By Mike Sunnucks | Rose Law Group Reporter
COVID-19, working from home and sheltering in place are all offering plenty of time for introspection.
That will impact careers, purchasing decisions and other consumers behavior as well as how businesses operate going forward.
Those latter factors will include who we decide to do business and bank with, said Michael Davidson, CEO of social entrepreneurial group Gen Next Inc.
“It’s going to infuse everything we do,” Davidson said during Rose Law Group’s New Economy (Virtual) Power Lunch on Friday.
“You start to really wonder what you believe. You start to wonder who your friends are,” Davidson said.
Davidson expects to see small businesses, entrepreneurs and others to look at shifting more toward local banks citing their better responsive to business customers applying for U.S. Small Business Administration grants and loans in the COVID-19 stimulus program.
Davidson also expects to see consumers look at how brands and businesses behaved during and coming out of the Coronavirus and will align their loyalties to the community minded.
“All that is going to be very values driven pivots,” he said during the Rose Law Group virtual forum.
He also said COVID-19’s unprecedented impacts on public health and the economy could spark a new focus on and a revival of philanthropy. Davidson also said voters will expect elected officials and candidates to be show more authenticity and understanding of real-world challenges and problems coming out of this.
The other side of the pandemic could foster changes in innovations from everything to online learning and working at home to agriculture, health care and other supply chains and how and where we travel.
Bill Nassikas, president and COO of Westroc Hotels and Resorts (which owns the Mountain Shadows and Sanctuary on Camelback resorts in Paradise Valley and Hotel Valley Ho in Scottsdale) said his company has already shifted its focus to also support the community and its workers.
Davidson said the economy and society will have a big focus on trust going forward including trust in employers and institutions.
Dr. Sonal Haerter, an internal medicine physician at St. Joseph’s Hospital and Medical Center told the Rose Law Group forum she is concerned about the pandemic and its fallout increasing anxiety, depression and sleep disorders.
Haerter said the public needs to have confidence both in how COVID-19 is being handled health wise as well as moving toward reopening the economy.
“The public confidence needs to be there,” she said.
