Looking at our projected income and cashflows, and then compounding that with the indeterminate period of time this coronavirus crisis is set to last, meant I had to make the hardest business decision of my career.
On Monday this week I told my team that in order to retain their jobs in the long run, I needed them to take an unpaid sabbatical in the short term.
The team we’ve built at OutOfOffice.com is like a family to me. Each with their own talents, each with their own quirks. So to secure their jobs for the future, I felt the inevitable choice was to offer the unpaid sabbatical. Some will opt for redundancy.
The government yesterday made an attempt to try to appease businesses like mine. Unfortunately, they haven’t. While I admire the polished soundbite of Rishi Sunak (an alumnus of my former school), and his headline-grabbing delivery, the reality is that none of the measures the new chancellor announced so far actually help us properly in this situation.
We are a profitable business. It’s not smart economics to now go and ask our bank for a loan. But how much should we ask for? How long will this last? How much will it cripple the business over the next few months and years? What we need is proper government intervention.
It’s why yesterday I sent a text message to my old colleague Laura Kuenssberg [political editor of BBC News]. We worked together when I was a journalist at ITN. She immediately asked if I’d be available for interview and so that’s why on last night’s BBC News I called out Boris Johnson. “Good people are losing their jobs right now,” I said.
I would love to be able to be in a position where I could keep my staff on – even on minimum wage – over the next few months but it would risk the future viability of the business and in turn the ability for me to hire them back in the future.
The government needs to act now and they need to announce how employees, as well as businesses, will benefit. They need to help me be able to guarantee them a basic income over the next few months or for a fixed period of time; help me not have to have conversations where I have staff members in tears at the prospect of not being able to pay their rent.
The only way through the next few months is to make near-impossible and emotionally difficult decisions to ensure that there is still a business for our staff to come back to.
In the meantime, my team need government intervention to help them.
Darren Burn is the chief executive of OutOfOffice.com and TravelGay.com.
