As the days go by and the coun­try grap­ples with the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic and its im­pact, so too are busi­ness own­ers who are al­so con­cerned about their rev­enue and main­tain­ing the em­ploy­ment of staff.

Al­ready, some have thrown in the tow­el and opt­ed to go the route of re­trench­ment in light of plum­met­ing sales.

But in the midst of it all, there are a few hold­ing on for the sake of their work­ers.

One such busi­ness is In­cus Ser­vices lim­it­ed.

Di­rec­tor Leslie Lee Fook yes­ter­day told Guardian Me­dia that his com­pa­ny, which has 18 em­ploy­ees, has al­ready start­ed to feel the ef­fects of the COVID shut­down.

“There are two ar­eas of our busi­ness, one is the more tra­di­tion­al in­fra­struc­ture side of the busi­ness where we had to out­source ser­vices we out­source for com­pa­nies, so pret­ty much any­body who has been af­fect­ed in any of the non-es­sen­tial ser­vices that are cus­tomers of ours have been im­pact­ed and as a re­sult that side of the busi­ness did see some im­pact,” Lee Fook said.

The com­pa­ny has al­ready lost around 10 per cent of rev­enue and Lee Fook is cau­tious about what else is to come.

He said the emerg­ing tech­nol­o­gy side of the busi­ness is where the fo­cus is be­ing placed right now but he al­so has an eye on his staff.

“The mes­sage to our em­ploy­ees is first that we are all in this thing to­geth­er,” he said.

How­ev­er, Lee Foo said he in­tends, “to com­mu­ni­cate with the em­ploy­ees to give them some sense of com­fort and cut­ting back staff is cer­tain­ly not an op­tion for us at the mo­ment.”

He said not on­ly does his heart go out to his work­ers but his cus­tomers as well, some of whom have been af­fect­ed more than him.

He told of one cus­tomer in par­tic­u­lar.

“This cus­tomer, whose pay­ments have nev­er been a prob­lem, reached out to say ‘would you mind if you gave me a break on this month’s bill’. So we had a con­ver­sa­tion with the cus­tomer and what we de­cid­ed to do is ac­tu­al­ly waive the bill be­cause we know their rev­enue com­plete­ly dis­ap­peared,” he ex­plained.

He said the plan is to chip in and help his cus­tomers as well to get through this sit­u­a­tion.

One of the ways Lee Fook has planned to keep spare re­sources on the books is by ask­ing em­ploy­ees to work on a spe­cial Caribbean da­ta project. He ex­plained that his com­pa­ny joined a body called the Caribbean da­ta fam­i­ly.

“Our man­date is to help flat­ten the curve and we in­tend to do that us­ing da­ta. So we want to use da­ta col­lect­ed from across the re­gion to give every sin­gle cit­i­zen the abil­i­ty to bet­ter un­der­stand the im­pact of the virus to them.”

Lee Fook’s plan for his em­ploy­ees is one of the ex­am­ples of busi­ness own­ers putting mankind be­fore mon­ey.

Ch­agua­nas Busi­ness Cham­ber pres­i­dent Vish­nu Char­ran said yes­ter­day that his mem­bers had been seek­ing to main­tain staff as best as they can.

“As far as I am aware, busi­ness­es have been op­er­at­ing with their nor­mal staff un­til the tow weeks shut­down of non-es­sen­tial busi­ness­es. Per­sons were not sent home be­fore the shut­down al­though sales were very slow,” Char­ran said.

“Of course, the ex­cep­tion would be busi­ness­es for es­sen­tial items. I heard some staff were of­fered va­ca­tion pay as the PM sug­gest­ed. Some were giv­en ad­vances on their salary. The busi­ness­men in var­i­ous ways are try­ing to en­sure that their staff is com­fort­able for the next two weeks. I am cer­tain many em­ploy­ees will have filled out the forms for the grant from the NIS as many com­pa­nies are hav­ing cash flow prob­lems.”

“As for my com­pa­ny (Char­rans Book Store), we have told them just call us if they need any as­sis­tance, as these are the per­sons we de­pend up­on for our busi­ness to op­er­ate.”

T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce CEO Gabriel Faria said he was aware that some busi­ness­es were try­ing hard giv­en the down­turn in the econ­o­my.

“Many of the es­sen­tial busi­ness­es which have been very ac­tive, su­per­mar­kets, et cetera, would be able to deal with it.

“The is­sues have been for busi­ness­es that were deemed non-es­sen­tial, as they have no in­come. The Gov­ern­ment has not put any struc­tured fi­nan­cial sup­port for those com­pa­nies specif­i­cal­ly, as we have seen in oth­er de­vel­oped coun­tries,” Faria said.

“We don’t have num­bers from our mem­bers but the gen­er­al feed­back is that most busi­ness has been work­ing with their man­age­ment and staff to re­tain staff at least for April. There has been a range of so­lu­tions im­ple­ment­ed to en­sure there is busi­ness con­ti­nu­ity and em­ploy­ees have a job go­ing for­ward.”

He said su­per­mar­kets and phar­ma­cies were prob­a­bly hir­ing staff now while com­pa­nies that have been deemed non-es­sen­tial are do­ing their best to keep their peo­ple em­ployed.