The people pandemic

Current product shortages in essential retail are being materially exacerbated by increasing numbers of staff, who work within the supply chain and store network, either testing positive or isolating, hindering retailers ability to receipt and ship product to stores. This resource shortfall is further compounded by a higher underlying absence % rate that is not specifically COVID tagged.

While there are signs that total absence is improving, it remains high, and many businesses are being forced to curb operating hours to manage a lack of available staff.

With the unemployment rate sitting just above 4% and with no inbound migration, there’s no silver bullet with the available workforce being increasingly relied on to cover the required hours.

Given this, it's no wonder there are calls to relax rules to ensure staff who are close contacts, but return a negative RAT, can continue to work.

While it is undoubtedly for the greater good, this will place additional pressure on essential workers who have worked tirelessly over the past 2 years.

We must keep our supermarket shelves stocked, but let's not forget there are tens of thousands of retail and supply chain workers going above and beyond to ensure this happens.

These are big challenges Australian retailers are grappling with, and our role at Grant Thornton is to help our clients find a way through, to be the best they can be.

And we’ve been doing this successfully for over 25 years.