Subscriber Only

Foreign-born immigrants have long driven the Worcester area’s population growth – and given diversity to its restaurants, shops, schools and workplaces – but a precipitous drop in international arrivals in 2019 could portend challenges to come.

With a pandemic affecting those clients who may be more susceptible to coronavirus and everyone else, community health centers – like their acute-care hospital siblings – have been thrown into disarray.

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.

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.