Throughout early 2022, the Victorian Chamber has been encouraging businesses to review their employment contracts, practices and alerting them to the support available.

If you were lucky enough to get in a break over the school holidays, you would have noticed the crippling effect that Covid-19 is having on our small businesses across the state.

Welcome to our first edition of Victorian Chamber News for 2022. We know that staff shortages, supply chain issues, isolation requirements, density limits and lack of accessibility to Rapid Antigen Tests (RATs) continue to cause difficulty and stress and the Victorian Chamber team is working hard to ensure your voices are heard and practical solutions can be found.

The Small Business Energy Saver Program is supporting Victorian small business owners to save on energy-efficient equipment. It will deliver $5 million in discounts to small businesses across Victoria that invest in upgrading their systems.

The Victorian Chamber welcomes the State Government’s extension of rent relief and protections for commercial tenants and landlords for another two months due to the ongoing impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Additional sectors will be relieved from close contact isolation requirements to ease supply chain bottlenecks and workforce shortages after an announcement today by the Victorian Government.

A third COVID-19 vaccination is now required for workers within certain essential industries, and close contact isolation arrangements have also changed for food and beverage distribution workers, as part of Victorian Government pandemic orders announced today.