This last weekend saw COVID return to the forefront of the minds of all Australians, with changes happening across multiple States in Australia – Sydney and Darwin in lockdown, a return to restrictions in Perth, Brisbane and Canberra, and the sound of borders slamming shut right across the country.

So at the time of writing this, it’s only Jeff – who’s based in Hobart – who’s happily mask free and we hope that this stays that way for him, and we all go back to it soon.  While we continue to do what is required under the restrictions and mandates, we also thank the people we know in the incident control centres, testing centres, labs and associated infrastructure around the country for looking out for all of us (which, for some of us, includes our partners)!

We’re by no means experts in pandemics, transmissions vectors and the like, but we’re fast becoming experts in how to respond when these things happen.  Much of that is thanks to our ISO procedures, like our Business Continuity Plan (BCP).  Our BCP is something we’ve been reviewing regularly since the start of the pandemic, and amending approaches to things as we need to.  Our BCP has really helped us to respond quickly to changing conditions, and as part of the building up of our resilience around incidents, there really is minimal change for our teams when we need to switch things up.

Apart from our flexible approach to working, our partnership with Amazon Web Services for the delivery of pretty much all our infrastructure also means that our systems are much more robust than the “good old days” of managing our own infrastructure.  The ability to spin up infrastructure quickly using cloud services has certainly made a big difference – we can adapt and respond to rapidly changing circumstances faster than ever before.

Back in February https://archive.gaiaresources.com.au/february-covid-update/ I wrote about how we responded to lockdowns.  We kept an eye on our team and tried to make sure everyone was well – mentally and physically – and we kept on working with our clients in the most productive ways we could.  We still work remotely for parts of our weeks, and while we enjoy getting back to our offices in the coworking spaces we use around Australia – it’ll be even better when we will be able to do that without masks or other restrictions.

Once these current restrictions end, we look forward to catching up again as a team for our usual end of financial year recaps and workshops – and we’ll publish our usual online recaps, too!

This pandemic continues to remind us that we need to avoid complacency and look out for each other.  We’ll continue to do this and if there is anything we can do to help our clients, or if you would like to just chat about how we’re doing, feel free to drop me a line, give us a call on (08) 9227 7309 or strike up a conversation on Twitter, LinkedIn or Facebook.

Piers