Phillips Consulting Limited, a foremost business and management consulting firm in Africa in collaboration with Nigerian-South African Chamber of Commerce, (NSACC) and other experts have warned organisations in Africa to begin to look beyond brick and mortar offices as a workplace because COVID-19 pandemic has altered the future of work.
Phillips Consulting, NSACC and other relevant organisations shared some practical experiences and proposed viable solutions as it will align with the new future of work and workplace post pandemic at the webinar held recently in Lagos.
Experts agreed that “The “post-pandemic” world of work will continue to evolve. With no clear answers in sight, organisations will continue to search for best-fit solutions to navigate the uncertainty around us. There is no doubt that this will have an impact on our lives.”
Rob Taiwo, Managing Director of Phillip consulting said “The truth is there is no silver bullet, the future is fluid, often the best strategy is to simply engage. Make your mistakes, forgive yourself quickly and move forward. One thing is clear from this conversation, the wrong thing to do is bury your head in the sand and hope this all blows over. In Africa, there will be winners and losers. The winners will most likely be those organisations that choose exploration over exploitation and innovation over business as usual.”
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In his view, Taiwo said, “From people to culture and how we shape the physical communities in which we work, from training to digital learning and how we use technology to transform our business models, all aspects of the organisation are under the microscope and nothing is off limits”.
“It is also important to recalibrate our role as employees, 44% of the people on this call are probably working harder than they did before the pandemic. This begs the questions, how best can we interact with the modern organisation…we must retool, we must reskill, we must recommit and we must remain forever curious,” Taiwo said.
Meanwhile, Remi Dada, CEO of Spacefinish stated that “A good enabling work environment will have the employee still come to the office or getting the work done irrespectively of location. The solution for The Future of Work has to be localised”.-
According to Joshua Ademuwagun, Head of Advisory- People Transformation, pcl. “People can neither stop nor fight the future of work. Organisations should position themselves to ride the wave of change by answering the questions about why, by whom, when, and how we will do work in the future.”
Speaking on effect of technology in new future of work, Tosin Okojie, VP Financial Planning and Analysis of Andela, revealed that technology is now the trusted intermediary between employer and employee, creating a network effect that has scaled the gig economy and, in the process, made organisations more agile.
Furthermore, Babajide Duroshola, General Manager of M-Kopa reminded everyone that the future of work is borderless, even for the Nigerian market. “We no longer need to have people confined to working in a specific geographical location. With COVID-19 pushing globalisation and allowing for accessible communication and dissemination of information, employees no longer need to be in the same country or time zone.”
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