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| Ayeni Ekundayo |
Ayeni Ekundayo, CEO Business Plus Service speaks with 'The Witness' in an insightful interview on the possible role of digitalization in Nigeria...
How can both the public and private employers leverage on the digital age to enhance employees’ performance?
Primarily, digitalization is all about having to leave the norm (from paper to per conversation) to do things that are not the regular things government wants to consider. Productivity is easy to measure to increase output in the digital age. Also, in terms of monitoring, the digital phase is one the drives of government globally. I also want to personally agree that with digitalization, the bottom line for any government is increase in productivity and reduced waste. Digitalization can help us achieve that faster. Even the issue of corruption and all of that, you can see the number of activities a person does per time if you digitalised. It will really help in terms of those bottom lines.
I asked the question because in Lagos for instance, the perennial traffic can be so time consuming and several organisations, if not all, still insists their employees report to office at stipulated time, usually 8:am. In this digital age, is it not possible for certain employees to work from home in the primary interest of employers?
Yeah. For the angle of digitalization, technology has made life faster. People can easily clock-in and start work right from home. If you are supposed to be up by 8: am, you can be up by for 8: am, clocked-in, and as soon as your system comes live, every other person knows that it is time for you to be at work and they know. So, it shows on the dashboard of even your boss that you are at work. And then your tasks and the schedule time for those tasks. So we know that within an hour you are supposed to deliver on ‘xyz’ and that will just be done straight away. It makes it easy for everyone to follow through the activities and get things done if they work remotely from their home. But the other side to it is that other cultural factors now kick in: such as employees complaining of poor internet service and electricity; that may cap for excuses for not doing what they are supposed to do. That is why most employers want their employees to show us in their place of work. But normally, if it is a developed environment where things can be measure, you can’t give excuses based on infrastructural grand. You can work remotely from home. We have companies we work with in the country and outside the country. We have clients in the US, Australia and in India. We work with them remotely from home and we don’t give complain of infrastructural issues. I have people who also work for me as freelance and as much as you are working, every 5/10 minutes, depending on the parameter we set, your screen will be screen-shot and I know what you are doing per time. If you left what you are supposed to do and go to social media to play you don’t know when your screen will be shot. It is not what the employee can remotely monitor but I can do the monitoring to see what your screen looks like. So, this is the age we are now.
Is there any organisation you know who have allowed their employees to work from home and the employees fail to deliver by giving excuses ‘based on infrastructural grand’ as you put it?
The only organisation that is seemly close to what we are talking about in Nigeria that I know of is Virgin Airline. They wanted to implement it for Nigerian market. I know they have started that almost globally now. Most organisations in Nigeria will probably don’t want to do that now because of the kind of people we are. And also, I have tried it personally, but I discovered I have to provide the supporting infrastructure to make it happen; fuelling their generator, provide internet just for them to stay up to task. And this is what we do immediately, maybe when we go on December break. So, we fund everything. We also ensure the employees have extra allowance to make things happen. So, you don’t have an excuse. By the time you are collecting N20, 000 from us to support your infrastructure; you are not supposed to also give us an excuse. You have to deliver on your part of the deal. I will encourage employers of labour to support employees to make it happen.
If you are encouraging employers to support the employees to make working from home possible, what part would the employees play in this arrangement, since the gesture is to make them (employees) more efficient?
Yeah. As I said, it depends on the maturity level of the employees in handling what is being offered. Can employees work with less supervision, which is one of the requirements you find on job openings these days? Can you work under little or no supervision? Because you are expected to be productive and not just do activities; and that is why all of that were made available. And the bottom line for every organisation is revenue generation. So, if you have to go the other course and come to tell us story, and as a result you were not able to meet your tasks, then you have just wasted your organisation’s money, thereby making yourself very vulnerable to be fired. But if many organisations can try that out, except for financial organisations where you need to collect physical cash from clients, bulk of these jobs can be done from peoples’ homes. And the employee must, as much as he can stay tuned to make sure the needs of the organisations are met.
Now, what department(s) in a financial organisation do you think can be supported by the organisation to work from home apart from the weekly meeting days in the interest of both parties (the employer and the employee?)
From the creative units, they can work from home. If they can get their technology team to work from home it will be nice. That will work better because a lot of them preferred working from home and do things at their own convenience. They can actually work all night for you at home if supported. But if you have to box them into office it kills creativity and productivity in those sets of people. So, those are the major arms. But maybe for operation, cash collection, you need to have them physically available. And then some part of customer care: such as chat with customers when needed, have phone calls as far as the environment is not noisy, can be managed from home. I think it make a lot of sense.
How do you see going full digital in Nigeria impacting our roads in urban areas in terms of managing traffic? Will working from home serve as key to solving the perennial traffic problems in Lagos for instance?
Working from home will really help in that regards because that mean many people won’t take out their cars for that day. On a Monday morning they are in their houses. Imagine 20% of people who use Lagos roads decide to work from home. That means we will free up the traffic and there would be faster moments all around.
What are the social economic benefits that digitalisation has brought to people living urban areas?
First, the higher productivity is, the higher cash inflow to the economy. Although for every organisation or every economy, you will also be able to engage some young people. For example, there are a lot of websites where they can go register, instead of just to do scam and 419. You can easily get website job and stay remotely at home and finish the execution of this job. There are a lot of young people that do creative drawing and writing but because they are not even given the opportunity and you are not allowing them work from home. I have a little money and a job to give out, and the person who can do the job is maybe, 35 kilometres away. Do I need to tell the person to come to work every day at my place or remotely outsourced it to the person? The person become relevant, make some money and I get my job done; instead of insisting that the person must come to my preferred physical official location for 30 days and I have to still cover that cost. So, that increases the bottom line in terms of cash inflow into the economy and there is increase in value. That brings a level of international presence in here. Same thing you will find in India. Most call centres in the US are outsourced to Indians. When I call by bank in the US the person speaking is from India and he tells me ‘don’t worry we will solve your problem’; meanwhile, the person is not there in the US. Some have never seen a plane before. But it is just because they can handle remote jobs from home and money is going into that economy. So, that is a model I think we should start embracing because very soon, there is a big weave coming. Hurricane pursuers always think ahead by positioning themselves at the location where the next hurricane is expected to happen. The big weaves coming is that digitalisation will catch us like storm. It is no longer a trend. It is the reality of our time; and many CEOs have not realized this and it will happen very soon; sooner than they expect. And there is a young hot generation in Nigeria who is about 70 million people or more; who are closely marked as the millennial. So, we who have gone ahead need to embrace what they are going to embrace; because there are new apps every day, new introduction, new technologies which we don’t have the time to study every day. But these young people can study and make money from it and see how they can even employ it for an organization. So, we shouldn’t neglect that aspect because I foresee a Nigeria where we will have a minister of new media or minister of digitalization. That is happening very soon.
You seem to be saying digitalization is not a threat to employment but to those who refuse to position themselves by learning to adopt. Are you in essence saying there is no cause for alarm that digitalization will take job from many?
Obviously. There was a generation before now when we used to have typists and secretaries, if you can remember. They were the ones to type and do other related jobs before commuters started coming in; and the secretaries refused to change. Before you know what was happening, the secretaries and the typists lost out of the game. We then progressed to the era of receptionists; they will type the letters in the computer and all of that. Gradually all these started losing their jobs because the MDs and CEOs started replying mails themselves. And then, cybercafé became a business. And then again cybercafé started dying out because everybody now has access to the internet remotely in their homes. It is a trend that you need to look at where it is going to and and stay in front. If you upgrade with the system, you will still have your position, even earning more money. An organization does not suddenly digitalize over night. They do it gradually but if you position yourself for an upgrade, you will be able to write on the new ones. But if you don’t, obviously you can’t meet up. You can’t put old wine into new wine skin. There are things we used to do 20 years ago that are no longer here.
So, where is Nigeria today as a nation in terms digitalization?
I will say the private sector is catching up fast. Government is gradually trying to do a lot; and I like the fact that the new government is trying to do some catch ups with the current realities, but is not really working in that manner. The government is slow in catching up with those realities. I understand it is a large scale. It is not a one man control remotely. But the government needs to catch up with what the private sector is doing. I like the fact that they are doing TSA. I like the fact that some of the government payments are becoming automated. Most government agencies now have their own website. Government officials now have Twitter handle and Facebook account, which make a lot of sense. But with time, they may need to up the game so that the reality doesn’t pass them by. But I am impressed with what the new government is doing in terms of digitalization because it is going to curb down on corruption and less productivity among civil servants. Because you can track performance of each employee and this will help holistic management. It will also help the tax system.
Apart from TSA, what are other areas you believe government can fight corruption using technology?
For example, we now have citizens’ journalism. We also have third party report system. I like the fact that a lot of people are capturing policemen taking bribe; capturing video of a neighbour stealing and rubbery going on. These have gone a long way to curb a lot of things which we took for granted before. Now if a policeman accosts me on the road and he is trying to demand some kind of money, he is not sure if somebody is not recording him. If I am being maltreated outside I am so sure somebody will capture it with camera and it will go viral and the government will look into the matter. We should start looking at relatives and friends whose lifestyle is beyond their legitimate earnings. We should be able to say something about it on social media. Anywhere you see injustice going, you can easily captured it and release it. Citizenship journalism has gone a long way in Nigeria. They may not all be professionals but their contribution is very obvious. That has really put officials on their toes because they know if they lie about what actually happened, somebody somewhere have got the real one recorded. You see what is going on in the National Assembly. We know what is happening per time as progress is going on they are live on Twitter and other social media platforms. Corruption can be curbed using those channels.
Are there correlations between digitalization and revenue generation, particularly for government?
I will pick Lagos State as case study. During the tenure before the current government, the Lagos State already had an automated process for residency. They had for tax system. They had for LASMA monitoring and all of that. What they simply do is to pick your details and verify you. For example, if you buy a car of N5 million, they can verify to know how much you earn; they can verify to know your BVN; they can call up to know if you are paying your tax; they can check to know if you are registered as citizen or resident of Lagos State and these have increased tax in the state. Revenue generation have increased across board for them; because all these things are integrated into one platform. So, the Governor can easily monitor monthly revenue of the state and the channels the revenue came from.
But much cannot be achieved in this digital age without strong internet service. Is Nigeria really prepared for this coming move as you say in terms of provision of internet services?
Yes we are ready. But the internet service providers in Nigeria still need to crash their prices. But I am happy with current ‘data war’ going on in the telecom sector; where mtn shows up today and say ‘I am given you 2 gigs for N1, 000’. Then, tomorrow, glo shows up to say ‘I will give you the same 2 gigs for N500’. It is ‘data war’ going on now. Last year from one of the town hall meetings that NCC held, one of the things they came out with was that a lot of people are migrating from voice-over call to data over-call. So, a lot of people are using data now. That been said, we still need more infrastructure to support what we are doing currently. Logically, sub-sea cables need to come in more. Things like what Main One does. All those kind of cables that bring internet into the shores of Nigeria. We are now having more of fibre optic all around and that is very expensive; because for every one or two metres you dig, Lagos State Government will bill you and Federal Government will bill you about N40 or N45 per metre. It is good revenue for government but it is still very expensive for the end users. Government at all levels should cut down the price they take from these companies so that it can be a lot easier for the end users.
The Witness
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