COVID-19 AND LESSONS TO BE LEARNED...(3)

WORK FROM HOME & VIRTUAL MEETINGS: I guess we are all familiar with the denouncement of office meetings by a sizable number of employees as a time waster and a hindrance to productivity at work. The social media is awash with memes on this. Beyond office meetings however, there are periodic meetings, seminars and conferences held by international organizations where participants have to fly in from different countries to attend. With this pandemic and the cancellation of flights plus the need for social (I prefer physical) distancing, we have seen the likes of International Monetary Fund (IMF), the UN Security Council, United Nations Human Rights Council and the G20 Health Ministers among others, holding virtual/online meetings which are no less productive than the ones which were in the past, held physically. Companies have also been holding shareholders’ meetings and AGMs online.  

Before the pandemic and the lockdown imposed to curb its spread shut most people in the world inside, employees in many organizations had been advocating to be allowed to work from home, and to be fair, some organizations had started trying it out on a limited basis to see whether productivity would remain the same or even see some improvements. According to Harvard Business Report, roughly about 5% of the workers in the US and Europe were working from home before the lockdown. With Covid-19 and the lockdown imposed in many countries in the world however, many companies have had no choice but to allow many of their staff to work from home and the number of workers who will be allowed to work from home will likely increase significantly post-Covid-19, whenever that is, since it appears Covid-19 will stick around for some time to come.

In cities where commuters spend hours in traffic to and from work each day, more companies might need to take more critical looks at the probable benefits of having their staff work more frequently from home.

The downsides of working from home in a country like Nigeria will of course revolve more around the mirage that stable supply of electricity really is in most areas, and good internet access that will be required for the work to be comfortably done. However, a balance can be found between health and loss of productive man hours that are daily experienced in traffic versus the facilities that will be required for work to be effectively done from home. Many are already saying work from home (WFH) is the future of work. Twitter in fact, recently announced that its employees can work from home on a permanent basis and not just till the end is seen of Covid-19. But while WFH waits to fully take off in the nearest future, there is no doubt that with the persistence of the pandemic, especially with some countries experiencing a second wave of infections upon the ease of lockdown, more employers will have to content themselves with the work being done (and hopefully not harass employees with messages in a bid to monitor the work being done) as opposed to insistence on the workers’ daily physical presence at work.

 

NIGERIAN  GOVERNMENT & ELECTRONIC GOVERNANCE: in the 5 days of partial lockdown in Lagos State before the Federal government imposed lockdown on Lagos, FCT and Ogun State, the Lagos State government had requested that members of the public refrain from going to the State Secretariat and any transaction needed to be done be carried out via telephone. The fact however is, precious few transactions with government offices can be carried out online. And over the phone, only the most basic of enquiries can mostly be made. I dare say, this is mostly true in other States of the federation as well as at the FCT.

Ensuring contact with members of the public has over the years and decades of Nigeria’s existence, mostly served the corrupt tendencies of government workers. If governments at all levels in the country should learn anything from this pandemic, definitely, one of the key lessons, and there are many, is the long overdue need, in the best interest of the government especially as regards revenue generation, to take as much of the governance as possible online. Phasing out physical interactions with government offices will not only substantially reduce corruption endemic in the civil service, the government will find its revenue generation greatly improved and expanded. This has become even more important with the pandemic drastically shrinking government’s income also from citizens’ inability to carry out normal business with the government. In the decision to put infrastructure in place for electronic governance, the government across all levels, have to put the economy and efficient service delivery at the forefront. Perhaps government would not be losing quite as much revenue as they presently are, if the government’s ease of doing business campaign had not been restricted almost, to only the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC). While the measures quickly put in place by the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration (NAFDAC) during the pandemic, for entrepreneurs to apply online for registration of products with it is commendable, much more still need to be done by other government agencies and departments both at State and local government levels across all sectors of the economy as much as practicable to enable citizens transact business with them online. Perhaps government would not be losing so much revenue if some form of electronic governance had been in place. As things stand, governments will continue to lose revenue on a massive scale until the economy fully reopens.