An interesting article from Accenture’s Now-Next portal highlights five new ‘human truths’ that they believe experiences will need to address in our changed world.

From their perspective, our new risk averse, virtual working, health conscious, home centred, and authority-respecting selves will continue in some form post pandemic.

Their five ‘truths’ are:

1. The Cost of Confidence. We’re now far more risk averse, therefore building trust through every channel becomes critical. As it says, justifiable optimism will sell well and the nature of what ‘premium’ means will change.

2. The Virtual Century. The enforced shift to ‘virtual’ everything (working, learning, socialising etc) will stay with us. Success depends on taking advantage of the creative opportunities.

3. Every Business is a Health Business. Our health consciousness will remain post pandemic. A new health ecosystem will develop and all businesses will need to work out how they ‘plug into’ it.

4. Cocooning. The home will continue to be the centre of our lives resulting in a rise in home spending and opportunities for businesses that recognise this.

5. The Reinvention of Authority. After many years of erosion, top-down control will be ‘back in fashion’ (certainly for governments that get their response broadly right), leading to greater acceptance of authority and the power of collective behaviour.

From our perspective, much of this rings true – but the devil will be in the detail, especially on how these various new behaviours will interact. For instance, we expect some kind of ‘bounce’ when lockdown ends, but will our new risk aversion temper our desire for anything involving close proximity (such as a flight and hotel in the sun)? Or will our increasing respect for authority mean as soon as Government says it’s ok to travel, we’ll be off like a shot?

Let’s keep watching. Behaviour spotting and, more importantly, identifying the real ongoing behavioural change behind the changes that have been forced on us, is something we should all be keeping an eye out for as we gradually come out of lockdown.

Let us know what you’re seeing.

Waymarker: We’re now more health conscious, risk averse, home-centred, authority respecting and happy to interact virtually, and this will have major repercussions for our post-Covid world.