Bruce Billson, in an interview with ABC Radio, said while a resilience and disaster plan is important for all business, the power of networking and the support small-business owners can receive through that are invaluable in times of crisis.
He said that during his tour last year to gather information from small businesses around Australia about their preparedness for natural disaster, he found a recurring theme — that those communities where small-business owners had created a network of support among themselves fared better in challenging times.
“Where business owners also have a relationship and a network of other businesses in an area, we found those kinds of businesses and those business communities fared best because when you’re with your peers and you’re chewing the fat about what’s going on with your business, you can share learnings with each other,” he said.
“You can actually draw from the wisdom in the room and benefit from that experience and that perspective.
“There’s rarely a business challenge that someone else hasn’t had to navigate and this is a great way of effectively sourcing knowledge from the business community crowd that you can then pick up and apply in your own business.
“This was equally valuable in the recovery phase where there’s a bit of a co-dependency on each other, where the vitality of the business community is interwoven into the success of the business centre recovery.”
Mr Billson said there is a need and a benefit in being engaged and connected with other businesses to help with disaster preparation.
The experience of the Lismore community highlighted this, said Mr Billson.
“They [business owners] were sharing with us the experience they had where after a disaster it’s pleasing and encouraging how many government departments and organisations and community groups come forward and businesses come forward to help,” he said.
“But what they found and what many found across our consultations — so frustrating and frankly, adding to the trauma — is having to tell their story over and over again to different agencies, to different departments, to different sources of assistance.”
Mr Billson said ASBFEO had urged governments of all levels in times of natural disaster to communicate transparently about what response the business community could expect.
He said something as simple as having an identified, designated location where businesses can come and where service providers can congregate is important.
“You can almost have a triaging while you’re there where the business can share their story, their circumstances, their needs, and some of the challenges they’re experiencing once and then, that triage centre can share that story and that information across a number of different support providers rather than have already traumatised and overwhelmed businesses having to go through that story over and over again,” he said.
Mr Billson said there were a number of things ASBFEO was trying to highlight to governments in regard to disaster recovery in the small-business community.
“One is that recovery is expensive. So, when government funds are being used to build road networks or to provide blackspot telecommunications coverage, build it in such a way that it’s robust,” he said.
“Harden that infrastructure so it doesn’t fall over and become a weak link very quickly in the event of a disaster. That’s really about more thoughtful design and implementation of work government would otherwise be doing.
“Another idea is — and we’ve seen this through government reports, Productivity Commission, the insurance industry has quoted this number — of all the money, taxpayer funding spent on disasters 97¢ in the dollar is spent after the event. It [is] spent in the recovery phase. We’re urging that this risk management, risk mitigation lens, sees more of that funding go to preparation and to avoiding and minimising the impact of natural disasters rather than, you know, solely being focused on the very important work, and at times expensive work, of the disaster response and recovery.”
