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.

COVID-19 PANDEMIC & THE MANY LESSONS TO BE LEARNED...(1)

Many people have said, and I agree for the most part, that the world will, as a matter of necessity make adjustments to the way many things are done post-Covid-19. While people desperately long to get their lives back post-Covid-19, those lives would have been greatly impacted in some ways by this pandemic. There is no doubt that for many, both individuals and corporate bodies, the return will be to a new normal. The fact that as at today, the 10th of June 2020, more than 7.26 million infections have been recorded and over 411,879 people have died across 188 countries and regions (according to data monitored by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering [CCSE] at Johns Hopkins University), and the near global restrictions of movement of people means that Covid-19 has wrought a lot of negatives. However, much as the pandemic has wreaked a lot of havocs globally, there are some positive changes that are already being made and will still need to be made in many countries of the world. The purpose of this article is to look at possible lessons to be learned and positive resultant changes that should be made both across the world and in Nigeria in the wake of this pandemic and its effects. Because there are several aspects to consider, this article will run in a few series.

CHINA AS THE WORLD FACTORY 

Long before Covid-19 started wrecking havoc in other countries of the world, its economic impact was already being felt in many countries chiefly because virtually everything that one can think of, are being either manufactured or assembled in China. The Western countries in pursuit of the maximum profit they can possibly make, decided the best thing was to tap into the huge population that China has, to get cheap labour and in so doing, outsourced virtually everything to China. This is the reason why when China started sneezing and coughing literally, the whole world started shivering with the cold of a slow in production of goods. It is time this trend is examined and tweaked to focus a bit less on just profit making and more on each country going back to either resuscitating or expanding its manufacturing capacity locally. The way many companies in the wake of scarcity of medical equipments particularly PPEs, redirected their focus towards local manufacture of this medical supplies, is a positive.

Beyond the capitalists’ actions which caused the world to rely almost entirely on China for most goods, the pandemic’s travel to other countries from China caused many countries to place restrictions on pharmaceutical goods and food supplies. The reason for the restrictions is not farfetched; each country wanted to be sure it would have enough supplies to meet its own needs. A country like Nigeria thus has to seriously work on producing many of tis needs for its large population. We have to go from a consuming country to a manufacturing country. On this, the CBN’s determination to push the country into local production of most the goods consumed in the country is a step in the right direction. 

Also, fact that Nigeria, while not having China’s population, is the most populous Black Country in the world with an estimated population of about 200 million people at least 65% of whom have been said to be below 35 years old should even be more of an incentive for us because what that means is that we have a very active population, and engaging that population productively will not only grow our economy, it will massively reduce our very high unemployment rate, reduce, poverty level and our over-independence on imported goods while also reducing crimes due to more people having opportunities to earn honest living.

                            Unemployment rate as at Q3 of 2018. Source: NBS

SOCIAL INTERACTIONS

It was common pre-Covid-19 for people to assume that physical interactions reduced drastically with the advent of smartphones because many people appeared to prefer chatting than talking even when in physical proximity to each other. The meme of a child wondering whether he was downloaded by his parents who were always bent over their phones, I believe, is a very popular one and aptly describes how smart phones have changed human interactions. 

                                             Source of images: Pinterest

However, nothing contradicts our seeming preference for interaction behind the comfort of our phones more sharply than the speed with which this virus traveled, carried and transferred by humans, from the city of Wuhan in the Hubei Province of China to most of the countries of the world. The lockdown has more so, shown very clearly that man truly is a social animal and even when virtual contacts seemed to be taking over, and sometimes, even when we will rather chat when we are in the same place instead of talk face to face, physical interactions have proved very important. I suspect that if only for a while, as the lockdown is being eased and after it eventually ends everywhere, we shall learn to treasure more, the friendship and interactions of the people in our lives. And perhaps, in countries in which so many died because of the selfishness and irresponsibility of a few, people would have learned to be a little less selfish and will be more open to acting in favour of the greater good.