It’s that time of year again when men’s upper lips start sprouting weird and wonderful moustaches. November has now affectionately become ‘Mo’vember and globally men are taking on a challenge and hooking up with a charity that supports the awareness and treatment of Prostate cancer and other men’s health issues. It’s a fun way to help a very serious problem. Prostate cancer affects 1 in 17 South Africans according to CANSA (The Cancer Association of South Africa) and is the number one cancer found in men too. Testicular cancer and men’s mental health issues, often associated with contracting cancers of this nature, are also part of this initiative.

Being in a business of predominantly women, Virtual Assistants understand the many issues that women have to face, both personally and in the workplace. Health and business and long-term wealth are all inextricably linked, and we all know that without your health you cannot function correctly to achieve anything. We fully empathise with our fellow women in this month that Breast cancer awareness and prevention are in the spotlight. Other female cancers are included too like cervical, colorectal, uterine and lung cancer, but breast and cervical cancer are the most prevalent.

When a company hires a permanent employee, they are essentially looking for someone to add value to their business. Without that there is little point in hiring. We, as professional Virtual Assistants (or VA’s), are acutely aware that the same applies to any outsourced service. Our play on William Shakespeare’s ‘How do I love thee, let me count the ways’ – to ‘the value of VA’s - let me count the ways’ is because we believe that when you become aware of the true value of a great VA, it may be ‘love at first’ sight for your business!

This month we celebrate our National Heritage Day and it is with great pride that we do so. Our former President and global human rights icon Nelson Mandela said of it: “When our first democratically-elected government decided to make Heritage Day one of our national days, we did so because we knew that our rich and varied cultural heritage has a profound power to help build our new nation.”

We said it when the pandemic was at its peak and we’ll say it again – the ingenuity of people when the chips are down is quite remarkable. Many businesses totally reinvented themselves and some people are now running two businesses instead of one if the temporary business they built is a sustainable one. For many though spring and the slow return to business could not have come a moment too soon. It is a spring that comes on the tail end of a very long hard winter and not everyone was able to create new businesses, so they are now rebuilding the businesses they had.

It seems quite strange that in a country like South Africa with its diverse range of cultures that one seldom hears of service providers that can accommodate people in their Mother tongue. In September, on Heritage Day, we will celebrate our cultural diversity but many people here only speak their own language.

There has recently been much discussion about working from home, as the pandemic forced millions of people into this situation whether they or their companies liked it or not. Large and small businesses alike found themselves managing employees remotely - a predicament that many were not comfortable with. The question that arose therefore was “is working from home a blessing or a curse?” Fortunately, there has been a lot of good advice to help them. We released several advice pieces on better ways to work from home and have offered some great ideas for home-based businesses that one can start-up.

The lockdown from the COVID-19 pandemic left many business people feeling helpless and redundant. Tradesmen, in particular, felt the pinch as they could not go into homes or onto sites other than for emergencies. As we phased back to normality, many had huge backlogs and had made office staff, who no longer seemed to be relevant, redundant. This meant that when they got busy again many contractors were overwhelmed with admin and various other tasks that just slowed them down. We have, throughout this month, been posting articles, giving case studies and examples of the many ways that a good Virtual Assistant can really help contractors of all kinds. Our A, B, C of how we can help you…

Michael Pretorius is the owner of CT Floors, a rapidly expanding specialist industrial and commercial flooring company focused on seamless concrete protection systems. Michael is as passionate about delivering value as he is about finding solutions to complex challenges for his industry-leading clients. He is the consummate Entrepreneur with a constant eye on expansion and a gift for extracting the best from employees by empowering them through creating the opportunity for self-improvement.

The casualties in the workforce of many businesses is one of the saddest thing about the whole COVID-19 disaster. We hope this useful advice on how you, as employers, can assist your employees through applying for the Government assistance known as The Temporary Employee/Employer Relief Scheme (TERS), will help. This relief is offered to employers facing distresses and unable to pay salaries and according to Arlene Legate, president of the SAPA, it is actually the responsibility of such companies to make use of it. She also assures us that, despite initial setbacks, payments are being made.