STAY HOME! A Rant About Why You Shouldn't Have Been At Work Today

So as I write this, there’s been a heavy downpour of rain here in Accra, Ghana since late last night, and even now, it continues to linger.

Rain like this typically means two things:
1. Most parts of the city will be heavily flooded due to the poor nature of our roads, wrong placement of building structures, and poor drainage systems.

2. Most people will likely struggle to get access to public transportation and hence will almost certainly be very late to work this morning.

The second item above is the focal point of my post.

I recently told a friend of mine: it’s very strange that with how much tech has advanced in our city, there are many employers who are still yet to fully embrace the concept of remote working.

I asked him a simple question: is your productivity tied to a chair?

If as an employer, you fail to recognize that your employees do not need to be physically in your ‘very nice’ office in order to get their jobs done, then this is what I have to say to you:

1. If you cannot trust your employee to have a sense of responsibility to get their job done outside of the office with little to no supervision, then you probably hired the wrong person to begin with.
2. If you think being physically present in the office is equal to productivity, then you obviously haven’t met people who download movies and hide in a corner of the office to watch them during office hours.
3. If you can only supervise employees when they are physically present, then your use of tools & tech for productivity & collaboration in your company is very poor, and needs to be reviewed as a matter of urgency.
4. If in this day of Slack, Asana, Google Docs, Dropbox, iCloud, OneDrive, Trello, Google Hangouts, Skype, GoTo Meeting, and several other thousands of apps, your employees can’t work remotely and still get their jobs done, then again, you haven’t equipped them with what they need to work, and it is not their fault, but yours!
5. If remote working to you means you cannot be sure of what your employees are doing during the day, then please ensure that you have a camera on your person that records your every move (even when you visit the washroom) because after all, your boss can't also be sure of what you are doing during the day either.
6. If you feel the only the way you can hold your staff accountable for work they're supposed to do, is if they are physically present, then you clearly haven't done a good enough job of letting them know your vision, business objectives, their deliverables and what is expected of them.

I know this post will make some people uncomfortable.

That's good. You are exactly the person this article was written for.

Productivity isn't measured by physical presence. It is measured by output. I wonder how many employers in this great nation of Ghana, can send out an alert to all staff to work remotely on a particular day because the city is flooded.

Heavens No! They wouldn't even dream of it. Close the office for a WHOLE DAY?!

SMH.
You need to be re-oriented.
P.S. I still got to work early today in spite of the rain. I got here just as early as I do on any given day (an hour before work starts), but that's also because I have a car, and my house is about 30 minutes drive away. So this is not a rant because I wanted a day off. This is about the several other people I work with (and have worked with in the past), who are not as privileged as I am.

Have a good day and a good week!
Stephen Sawyerr
Head of Growth, Jumia
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