Human Resource HR professionals have outlined how companies in Nigeria can boost productivity in the era of remote work.
This comes after the Covid-19 pandemic and high inflationary pressures have pushed companies to embrace remote work.
Speaking at a webinar themed ‘New Trends in the World of Work: Shaping the future of work’ on Tuesday, Rabi Adetoro, head of human resources at Momo Payment Service Bank, said employers must first eliminate the bias that exists regarding remote work.
“The most common one is the proximity bias, where many managers believe that if people are not in the workplace, they are not working,” she said.
She said what is most important are the outcomes, not outputs. “In other words, the outputs are the presentees in the office, but the outcomes are the goals set for them.”
She added employers can eliminate those biases by training line managers to set clear and smart goals and evaluate those goals at more regular intervals and not wait for long periods. “Once we have these working together, organisations’ productivity will improve.”
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Taiwo Adeshina, partner at Jackson, Etti & Edu, a Lagos-based commercial law firm, said employers must have a policy document that clearly states how people would work at home.
“It will help how the workstation should look without you physically intruding on their privacy. If anything happens and it is not shown or found that the employee did not follow those rules in the document, you can be exonerated from such liability,” he said.
Remote working is not a new concept, and there has been some clamour for flexible work. Still, the pandemic forced many local and international companies to embrace it. However, in 2021, some companies swiftly turned back to adopt the traditional 9-5 work schedule, while others still maintain remote work.
Some of the advantages for employees are that it helps in saving extra expenses, reduces physical stress, excludes commute time, and provides more flexibility. For employers, it improves productivity, broader spectrum of recruitment, higher staff retention and reduced costs.
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According to an article by the Brookings Institute, companies can legally use keylogger software on business computers, deploy video surveillance cameras, monitor worker attentiveness and track physical movements through geolocation software.
Others include compiling lists of visited websites and applications, monitoring emails, social media posts, and collaboration tools, and compiling productivity data on how workers spend their time and how long it takes them to finish particular tasks.
“The future of work is satellite workstations where the employer can remove the employee from his or her home and place the person at the neighbourhood office,” Justice Ogbuanya, a judge of the National Industrial Court of Nigeria, said.
