My POS software business earlier today released to customers a free contact tracing initiative through its website that enables them to easily collect the details of people entering their business in a format useful to health authorities should that be necessary.

Here’s part of what I announced to Tower customers early this morning:

We have done this because state and territory governments have not agreed on a consistent approach and because we think manual record keeping is not ideal in times when health authorities will want a fast response.

Using our approach, we collect and securely store customer details and allow our retailers, and only our retailers, to download these based on selection criteria you enter.

We generate a QR code unique to each business. Customers scan this and are taken to a page we create for each business where they enter their name and mobile number. They can optionally enter their email address. We tag this data with the date and time. That’s it. Their visit is tracked. If asked, retailers can show authorities that they have a process in place for collecting this data. For those without a phone, collect the data manually, on a clip-board.

As we gain use experience with this facility we expect to enhance it further.

We have also shared a sample document in editable Word format to use at the front of a store, with the QR code shown replaced with the store’s QR code:

We have developed this free QR code based contract tracing tool to help our small business retailer community to be well equipped for helping health authorities should there be a Covid diagnosis that connects with the retail business in some way.

This is another way we can give something back to the small business retail community, a community that is so important to our business.

We have seen with Covid that the ability to quickly track those who may have had contact with someone who tests positive it critical to the public health response.

This contact tracing initiative from our POS software company could be a useful tool. From the outset, we knew we have to deliver this without cost to small business retailers.

We are grateful to those on our team who have brought this to life and our own retail stores where we tested this to ensure its practical usefulness.

With Covid here for a while longer, having tools like this for rapid response is critical for the economy, critical for our small business retail community.

I ask because someone shared a photo of social media of it on sale in a newsagency in the ACT.

For the record, I would not sell this book in my newsagency.

The front page of the Herald Sun today features 2 stories. One is the Brownlow win and the other is typical propaganda. Victorians have demonstrated extraordinary resilience over the last two and a half months of the second wave. We have crushed it and now we see restrictions eased. Rather than celebrate what Victorians have achieved and focus on that news, the News Corp take is negative, on brand for this paper these days. For a newspaper that claims We’re for you, the relentless campaign demonstrates they are not for us. It’s embarrassing to have this paper on the shelves.

Plenty of local councils are offering Covid related small grants to help small businesses with a range of projects. from what I have seen they are easy to get and broad in their application.

• One newsagent applied for a $5,000 grant to replace the carpet in their shop. It was approved and the carpet goes in next week.
• Another newsagent applied for $10,000 to install air-conditioning. They were given $7,500 and it has been installed.
• Another newsagent applied for $5,000 to pay for the development of a website. The website goes live next week.
• Another newsagent applied for $10,000 for automatic doors. They were given $5,000.

Many councils around Australia are engaged with grants like these. My advice is to check with your council. If they have a Covid related grant, apply – the worst thing that can happen is that they say no.

A retailer contacted me yesterday with this scenario: three of their casuals are poor performers, too often unwilling to work, making many mistakes at work and disinterested in engaging with shoppers despite encouragement to do so.

The retailer would like to replace them with new employees, three of the many who have dropped their resumes off, keen for a job.

The challenge for the business is JobKeeper. Getting rid of the three poor performers would see the business lose JobKeeper for them and not have access to JobKeeper for three new hires.

The owner has spoken with Fairwork and the answers there are not black and white.

I suggested they performance manage the three dud employees, putting them through a documented process to seek improvement or to at least provide a documented and lawful pathway for their exit from the business.

That employees are able to be paid JobKeeper regardless off whether they actually work is a flaw in the system that needs addressing.

The additional workload and stress on small business retailers because of JobKeeper is an unintendended consequence for sure, but disappointing.