April 13, 2020Edition

For the past 30 years, Richard Carr has helped his clients, many of whom are business owners, prepare for and weather financial storms. As the coronavirus pandemic upends the economy, Carr and his team at Carr Financial Group Corp. in Worcester are figuring out what the future will look like.

As businesses desperately need this funding to stay afloat in the coronavirus crisis, Congress must work together to bolster the program, as $349 billion clearly will not be enough.

A couple of weeks ago, the Boys & Girls Club of Worcester, as well as other licensed child care centers, had to make perhaps one of the biggest-ever decisions affecting our industry: Do we close our doors due to Gov. Charlie Baker’s order or apply through the state to become an emergency childcare site?

Meetings are certainly looking different in these days of social distancing. Zoom and other online meetings, or conference calls, are popular ways for businesspeople to gather when they can’t actually gather. But there are safeguards and polite practices to keep in mind when hosting an audio or video conference call.

Companies like Worcester Fitness, Centage Corp., Anna Maria College and Clinton Savings Bank all have had recent hires and promotions.

It’s easy to look at everyone in the same industry as you as your enemy, but it’s incredibly short-sighted.

10) Start with a plan. Companies of all shapes and sizes should draft a distinct crisis response plan. Existing disaster recovery plans or business continuity plans might not suffice.

Essential manufacturing includes a wide spectrum of workers, ranging from those who produce medical supplies to those who support the agricultural market, and everything in between.

The Gov. Charlie Baker Administration has leaned on the state’s manufacturers, creating the Manufacturing Emergency Response Team under the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative to coordinate manufacturers’ move toward pandemic-related materials.

College leaders in Central Massachusetts are grappling with an upturned admissions period and wondering what fall enrollment will look like if students decide they don’t want to travel far for school, or even whether a fall semester would be able to take place on campus anyway.

The pandemic has complicated things for Behavioral health providers in their patients in two major ways: anxiety of getting the virus and depression from being stuck often alone indoors has increased risks for patients, while efforts to keep people generally away from one another has made group therapy sessions almost impractical.

Dr. Eric Dickson didn’t pull any punches during our interview on April 3 for WBJ’s podcast. The president and CEO of UMass Memorial Health Care said unless something is done to help fix the Central Massachusetts’ hospital system’s finances, the region’s only level 1 trauma center won’t be around for the next pandemic.

For banks certified as U.S. Small Business Administration lenders, last Friday was a rush of activity for an industry more used to thoughtful and methodical transactions. The planning was still there, but no spare time once the SBA began accepting applications for the $349-billion federal relief program.

Everyone is dealing, to varying degrees of success, with a new background anxiousness due to the social distancing and other restraints.

With events canceled across the state and most hospitality businesses considered non-essential, the Central Massachusetts tourism industry is anticipating major losses due to the efforts to stem the coronavirus pandemic.