After Covid-19 hit the country and Seward County hard, businesses had to adapt to see continued success despite a pandemic.
Even with 2022 seeing fewer Covid precautions, businesses are continuing to see new trends and carry on trends started during the pandemic.
Jonathan Jank, president and CEO of the Seward County Chamber and Partnership Development, said Seward County businesses have seen quite a few different trends since Covid hit.
“First and foremost, I would say creativity has been a big trend we’ve seen,” he said. “Businesses had to become even more creative and innovative in how they serve their customers. For example, even though it wasn’t a brand new concept, curbside pickup became integrated into many more businesses.”
That led to changes in expectations. Customers started to expect different things from businesses.
“Behaviors begin to shift with these expectations,” Jank said.
Jank said some businesses have changed their services or products. Many businesses have changed based on the specific needs of their customers.
“For example, there has been a significant increase in online shopping around the country,” Jank said. “Online purchases for retail specifically are right around 20% of all purchases. So that continues to be where one of the main focuses are, and if you aren’t up on that, you’re potentially missing out on 20% of your market.”
Jank said businesses have done other creative things to deal with the pandemic like delivery and finding different times to be open.
Although the pandemic was a hard time for many businesses in Seward, a lot were able to make it through.
Jank said that businesses in Seward County are resilient.
“We are very fortunate with the number of businesses that were able to work through the challenges of the pandemic,” he said. “Although we did have some closures, and we are very sad to see them go, we have seen those empty places fill up from a growth opportunity standpoint.”
Although most of the trends have been relatively positive, some have been more negative.
Jank said some of the challenges businesses have faced recently are because of staffing.
“We are in an unprecedented time of what we call the talent wars in our industry,” Jank said. “There’s been a cultural shift for workers having almost an unprecedented ability to find employment. There are more jobs available than there are people looking for jobs in the state of Nebraska right now.
Jank said Seward County is in a similar predicament.
“Employers are having to become creative with how they welcome their employees to their companies and businesses,” he said. “They need to show what sets them apart from other businesses and show why people would want to work for their business.”
Another thing hurting the number of employees is the number of people retiring. Jank said the country is going through a wide retirement phase.
“We use the term ‘Silver Tsunami’ which is referring to the number of Baby Boomers that are retiring,” he said. “We have an estimation that 10,000 Baby Boomers are retiring a day for the next 10 to 15 years. Covid actually sped that up to about five years in advance, so we are seeing more of it now.”
Businesses are also seeing low numbers of women in the workforce. Jank said this is because daycares can be un-affordable to some.
“This is a very unique issue that our chamber is starting to work on,” he said. “These are very unique challenges that will take specific solutions to them and we’re dedicated to working on them. We’ve identified them as a need and we’re starting to acknowledge that this is where we need to be from an effort standpoint.”
Another issue that has come with Covid is increased prices. Jank said Seward County and the country have seen a lot of these increases lately.
“Inflation and supply chain issues are really leading to some of the price increases that we’re having to deal with, and unfortunately, the pandemic really had a big impact on that,” he said. “We have a lot of industries that are trying to catch up.”
With the many up and down trends happening in the “after Covid business world,” one thing that excites Jank is the amount of local support that he has seen recently for Seward businesses.
“I’ve talked with a number of retail businesses that have said that their business is up significantly, which is great,” he said. “I really do think there’s a sense of appreciation from customers knowing that we are very fortunate to have these businesses. We want to make sure that we support local and make sure that they stay around for the future.”
