Welcome back to our AuSAE Member Chat Series – Half an Hour of Power. This week we are delighted to have sat down with AuSAE member, Donna South, National Manager Membership & Marketing, Weld Australia.
In a short 30 minute interview we discussed four key questions with Donna to reflect on the last four months and look forward to the future post this crisis.
What do the next 6 months look like for your association and your members
Anyone who tells you they know what the next 6 months is going to look like is lying. I think it’s safe to say we are all in a state of uncertainty and trying to plan and lead in this environment is extremely challenging.
In saying this since the onset of this crisis I have been pleasantly surprised by the impact and reaction from both our members and internally within our own organisation. From a member perspective the news isn’t all bad, we have a broad and diverse membership which means the impacts are felt differently across all levels of our membership. Some of our members particularly at the SME level are experiencing an upward trend, harnessing the opportunities of new business from clients who would normally go overseas and are now coming back locally.
As an association the next 6 months will be challenging but it is full of opportunity. This crisis has forced us to push the reset button – reminding us why we are here, what we need to do and how we need to do it. Our members have never needed us more and in the next 6 months we will continue to increase member value through personal touch points, check in calls, and find new ways to communicate with members to ensure we understand what their challenges and opportunities are going to be moving forward.
Areas of concern
The main thing on my mind as I look forward and begin planning for 2021 is the uncertainty. The uncertainty not just about the pandemic but the economic impact and the flow on effects as we move forward. There is no guidebook for this, and as I constantly say to my team, we’re building the ship as we’re sailing it. I think once we all accept this level of uncertainty in our operations, we can start to look at the risks we can control and plan around this as a starting point.
Like all associations we’re exploring changes to our member value proposition to meet the needs of our members now. I am conscious that we are changing and adapting our member benefits for a very specific moment in time. This won’t be around forever so the changes we have implemented will either stop or continue and I want to ensure we are forward planning for this from a time, resource and investment perspective.
Of course, another area of concern is the ongoing impact on our members. I have spent every day on the phone conducting welfare calls to our member base and I’m hearing that members are okay for X amount of time as long as things don’t shift and change too dramatically. However, not one member I have spoken to has said ‘I will be okay indefinitely’.
Areas of opportunity
I am a big believer in never wasting a good crisis. The opportunities and the rate at which these have unfolded would never have been possible normally. For example, we have been working on transitioning our products and training into an online environment for a number of years, and meeting resistance from our authorising body in Europe. Since the pandemic this has changed and the flexibility is now on the table to offer our training modules online for members. We have launched two of our most popular courses online and have sold out of every session. The success, uptake and feedback from members has been incredible.
As an association we are able to go back to grass roots, we have been given the opportunity to stop, breathe and assess our role as an association and what we can do for members now and into the future. We are all guilty of getting caught up in the day to day activities and rolling out programs and events year on year. But we’re all in a position now where we have to basically throw it all out and start again, keeping our members front of mind in this next stage.
Since the start of this crisis, Australians have stepped up to support local, whether this be ordering coffee from your local café, eating at a local restaurant or purchasing Australian clothing. We are becoming supportive and educated buyers who want to understand where our products are made, and this has instilled a level of patriotism in all areas of the supply chain. We have a real opportunity here to advocate for our members and harness this consumer behaviour to keep manufacturing and fabrication on shore.
Celebrated moments in the last four months
One of our biggest moments to celebrate during the last few months was the speed and quality our team injected into the roll out of our online education courses. As mentioned above the uptake and feedback from members has been overwhelmingly positive and it’s a project we have waited years to see come to fruition.
We have been pleasantly surprised with the increased engagement with current members as well as the number of new members we have welcomed since the world turned upside down. The team has worked tirelessly to increase communication and ensure we are opening the door to new members with a broad range of topics that effect our sector.
I am also very proud of how the entire organisation embraced and successfully adapted to working from home. Everyone has welcomed this change, remained flexible and adapted to their new environments.
