Working From Home: Businesses Urged To Establish New Ways Of Measuring Productivity

Speakers of the virtual breakfast meeting

Accra, Ghana, June 2, 2020//-Banking and ICT executives have urged businesses to establish new ways of measuring productivity of staff in this era of working from homes, following the outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic.

According to them, greater percentages of the staff are working remotely, so there is the need to find ways to measure their productivity and activity.

There are also more and more staff working from home and so we definitely recommend some good employee tracking software so that you can check what they are doing and improve productivity.

Speaking on the theme ‘The Future of Work is here– Preparing the Work Place for New Talents Needs’ at the recent virtual 28th MTN Business World Breakfast Meeting in Accra, the CEO Fidelity Bank Ghana, Julian Opuni said businesses must change their traditional ways of measuring productivity to new ones.

“I think what is evident now, because of the rotation system; people are working from homes etc. And the fact that people are working from home, it is no more about hours worked. It is really about output”.

So businesses have to put in place those systems that enable them to measure the output and see the productivity of their staff, Mr Opuni explained.

Throw away analogue mindsets

The Country Director of Oracle Ghana, Franklyn Asare, used the occasion to appeal to human resource (HR) departments as matter urgency to throw away their analogue mindsets and rather look at the digital and virtual ways of doing things.

This is due to the fact the ongoing pandemic is also affecting how companies hire people, he noted.

Accountability and transparency

Touching on accountability and transparency, Mr Asare was of the view that companies could still use their existing KPIs to easily monitor their staff working from homes and other distant locations.

They should also put in place collaboration channels where people can find what each staff is doing easily. If these are done, managers of companies can ensure transparency and accountability, he said.

New skill developments

On new skill developments, for instance people have to learn Zoom and how to use Zoom now to enable them interact with staff and customers, according to him.

“But I think that we still need to address the skill element as our workers work remotely. Because in the office environment, you can have a problem and you can go to colleague by the next desk for help. But in the home you are alone. I think that we need to develop that to allow people to be able to grow and develop”.

Embrace cloud  

The West Africa Regional Manager, CSquared, Ms Estelle Akofio Sowah, noted: “That is why cloud computing is very necessary here. When you work in the cloud it doesn’t matter where you are”.

“I think that is also a big reality check for businesses. So, technology companies operating in this cloud area will hugely benefit from this era”.

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