What I’m learning from the Covid-19 pandemic is that the definition of productivity used in the workplace over the last few decades misses the point. Professional productivity should be measured in what is produced, not how much time is spent producing it.
In fact, looking at the remote work phenomenon we have seen after the last few months, the only real surprise is that businesses didn’t shift to this model sooner.
What was it that stopped us from working from home? Why did it take a global pandemic for companies to realise that, their employees can be productive without constant supervision?
I imagine that in the next few months and years, the relationship
employees will have with their companies will change dramatically. At
least, that is what I am hoping for. In South Africa it may become
indefensible for many companies to expect their employees
to spend a few hours each day commuting to an office, instead of
providing employees with the IT equipment and training needed to remain
productive at home.
A move in this direction will also allow for employees to maintain a
better work life balance. Coming into the office only a few times a week
will free up time employees can use assisting their children with
homework, cooking, or pursuing a hobby. Where’s the
harm in that?
But before any of this can happen society at large needs to ease back
into a sense of normalcy, with a phased approach being taken in South
Africa to reopen the economy.
Business owners around the country are asking what will the work
landscape look like in the near future? And as citizens of South Africa,
many of us parents, what about our children, what will their schooling
looking? These are things that must be considered
as we shift from lockdown to recovery mode.
At Aruba, we have already begun talking to customers and community
leaders about these challenges. I wanted to share some of my thoughts on
a few things to consider as we emerge from this global disruption.
Remote work becomes the new standard
As mentioned above, remote working looks set to become the new normal in
the post-pandemic work landscape. There are multiple benefits to this,
but a crucial one is that limiting the exposure of your workforce is
likely to become a necessary reality for the
near future, so that productivity levels are not compromised by having
large pockets of employees off sick at the same time. It will also give
your employees more freedom to structure their time in a way that works
for them, leading to improved work happiness
and possibly less staff bleed.
As the home becomes the primary location for where mission-critical work
gets done, organisations will have to adapt their IT postures to
account for this new reality. As an organisations’ connection points
become distributed across households and networks,
new concerns around security, visibility and user experiences will
arise, so make sure you are prepared to meet these.
Employees should also be set-up with the right tools to work remotely.
Different businesses will have different requirements for employees, but
laptop and a set of cloud enabled or web-based applications is a good
start. In South Africa, where many households
don’t have access to the internet, providing internet dongles and data
allowances is crucial.
Many of Aruba’s customers have chosen to provide the computing
environment as well as a secure networking environment at home, so
employees get the same work experiences as they do at their workplaces.
This reduces the need to VPN into your work network, and
requires only that the employee turn on their device and start using it,
giving your IT team visibility into the environment to troubleshoot,
maintain, and monitor security compliance.
Education can show us the way forward
Education in South Africa is always a hot-button issue, with challenges
arising from low numbers of qualified teachers, to the disparity of
infrastructure between wealthy schools and those in impoverished areas.
But one thing is certain, access to quality education
remains crucial for South Africa’s future.
What I have heard from conversations with customers in the education
space is that their challenges are similar to those of enterprise
business customers: How do we bring students back to physical locations
while maintaining social distancing? How do we engage
students when online learning stretches into an extended timeframe? And
what are the resulting implications in how educators and planners
prepare their education and technology plans to support these learning
models?
There are no simple answers to this, but I believe that the advances,
innovations, and decisions made in the education space will lead the way
for businesses in the future. Afterall, students who now spend a
majority of their time learning from home will have
little trouble transitioning to remote work once they enter professional
life.
Aruba will continue to support our education customers and partners as
they navigate these challenging times. We’re here to help them configure
their network infrastructure to get the most from the collaboration
solutions they choose whether its Zoom, Teams,
or something else.
