Category: Coronavirus

Will the COVID-19 Pandemic Upend the Way We Do Business…Forever?

Brad

It’s 2:15pm, and you’ve just taken a quick break from work to check your phone. You open the social media folder in your iPhone, where you have applications like Twitter, FaceBook, LinkedIn, and Instagram. You open Twitter to check the feed for any important pieces of news you might have missed. The first tweet you see is something that someone you follow has retweeted, and instead of getting caught up on current events, you spend the next 30 minutes reading through the battleground taking place in the comments.

No, you’re wrong. I hate you.

That’s the takeaway you get from accidentally sinking so much time trying to figure out why unknown people from all over the country – even the world – are fighting to the virtual death over a fairly innocent tweet expressing a rather uncontroversial opinion or introducing a novel concept.

Now, imagine just two years into the future, and the overwhelming majority of corporate jobs are performed remotely. All communication takes place over company instant messaging platforms, meetings are performed over Zoom and the face-to-face interaction that has come to dominate the business world is effectively non-existent. What impact will that have on how we do business?

Social media, despite the demonstrable benefits that it brings, has also created quite the divide…will the same happen in the business world? What other surprising effects might there be?

Of course, no one knows what the future will look like in two years, but it certainly isn’t an out-of-this-world prediction that the move to online work will have a significant effect on how we interact. Humans are built to be communicative. We do that at our best when we are able to have conversations with one another, and really think about and digest what the other person is saying. The internet and social media have made communication easier, faster, and ubiquitous. There is no doubt…the effects have largely been borne out. The era of social media began more than a decade ago, and we now have years of history to examine some of the key effects. While some fields – most noticeably the technology industry – have had a remote-work capability for years, it was uncommon before COVID-19 for the broader economy.

Here are some of the key things to look for as we get deeper into this new decade, and business becomes less face-to-face.

Business from Afar

  • Employees often cite company culture as one of the biggest factors in determining where to work, and whether to stay. How will company culture – and by extension, employee satisfaction – be affected by little-to-no personal interaction? If employees become unsatisfied and turnover increases, what impact will that have on the viability of the company, and perhaps even entire industries?
  • Much has been said and written about when it comes to the rise of technology and its potential negative impact on future job creation. While a great number of jobs have been and will continue to be created as a result of technological advancement, the jury is out on whether there will be more or less overall jobs in the long-term. Will online work help us or hurt us?
  • If you can work anywhere in the world, why would you live where you live? I understand this question reads negatively, but really, do you need to or even want to be where you are if you are no longer required to be physically present somewhere? And if not, where would you move and how would you live? I’m sure this is a question that someone working in the real estate industry would love to have answered and is without a doubt a question they are already beginning to explore.

However, it isn’t just about real estate. Where people live is also where they spend money, and most importantly, where they live determines the way in which they spend money. For example, someone living in Florida spends money in service-oriented establishments (Disney, beach bars and restaurants etc.), whereas someone in Utah likely spends money on skiing and other forms of outdoor recreation.

In closing, the world will be different. That much we know. The rest is anyone’s guess, but it might just pay off to be thinking ahead.

The Coronavirus Experiment

Brad

Reflection is often thought of as a process that begins at the end of an event or series of events. It is, however, a useful mechanism to leverage during a moment of pause – whether that pause be naturally occurring or self-initiated. My reflection as of late, has been a mixture of both.

My new day consists of the following: I wake up, make some coffee, eat a little breakfast, and turn on my computer at the makeshift workspace I created in the living room – a space that prominently features an HP monitor that sits atop multiple textbooks to prevent my neck from craning all day. A half-full bottle of Purell is the primary fixture on my desk. For seating, I use a beach chair…the comfortable option in the house. Bloomberg is streaming on the TV, and it provides market information and background noise. At around 11 or 12, I take the bicycle for a 5-mile ride for exercise. The Coronavirus Task Force Briefing comes on around 5:30 or 6, which is followed up with a run and a workout later in the evening, and some reading interspersed throughout. That is about it. Nowhere I need to go…nowhere I need to be. My car sat so long that the tank hadn’t been filled in several weeks, and the engine barely started when it was my turn to drive for groceries.  

With limited mobility and a simplified lifestyle, my propensity to ponder and reflect has taken the driver seat. Here are some of the observations that surfaced:

Power of choice has increased – while not a profound discovery, it’s the abundantly obvious one. Routines are typically occupied by work or school – the obligations — with the remaining hours punctuated by the distraction du jour…watching TV, virtual argumentation (hello Twitter), or video games. In the coronavirus era, the places we always needed to be have been removed from the equation, leaving us with greater power of choice. For those performing work or school functions online, you must still perform, but there is new optionality as to when and how you will do so. This leads to my next observation, which is…

People are taking two routes with their time– one in which time is allocated in greater quantity to virtual distraction; and the more productive route, where high achievers focus their time efficiently, and are likely to accomplish personal and professional goals at a comparatively higher rate. Now, for those with children at home or who happen to be members of essential services performing their duty during this crisis (thank you), the circumstances are different; however, the general attitude and subsequent actions that they choose to take, will fall into one of the two buckets.

The coronavirus schools of thought – two opposing, vocal camps of people have emerged during the shutdown: one group that is inclined to feel we moved too quickly or too broadly to halt activity and economic production, thereby impacting the livelihoods of citizens in a significant, yet different way than the virus itself; and the other that believes the science community knows how we should respond during the crisis, and whose recommendations are delivered with a high degree of problem-mitigating accuracy.

Only in time will certain answers be revealed. Each camp is likely to discover that any response to the crisis would not be without costly trade-offs and missteps, and that there is not one right way of handling the situation.

Patriotism Remains – despite the differences, we have largely come together as a people. Politicians have thus far managed to move swiftly and definitively in the public’s interest with a high level of collective buy-in from the populace, and American industry has reengineered itself for the greater good, producing materials of need in hospitals and healthcare facilities.

The public health and economic experiment unfolding before us will be slow to yield final results. The impact to the economy, to livelihood, and to the health of many, has been and will continue to be substantial.