TRANSCRIPT
Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman Bruce Billson interview with Leon Delaney.
Radio 2CC Canberra
Subjects: How small business can prepare for a disaster, checklists to help small business, My Business Record, telecommunication services, banking services
Leon Delaney
The Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman has warned small business operators that they need to be properly prepared for natural disasters. The Ombudsman joins me now. Bruce Billson, good afternoon.
Bruce Billson
Leon, fab to be with you and your listeners.
Leon Delaney
Well, thanks for joining us today. Don't small business owners already have enough things to worry about without having to focus their imagination, their attention and their energy on something that might never happen?
Bruce Billson
Yeah, it's a good observation, but the corollary of that thinking is that if something does happen, you're in a lot of challenging... I'm trying to find a nice way of saying something other than excrement, Leon.
Leon Delaney
I was going to say, you're in a sticky situation.
Bruce Billson
One of the things that we were urging people to think about is that a disaster can be a natural event or it might be something that happens to the haymaker, the person who is bringing the revenue into the business.
And for a sole trader, it may well be them. A really adverse health event can knock the business right off course and have a significant impact on the livelihoods that are reliant upon it. So, we're not suggesting it needs to be super complicated. In fact, only one in four small businesses have something that looks like a current business continuity plan.
But we have found that if you've got one of those, you might take some sensible risk mitigation steps as part of being prepared, that will bolster your resilience and that'll certainly help you bounce back in the event that something adverse happens to your business or even to the business owner and leader.
Leon Delaney
Indeed. Now you mentioned a business continuity plan. What would such a plan look like?
Bruce Billson
Well, a couple of simple things. Have the contact details of all that the key folks that you might need to be in touch with, or someone on your behalf might need to be in touch with. These are your suppliers, your accountant perhaps, of course your staff, many of your customers. They are central to how the business might be dealing with the circumstances it faces.
The other thing is, have available backups for important operational data so that if there’s an event that takes out your own technology, you know where you've stored crucial bits of data - maybe in the cloud or maybe offsite. And what would it look like if you had to operate from somewhere else?
We're always urging people to have deeper digital engagement, you know, digitise your business as much as you can so that the business of running the business, not the stuff that's your jam, not the stuff where you’re at your best, but vital to running that business. The business of running the business means, well, maybe if the communication systems are taken out or the power goes down, I'm really in it in a sticky situation.
And just stay up to date the best you can with your record keeping, your tax obligations, pay your insurance. It's that sort of thing that we would put to people as really sensible use for those with a lot on your plate already, but that can really help in the event something that you wish didn't happen does happen to your business.
Leon Delaney
Indeed. And of course, in regards to the communications network, we all saw what happened last year with Optus going down. That impacted on thousands of small businesses right across the country in a way that I think very few people actually foresaw that happening.
Bruce Billson
And we had a bit to say about it because we actually think communications, like access to a banking service, are essential services for business these days. And we were particularly upset when the Optus executives were saying we'll give you a couple of bucks back, which is the equivalent of a day or two of what you pay to access our communications services. We said to them, hang on a minute, the economic losses will be many more times that. And there's a duty on those service providers who've signed up to things like the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman Scheme to be prepared to compensate businesses that have had a direct loss.
It's the same with banking services. Payment platforms went out late last week for a lot of the challenger banks. That can really just take all wind out of the sails of the business and really leave you quite incapable of delighting your customers. And it costs you sales, revenue and reputation.
Leon Delaney
It certainly does. Now, you have apparently conducted a small business natural disaster preparedness and resilience inquiry. First of all, what did your inquiry find? And second of all, what did it recommend?
Bruce Billson
You can find a copy of that report on our website. Why we did that was there was a series of natural disasters, in some cases impacting the same businesses, and government asked us to have a look at what could be done to improve preparedness and resilience. And we did that and we found pleasingly that people better prepared and more resilient - guess what? - they get through the disasters better and they actually are better placed to get organised and recover on the other side.
One of the things that we found was it's hard to get simple information like that little checklist I described earlier. Businesses ask, what are you talking about? Preparedness? It sounds kind of funky. But what actually are the action steps we can take? It also looked at the support that's available. It’s hard to be really well prepared if you're not sure what the support is that you can tap into and rely upon in the event of a natural disaster.
And we know through some of the joint Commonwealth and State and Territory disaster support funding schemes, you can get quite different outcomes depending on how those negotiations go and what kind of disaster there was. We are saying a little more predictability would be really helpful for small businesses getting themselves organised and ready to bounce back.
There's also some specific advice around, let's call it place-based responses. It's all well and good to know what's going on, on the other side of the continent. But if you're hit in your community, what's the machinery that's going to be stood up? Who do you talk to? Where do you go to get that support in a very tailored way and can’t that support actually have you tell them once, almost like a triage at a hospital? Tell us once what's happening in your world and then let us help land you with those people who can best help.
So, it's those sorts of ideas. There was even some thoughts around insurance and making it more available. Then the big one is really thinking about which areas are impacted by disasters. You don't need to be directly impacted by the fire, for example, to be a business that now has no customers available in the region because of the fire. So sometimes that thinking can be really not connected to the way local economies operate. So, they were just some of the recommendations we made, Leon.
Leon Delaney
One of the things you put forward was an opt-in My Business Record. How would that work?
Bruce Billson
If you're interacting with government or lodging your BAS returns and other reporting obligations, whether you could choose to say to government can you hold some of that in a secure location, that in the event a disaster hits we can actually tap into the information government holds about our business and help put the pieces back together that way?
There's so many bits of data that government holds that you're obliged to provide as part of that big responsibility of owning a business. But if a disaster hits, how about we get a bit of reciprocity, that some of that data is made available to help the business recover. So, that was what that idea was about, just where there's a real gap in information.
Leon Delaney
Congratulations on not stumbling over reciprocity, that always gets me.
Bruce Billson
It’s right up there with perspicacity. I stumbled over the opening one though when I was trying to work out a way of saying not what would naturally come to my lips. Thank you for steering me through that.
Leon Delaney
Well, Bruce, it's always great to catch up. And if people want to find out more about how to prepare for the unexpected, the natural disasters or other unexpected events that can impact on your business, obviously you've mentioned the website. You've got a lot of information there. Is that the first port of call for people to look into it?
Bruce Billson
That's the best place to go. There's some really straightforward checklists. Not mountains of information you've to wade through, but cut-to-the-car-chase checklists and resources to help small businesses with their preparation and their recovery. That’s www, A S B F E O, the acronym for Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman, dot gov, dot au (www.asbfeo.gov.au). And there's gripping material there that your audience will, I know, no doubt love.
Leon Delaney
Look, it's one of those things, isn't it, though, if you are in fact running a business, all of a sudden it becomes very interesting.
Bruce Billson
There's a lot on your plate and we're trying to make it simple. I mean, even with emotional wellbeing, and we touched on that in the report. If you're a time-poor small business owner, you don't really want someone saying, look, you need a little bit of mindfulness. It's not really going to be that helpful. But we do point out simple action steps about prioritising things you need to do, understanding what's in your influence to control. So that's what we're trying to do. Actionable information that time-poor small business can just pick up, say, yep, got that, I can do that. And be better placed because of that. That's what we aim to do here.
Leon Delaney
And if you can't remember, ASBFEO, just Google Small Business Ombudsman and you'll be right.
Bruce Billson
That'll do it. And you know, I'm sure we can come up with a rap song to help people remember that.
Leon Delaney
That might be the go. Thank you Bruce Billson, the Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman.