Technology to the rescue, if SA business will give it a chance
• As Covid-19 forces us to rethink the way we work, will telecommuting finally be embraced?
For about a decade I’ve been writing about the world’s readiness — or lack of it — for telecommuting, a trend that bubbles up regularly. Online conferencing hardware has got cheaper and better, and fibre is extending its reach in SA. It’s not just the quality of video conferencing; technology such as Slack (for communication and collaboration with teams) and Trello (for project management) can replace a lot of “face time”.
However, I haven’t seen mass uptake of this possibility. There are sections and sectors better placed for this, yes. As a freelancer who sells a service based on brain work (research, interviewing, writing), also known as a “knowledge worker”, I can work from home, or wherever my laptop is, and I don’t ask for permission to stay at home when sick.
This has worked because my boss — me — trusts me to get on with it. But a lot of traditional corporate managers don’t. Research from the University of California-Santa Barbara (UCSB) published in May 2019 found that workers present at work are still perceived as more productive and committed.
This is an issue encountered by many women in the workforce. A terrifying article from the Harvard Business Review, “What’s really holding women back?” describes how pervasive this belief is and how resilient it is in the face of opposing data. The perception of women being more committed to family responsibility than work — even when this notion was utterly and robustly disputed — held firm and had direct effects on who was advanced up the corporate ladder. Women were actively encouraged to make use of “accommodations” such as flexitime and then were held back as a result. Lovely.
But I digress. While the world is freaking out about the coronavirus, self-isolation has been touted as an effective mitigation tool. Avoid crowds, stop shaking hands and for the love of god don’t go to the office if you’re sick. This could be telecommuting’s big moment, but there are some infrastructural and perception barriers to cross first.
On the latter, SA business leaders, and public sector leadership for that matter, must make good on their claims of readiness and acceptance, and they must learn to trust their staff even when they are out of sight. It goes without saying that staff must then live up to those expectations.
Honestly, we could all benefit from this significant, or even seismic, shift in how we work and move about our cities. I love the idea of essential-only car travel. Imagine a free-flowing Cape Town CBD. And with conferences being cancelled or moving online, I’m wishing we would all pause to think if this “critical” meeting could have been handled on e-mail or Slack. If remote work becomes the norm for knowledge workers, it also ungenders the use of flexi options.
And I’m hopeful that once we are forced to take these measures because of coronaphobia, it will have longer-term effects and change some mindsets.
‘This seems to be a fervent wish for many. Researchers are already trying to calculate the positive effect these adjustments could have on the causes and indicators of the climate crisis. Air pollution in Chinese cities, for example, declined significantly in the past month as people retreated into their homes.
Here in the developing world there is a definite downside. Reality check: we aren’t just a country of middle-class knowledge workers. If you make your living with your hands, in a factory, on a farm, in construction or in mining, telecommuting isn’t just out of reach, it’s meaningless. If you don’t have reliable electricity at home, let alone a laptop or spare cash for data, remote schooling is a futuristic fantasy. If you are a casual worker or earning a minimum wage, you show up for your shift no matter how ill you are or you risk losing your job and your ability to put food on the table.
Smaller enterprises also take a knock. Your average big bank or consulting firm can probably afford to embrace flexitime and remote work today, but small businesses, one-man-bands and independent retailers? Not so much.
So I can’t help worrying that if we wake up on the other end of this global health scare and the world has fundamentally shifted, is SA going to be too far behind? We know tech and internet access can be a leveller, but equally the lack of access deepens and widens the already unacceptable gaps between haves and have-nots.
Yes, there is a lot that is scary about a pandemic. But as a technophile and technooptimist, I can’t help but wonder if this is the nudge we need to finally see remote work go mainstream, to dramatically extend local internet access and to look for opportunities to advance our workforces and skills.
SA BUSINESS AND PUBLIC SECTOR LEADERS MUST LEARN TO TRUST THEIR STAFF EVEN WHEN THEY ARE OUT OF SIGHT
IF WE WAKE UP AFTER THIS GLOBAL SCARE AND THE WORLD HAS FUNDAMENTALLY SHIFTED, WILL SA BE TOO FAR BEHIND?