COVID business roundtable aims to prepare post-pandemic plan

Some of Australia’s biggest companies will discuss how to prepare a plan to return Australians to work and revitalise city centres.

Some of Australia’s biggest companies will discuss how to prepare a plan to return Australians to work and revitalise city centres.

A roundtable of some of Australia’s biggest businesses and employers, including Wesfarmers, Lendlease and Allianz, is meeting as part of a scheme to lay out a road map for a post-COVID-19 world.

The working group, which also reaches across sectors including health, infrastructure and legal, is convened under a global project by professional services firm AON, which is hosting similar coalitions in New York, Chicago, London, Singapore and Dublin.

AON Australia chief executive James Baum said the meetings would develop recommendations on the return to cities that could be shared with governments and business, as well as sharing experiences of frustrations and difficulties during the pandemic.

“One of the things that businesses across the board can agree on is we’re challenged by many of the same things,” he said.

“The organisations that have been involved are as much thinking about how they can help the broader business world, as well as the economy as well, and what they can take out of it themselves.”

The project comes as Melbourne exits lockdown and governments look to shift cities to a post-pandemic kilter.

The working group, dubbed The Australian Work Travel and Convene Coalition, held its inaugural meeting on Wednesday, with the submissions from the companies involved set to be used to create a benchmarking report and develop guidelines and recommendations.

Companies include Wesfarmers, Accenture, Lendlease, Allianz, Black Dog Institute, Ramsay Health, Ashurst, and Ventia were represented at the meeting.

Mr Baum said Australia was well placed to lead global discussions on what the workplace for the future would look like and how staff would engage with the office, in large part thanks to the country’s success in suppressing the virus.

“On a global level, the Australian experience is going to inform a lot of what the workplace of the future is going to look like,” he added.

Mr Baum said one of the key issues he hoped the Australian panel would address was strategies around mental health and stress.

“We’ve talked to clients and looked into our own organisations, we see the stress and anxiety in and around our own colleagues as they manage months of lockdowns while watching many of their colleagues in relatively open working environments,” he said.

“Most organisations we see are kind of seeing that through a bit of a vacuum, but given this is a brand new experience the ability to come together and share and debate these topics can only help.”

Mr Baum said the Australian experience of COVID-19 was unlike many other countries in which AON operates, with differing levels of lockdowns and social-distancing requirements that complicated operations of national businesses.

“Australia faces this unique situation in that we have handled this independently, we’ve had different stages of restrictions across the country.

“I’m not sure there’s been a country with such a disparate take on how to manage lockdowns,” he said.