium, gym, indoor sporting center/play center, an amusement park and Perth Zoo.
- Residential aged care and hospitals
- Indoor events with over 500 people, specified outdoor high-risk events and outdoor music event with more than 500 people.
How to operate the Small Business smoothly during this Pandemic
- This COVID pandemic has made businesses think about their operations in a dept way. Follow these tips to mitigate risk, protect employees, and support customers during this COVID-19 Pandemic.
- Communication to the Customers: Communicate with customers clearly about the COVID -19 protocol followed by the business – like mandatory requirement of wearing the mask when they visit or enter your premise. To provide proof of vaccination, this can be done by adding notification about the requirement in your website and social media, or inform the customers know when they make appointments/bookings. The best practice is to proactively communicate with the customers. Informing the customers about financial risk to the business if the health direction is not followed will make them understand the business risk involved from your point of view.
- Encourage remote work option: There are a lot of free online tools available in the market that small business owners can utilize for remote working. With remote working options teams can stay in touch and keep working even if they aren’t in the same place.
- Remote work policy should be implemented, and it should cover important aspects like – scope of work, how to communicate (via email, slack, or video call) and what deliverables each team member is responsible for completing.
- Encourage more virtual meetings: Business owners can reduce meetings and travel and alternatively encourage having virtual meetings. Having virtual meetings will save a lot of time, cost, saving and this will eventually increase productivity.
- Employee Flexibility: The pandemic has affected the whole world drastically; as a business owner you need to be flexible enough with your employees and understand what each person is going through. Make your team aware that suddenly some emergency can come up and the business might come to be short staffed. Owners need to have a contingency plan.
For a small business to stay afloat during this COVID period, requires new approaches, to adapt to the changes you may need to make some adjustments like
- Using contactless deliveries to make services available.
- Asking employees to learn new skills to support changes to the business model.
- Adopting new revenue streams that is high in demand.
- Instituting new safety measures, such as installing Plexiglas barriers between staff and customers.
- Adopting new technology processes.
*NETCorp is not an accounting firm, HR specialist, or financial advisors and therefore we encourage you to do your on fact finding research
