AUSTIN (KXAN) — Over the weekend, several businesses across Central Texas opened its doors to customers after being closed for more than a month due to COVID-19.
With people beginning to get back to work, KXAN checked in with businesses to find out how the rehiring process is taking place. The Chief Operating Officer at Z’Tejas, Robby Nethercut, said since the shutdown he was able to keep the majority of his employees working.
“We didn’t run off or furlough anyone, we didn’t shut down our facilities,” Nethercut said. “We did have to reduce hours, let’s be honest, because we weren’t allowed to have folks coming into the building, but what we were doing this is very systematically rotating shifts.”
Nethercut said they did this to ensure a “fair system for everyone to get hours.”
“We had a lot of folks that decided, ‘Oh, I am a single mom and I want to stay home with my kids for shelter-in-place because I don’t have a caretaker,’ so I said, ‘Hey, no problem, stay home and do what you need to do.’”
Nethercut said since reopening Z’Tejas on Friday business has been steady, and the restaurant is now looking to hire extra help.
At Sikara & Co, a jewelry shop part of the 2nd Street District, they plan to slowly bring back workers.
The team is small, just six of them. At present, only the company’s founder, Mousumi Shaw, is inside the shop working by appointment. Shaw has some of her staff working from home — helping with online sales. She plans to bring two employees back into the shop by the end of this week.
“On the weekend we would definitely be double staffed, during the week there were typically two people here as well,” Shaw said about the business before the pandemic. “I think we will be testing it out and just seeing what the traffic is like. I’m expecting people to take their time coming out, and jewelry is a sparkle in people’s lives but it’s not groceries necessarily.”
Shaw said she doesn’t believe she’ll have her full team back in the shop until this fall.
These are changes are something both businesses are trying to figure out as they move forward, and a big part of that depends on customer demand.
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