Interview with Vahid Jacob, managing director and digital consultant at Vision 360 Consultancy |17 April 2020

Vahid Jacob (Photo source : Vahid Jacob)

‘In the digital age working from home might be here to stay!’

Working from home, le ‘Teletravail’ has become the new reality of the world and it is realistic to assume that shifting to the ‘home office’ will become the new norm for many of us for a while, after the announcement made by President Danny Faure last week, urging all non-essential workers to stay at home.

We contacted Vahid Jacob, managing director and digital consultant at Vision 360 Consultancy, for his thoughts about the new concept.

Seychelles NATION: COVID-19 has forced many companies worldwide including Seychelles to rethink the way we work. Working from home has become mainstream but is it here to stay?

Vahid Jacob: If there’s one take away from this pandemic, it’s that people have finally recognised the value of working from home. For many small businesses and agencies like mine for example, working from home was already a part of the normal course of business, and for some, it was the primary working environment. If the current state of business has taught us anything, it’s that work might never look the same even after this pandemic is over.

Chief executive officers, business owners and government organisations that believed employees are more productive at the office from 8am – 4pm are now testing their theory out first hand and along the way, they might find that working from home is not as bad as they thought.

What we are seeing is that several government organisations and companies are finally investing in the technology needed to make remote work possible and investments in technology that might have seemed unnecessary before have now become necessary to keep their businesses and organisations running. The use of several video conferencing software such as Skype, Go-to meeting, Zoom and even WhatsApp video calls have greatly increased and virtual meetings have quickly become the new norm. Which shows us that in most cases that one-hour drive to the office, for a 20-minute meeting was unnecessary and could have been done virtually!

Many companies in Seychelles are finally rolling out services to make working from home easier and more desirable. Telecom companies such as Cable & Wireless, Intelvision and Airtel are encouraging their customers to access all their services online such as bill payments, package subscriptions, top-ups among others and avoid lines in their showrooms. Banks such as Absa, MCB and others are asking their customers to move entirely to internet-banking for daily transactions such as transfers, checking of balances and purchases and have made most of their services such as withdrawals and cash deposits, cheque deposits available through their ATMS. Super markets and smaller retail shops are moving towards cashless transactions and encouraging their customers to avoid the use of cash and instead are opting for card payments. Newspaper companies such as Today in Seychelles and Seychelles NATION are encouraging people to sign up for their e-versions and download their app to gain access to these newspapers from their smartphones. We have seen several private schools introduce e-learning programmes and run virtual classrooms, many of these things are here to stay.

With nearly everyone working from home this has forced many businesses to innovate in order to stay relevant and certain businesses such as restaurants, take-aways, butcher shops, farms, fishermen, clothing stores and others have found a way to make it all work. What we have seen in the past few weeks is that many restaurants and food outlets have started home delivery, certain wholesalers and butchers are offering delivery services to your doorsteps if you order a minimum amount, clothing stores are moving online and selling their clothes on e-commerce websites and Facebook, farmers and fisherman are delivering vegetables and fish to your doorstep and more companies are marketing their services on social media.

This might be the push we needed for companies to innovate and increase the number of entrepreneurs in Seychelles. But one thing is for sure, in between all the doom and gloom some good might actually come out of the situation we find ourselves in at present.

Seychelles NATION: How do you see Seychelles doing with this idea?

Vahid Jacob: I think Seychelles is moving in the right direction but we are not there yet. Although some companies are making an effort to innovate, I think a few large corporates and especially government organisations are still operating with the old ‘command and control’ mindset from 30 to 40 years ago in which employees have to be in a regulated working environment with fixed working hours and most things are still done manually. Times have changed, we are now in 2020 in the digital age, the current COVID-19 situation should serve as a wake-up call for these large corporates and especially government organisations to innovate.

The government for example can use this situation to introduce flexible working hours and make government services more accessible online by introducing an e-government gateway that integrates the services of different government agencies in order to facilitate access through a single system or website. This will go a long way in giving people direct access to services from the comfort of their homes and at the same time reducing the working hours of their staff and removing long unwanted lines in government departments.

It's a dream of every citizen of Seychelles to have easy access in applying for government aid, getting land registration documents, paying taxes, renewing a workers’ gainful occupation permit (GOP), applying and registering for business licenses, checking the status of the business license application, reviewing the information about clinics and hospitals nearby, and many other important events in everyday life. All this can be done online, through one single website. Can government get it done? Yes. Let’s use this opportunity to innovate.

Seychelles NATION: What are the advantages and disadvantages of working from home, especially if you have a baby, toddler or child around?

Vahid Jacob: While working from home might have its pros and cons I definitely think the pros outweigh the cons. Although I have an office which I rent out for my agency, this is mostly used for meetings as certain of my older clients don’t feel comfortable discussing a contract over Skype and insist on meeting face to face, however most of my actual work gets done at home.

What working from home has shown me however is that working with a toddler and family members around isn’t always easy, but I have learned to adapt to it. I have had a couple of business calls with clients with my kid or wife in the background and the occasional screams from my son which would have been seen as inappropriate in an office setting, and my attire has gone from formal to super casual at times. But I think it would be a mistake to try to simply replicate my office environment into my home, In fact most of my clients appreciate the fact that I have a loving family around me. When you have a better life/work balance you are happier because you are able to fulfill your obligations to both your clients and family. It makes you feel more fulfilled. You no longer live for work but instead, work to live.

Seychelles NATION: How do you prioritise your day when you are at home?

Vahid Jacob: Working from home can be highly productive for me, but it can also go wrong and get messy at times and without a proper prioritised schedule it's easy for me to get distracted at times, and get very little done. I find ways to motivate myself to work positively and productively and I have my to-do list prioritised from most important to least important and effective time management is essential if I want to continue meeting my deadlines when I’m working from home. Regular short breaks help to keep me energised and focused and sometimes I set a timer of one to two hours after which I take a short break, get some coffee or listen to music. At the end of the day I might start late and finish late but I’m in control of my day and most of the time get much more done at home than at the office.

Seychelles NATION: Do you think the present situation will change how we operate even after the pandemic?

Vahid Jacob: It all depends on the business or organisation. The current situation shows us that online services and working from home provide an opportunity that a lot of companies and government organisations have not capitalised on and not understood over the years. There is a lot that you can do to move your business offering or services online and push to digitise your content via websites, social media, youtube, podcasts, blogs, and more, especially here in Seychelles where the infrastructure is already there, we just have to make use of it.

A unique opportunity from this is that we now have the chance to test out remote working, conferencing, and the use of digital tools first hand on a large scale and see if it works for us, an organisation or business. Flexible working hours and digitisation of services can be at the core of many companies and organisations and the faster we embrace this, the more opportunity there is to get in front of the changes that are here to stay. It will be very interesting to see, after this pandemic is over, how much of the present way of doing business actually sticks.

Vidya Gappy