DECEMBER 2023

ECONOMICS & ENTERPRISE
Post-COVID Redux
Businesses ‘muscle through’ lasting pandemic changes
BY PAUL NATINSKY
Metro Detroit employers felt
the ground shift beneath
them during the height of the
COVID pandemic in 2021-2022. Precautionary
measures intended to limit the
spread of COVID-19 had the devastating
unintended effect of slowing to a
trickle the revenue streams of “in-person”
businesses such as restaurants,
concert venues and banquet halls.
Simultaneously, office-based enterprises
saw the birth of a new culture
and attitude toward work. Characterized
by the necessity to work at
home—away from other people and
the danger of infection—employees
became accustomed to taking their
meetings over video conferencing connections
such as Zoom.
As we head toward the end of 2023,
a largely vaccinated population has returned
to work, to restaurants, to concerts
and ball games. But in a very different
way than many expected. Work
and recreational culture have changed
in ways that seem enduring if not irreversible.
We spoke to a wide sample of Detroit-area
businesspeople in the summers
of 2020 and 2021—during the
height of the pandemic. This month,
we checked back with some of these
sources to find out how their businesses
are faring post-pandemic and to assess
the changes COVID left behind.
“The hangover is still there,” says
Jason Najor, who owns several Detroitarea
businesses including several Beyond
Juice restaurants, a cell-phone
repair and reconditioning business
and a banquet hall. He says it is difficult
to lure employees back to work in
the post-COVID environment.
Najor attributes much of the reluctant
return to work to the largesse provided
by emergency COVID funding,
which included generous and lengthy
unemployment benefits. He says there is
still a small amount of government money
to be had, and that is fueling some of
the worker shortage. But employment
under pandemic conditions unearthed
new ways of looking at work…and life.
Mike Sarafa Jason Najor Ziyad Hermiz
The new normal is getting a better
work-life balance, said Najor. There is
no returning to what was normal before
the pandemic. The flexibility of
working from the house a couple of
days a week is “way too hard to take
back.”
“I think employees’ attitudes have
shifted sharply with respect to worklife
balance and home-work balance in
terms of where they are physically,” said
Mike Sarafa, who owns an equity stake
in 345 Supercuts value hair salons.
Sarafa operates a small office to
manage his business interests, and
that workplace is seeing the same
cultural changes experienced in traditional
offices elsewhere. Workers in office
settings have become accustomed
to working from home in casual attire,
with no commute and the flexibility
of picking their kids up from school.
The slowing of the pandemic has not
quelled the desire for this new, balanced
way of working.
Ziyad Hermiz is a litigator at Varnum
LLP. He says minor legal proceedings are
made easier by retaining video conferencing
adopted during the pandemic,
and many are still conducted remotely.
But, he says, many hearings and trials
are moving away from the virtual courtroom
back into the actual one.
Hermiz says it makes sense to
avoid taking the time to drive to minor
proceedings, which can waste half a
day. But he prefers conducting depositions
and trials live. As a litigator, he is
accustomed to live exchanges.
Outside of office settings, employers
face different challenges. Supercuts
employs a large on-premise workforce,
stylists have to be at the stores
to do their job. But the shift to a more
balanced work-life culture has not left
them behind.
Supercuts stores do a huge portion
of their weekly business on weekends,
and another chunk during evening
hours. Sarafa says that while the very
tight restrictions in force during the
height of COVID are largely gone, his
stores have difficulty getting enough
employees to staff Sundays or work
past 5 p.m. during the week.
In addition to being short employees—Sarafa
says he could fill 200 stylist
positions immediately and Najor
says his Beyond Juice businesses are
often run by skeleton crews—they
cost more. Inflation has settled down,
bringing some relief, but wages that
bulged during the pandemic have remained
at escalated levels.
In this environment, businesses
find it hard to expand. In addition to
a shortage of workers, high labor costs
and the lingering effects of an inflation
surge, demand for some services has
not rebounded to pre-pandemic levels.
Office-adjacent businesses such as
lunch spots, convenience stores and
gas stations are not used as frequently
as they were when the bulk of the
workforce went to the office.
The pandemic ushered in another
enduring change. Interpersonal communication
has deteriorated.
“Communication skills are almost
gone. Politeness is almost gone. People
have no patience,” said Najor. He
said it took 100 years of development
since the industrial revolution to build
this economy. “It’s amazing how far
that’s regressed in one or two years of
shutdown.”
“We’re real old school family businesses.
We come from the grocery
industry, where customer service is
number one. We come from the hospitality
industry, where customer service
is number one,” said Najor.
But, he said, growth in the current
environment will cause the customerfocus
his family brings to its businesses
to fade. He says “you can’t be in two
places at the same time,” and without
a family member always on hand to direct
training, the strong customer service
ethos will become diluted.
The pandemic’s worst effects on
business may be receding, but a host
of unexpected consequences will challenge
the Detroit area’s businesses for
some time.
As Sarafa says: “It’s a battle, but
we just try to muscle through it day in
and day out.”
30 CHALDEAN NEWS DECEMBER 2023