Our Executive has met and decided on several escalated responses to help protect our employees, clients and visitors, whilst maintaining support to our more than 75,000 customers across Australia.

The temporary measures we are implementing are unprecedented. However, these are unprecedented times that require leadership and bold decisions to protect our team and do our part to curb the spread of this virus in the community.

Overview of new measures effective immediately:

*Our Strata Managers, Assistant Strata Managers and Trainee Strata Managers will work from either  home or remotely until further notice.

* Our smaller branches/offices will close temporarily.

* On-site visits will be temporarily restricted.

* Our front-line service teams such as customer support and administration will remain in the office at this point in time. However, a social distancing practice will implemented in these offices.

* We will implement new rules for our onsite building and facilities managers.

* We will temporarily cease attendance (face to face) at meetings for our employees.

* We are cancelling planned employee events in May, June and August.        

Employees working from home
Our strata and non-customer facing employees will work from home effective immediately. 

Following significant technical and data capacity upgrades undertaken over recent years all employees of the Group are still able to access their computers and phones and so can be contacted as normal.

Line managers will engage with their teams regularly on Skype to keep up morale and provide updates and be available for escalations and to answer questions.

Effective tomorrow, Tuesday 17 March 2020. The following branches will close:

* Sydney Olympic Park

* Hunter

The following offices will be open with limited capability:
Hope Island will remain open for limited strata searches and urgent matters. However, as outlined below, we encourage visitors to call and not attend.

On-site visits
We are placing a soft ban on all visits to our offices temporarily.  We will attempt to limit visits to strata searches only, understanding the importance of this function for the sale of properties under our management.

Other functions such as key and access device management can be done over the phone, utilising express mail services and other measures which do not require access into the office.

Employees still working in the office
The customer facing employees who will remain in the office will practice social distancing and we will continue to monitor advice.

On-site building and facilities managers
For now, these employees will remain on-site with the following conditions:

• * They isolate within building offices as much as possible.

• * Visitors do not attend the office or interact in close proximity to on-site staff unless they are urgently required to do so. In which case full preventive virus transfer practices should be implemented including hand washing before entering and remain for only a very short period of time.
   

• * In the event the on-site employee is required to enter an apartment, we ask where possible the resident wear a mask. The employee if concerned, does not have to enter an apartment.
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• * Some employees may need to work off-site and be available on the advertised building management mobile service and e-mail.

Attendance at face to face meetings temporarily restricted for our employees
We are restricting face to face meetings for our employees.  This restriction is effective from Monday 23 March 2020.

You may of course continue to meet if your building wishes to do so and our strata or building manager can attend via phone or skype.

We encourage you to contact your Strata, Building or Property Manager to organise alternative methods of meetings include online, phone, skype, proxies or postponement.  

Phone (Audio and/or video) conferences are very easy for our team to organise. All you will need is a phone and we will supply the meeting a phone number and code.

Employee events
Employee training and appreciation days in May and June have been postponed as has our Leadership Retreat in August.  We hope to be able to re-group in June and reschedule these important events.

Ongoing
The situation remains fluid and further decisions may have to be made without short or little notice in line with Government and Health Authority advice.

Our priority is always the health and safety of our employees and customers and we will continue to keep you updated.

We thank you for your ongoing support and look forward to being able to continue to offer you our services during this time.