Hard Bakka Latest News

How Hard Bakka is Responding to Coronavirus (COVID-19)

With the coronavirus (COVID-19) situation developing rapidly, we believe it is critical to be open about how Hard Bakka is responding to the outbreak. Our objective as a business is to approach this situation with utmost care and urgency; Hard Bakka’s main priority is the wellbeing of all our employees and of all the communities we serve, including our customers, prospects, suppliers and candidates.
Given how fast the outbreak is progressing, we expect, and are prepared, to move on our plan continuously to ensure the health and safety of our employees and communities we engage with. Below are details reflective of our guidelines and practices as of March 20, 2020. We will update this information as needed to reflect any key changes to our approach.

Employee Travel
Hard Bakka related travel is now banned to further notice. We believe ceasing travel is our safest option in reducing the risks of infection. Any pre-planned employee trips to events or unnecessary customer visits, are receiving assistance for cancellation.
We are asking all employees or personnel, who travel by cruise ship or airplane to self-quarantine for 14 days upon their return.

Remote Work
Hard Bakka considering the situation, are implementing guidelines of social distancing and general hygiene suitable to the trade and workplace, without disrupting the livelihood of its employee base. Hard Bakka strategies include:
• Requiring able employees to work remotely using an IT preparedness checklist
• Requiring all factory and office employees to maintain a distance of 1.5m to 5m from others in the workplace in-doors
• Requiring workers to wash their hands regularly as stipulated by authorities and holding enforcing this in Toolbox meetings
• Alternatively, if not working remotely our staff strictly adhere to the recommended Australian Health Department guidelines

Events
Hard Bakka has cancelled several upcoming events, both internal and external, including our Job Execution BBQ planned for EOM March and the annual Mid-Year BBQ in June. We’re optimistic that coronavirus will be contained before our End-of-Year Annual BBQ in December event, but we wouldn’t be responsible if we weren’t planning for every possibility.
For other events, including Hard Bakka Toolbox meetings and CEO speaking engagements, we are using a cautious decision-making framework on a case-by-case basis.

Hard Bakka Office Visits
For anyone planning to visit us, or progress with a face-to-face meeting with a Hard Bakka employee, we encourage you to first connect with us via telephone to confirm your visit or postpone it. In areas with high- and medium-risk of infection, we recommend no in-person meetings and visits for partners, customers and candidates. And if you’ve recently travelled to an impacted area, we encourage you to cancel your office visit. However, rest assured should you not fall into this category, all of our staff follow current strict hygiene procedures as recommended by the Australian Department of Health.

Hiring and Candidate Experience
Hard Bakka is hiring for open positions in Sydney, and we are adapting our recruiting and onboarding processes to be virtual. Our HR and Operations team is focused on assisting our candidates during this uncertain time by providing more flexibility and guidance during their interview process.

Business Continuity
Hard Bakka maintains business continuity and disaster recovery plans targeted both on preventing outage through telecommunications failure, systems and business operations, and on fast recovery tactics in the event of an availability or performance issue. Whenever customer-impacting situations happen, Hard Bakka’s aim is to rapidly and transparently isolate and address the issue. Identified issues are published on our Notice Board and are subsequently updated until the issue is resolved.

Internal Communications
Currently, we are increasing our commitment to transparency and sharing knowledge fast with employees as the situation evolves. Our leadership teams are using our internal communications tools to update employees on the latest developments and anticipate concerns, questions, or support they, or their customers and relatives, may need.

In addition to the above actions, Hard Bakka are keeping empathy, care and safety top of mind. It is an anxious and stressful time for our communities around Australia, and so we want to do anything we can to reduce panic and increase our strong commitment to safety.

We hope this information helps in understanding how Hard Bakka are responding to coronavirus, and we appreciate the ongoing support from our employees and customers.

For questions about this post please contact:

Mona Hwalla
General Manager
Hard Bakka Pty Ltd
Phone: (02) 9796 7888
Email: admin@hardbakka.com.au