Tennis Australia’s people director: ‘It’s been a crazy year’

As Ash Barty, Serena Williams, Roger Federer and the world’s other elite tennis players converged on Melbourne in January for the Australian Open the Grand Slam tournament faced a potential disruptive threat.

Haze from the bushfires ravaging the nation posed air quality risks.

Tennis Australia closely monitored the air, the Australian Open went on and Serbia’s Novak Djokovic and America’s Sofia Kenin were crowned champions.

With the 2021 Australian Open scheduled to go ahead in January Tennis Australia faces a new and monumental challenge: the COVID-19 pandemic.

“We thought smoke haze would be the craziest thing we would have to deal with in 2020,” Scott Glover, Tennis Australia’s director of people and culture, told HRD.

“Less than two months later we were dealing with the pandemic.

“It has been a crazy year.”

Melbourne, of course, is Australia’s pandemic epicentre with the city’s residents enduring lockdowns.

TA is dealing with the difficulties of planning for the 2021 tournament without knowing what restrictions will be placed on the population and how severe Melbourne’s COVID-19 infection rate will be.

TA is also taking great care to ensure its 470 employees, who have been working from home since March, and 200 others across member associations were OK.

“Right now one of the biggest concerns for our Melbourne team is social isolation,” Glover said.

“The longevity of that remote work is something that is absolutely a challenge and giving people that sense of connectiveness.”

TA has been conducting virtual town halls, surveys, set up COVID leave, is sending support packages and gifts and managers have been checking in with employees on a personal, rather than just work-related, level.

A new human resources platform, Workday, was also implemented in May.

“This was a huge change for our business and I can’t imagine going through the pandemic without Workday,” he said.

“The insights we have from our workforce, and then to be able to make informed decisions, has been fantastic.”

TA also had great success with its health and wellbeing program, Serving Your Health, and reward and recognition program, Serving Your Success.

Planning for the Australian Open and other Australian lead-up tournaments continues.

Players flying in from around the world will likely quarantine in “biosecure bubbles”. That will allow the players to practice and train ahead of tournaments.

“We have five events happening in five different states in the lead-in and then the Australian Open in Melbourne,” Glover said.

“So, we have six locations and working with government, both federal and state, around border security and the quarantining and hub requirements.”

TA has five potential scenarios for the Australian Open. The hope is the tournament will go on like previous years without crowd restrictions. If not, TA is prepared to reduce crowds to 50 or 25 per cent of capacity to allow for social distancing. There is also the option to have a “broadcast only event” with no crowds. TA is open to changing the date of the tournament. There is also the option of cancelling.

TA usually has a 10,000-strong workforce for the Australian Open, including casual employees.

“We normally advertise the roles in July, but we delayed that and only went to market in September,” he said.

They also have to institute protocols and potential bubble options for ball boys and girls and others who will be in close contact with players.

“Those that are working closely with the players – ball kids, officials, all of our player services teams – the protocols for those particular people are going to be quite strict,” Glover said.

“We are hopeful they will not have to be in a bubble as such, but there is a lot to be determined.”