Work-From-Home is a concept where the employee can do his or her job from home rather than having to travel to the employer’s workspace. The employee uses modern digital channels to communicate and engage with the employer and work colleagues. Studies have shown that organisations that embrace the Work-From-Home concept, over time, saves money, yield more productivity and quality of services from employees and benefits from a happier and motivated workforce. Work-From-Home reduces an organisation’s operating costs with respect to the cost of office infrastructure and auxiliary services and, crucially and inadvertently, mitigate environmental impacts and carbon emissions.

NISTI’s current situation:

• NISTI (National Institute for Science, Technology and Innovation) has been experiencing working-from-home since August 2019 when evicted from its Bel Ombre premises at short notice;
• NISTI provided its workforce with mobile 4G Internet access, a tasks management platform and established a team communication channel;
• The team regularly exchanges work items, ideas, issues and feedback using the all available communication channels such as Skype, Zoom and Microsoft Team;
• NISTI cannot fully execute its mandate solely by working from home based on its legal mandate;
• Key deliverables of National STI Policy and Strategy 2026 – 2025, namely such as (BTI) Incubator, National Research Foundation (NRF), OASIS Seychelles and Technology Transfer System, require engaging sustained in-personal interactions; and for these projects, NISTI needs a physical office space for their successful implementation.

Possible way forward:

• Convenient method for communication
  • Improved internet connectivity, cost and reliability;
  • Change of mindset and developing a new culture of work and ethics.
• Best practices
• Adequate monitoring, guidelines and boundaries; and
  • Set expectations, milestone, deliverables and accountability
• Engage employees
  • Keep employees in the loop;
  • Share adequate information and keep employee motivated; and
  • Add regular social activities and meet ups.
• Governance
  • Relook at administrative procedures, rules, and regulations;
  • Policies in place with regards to data in public domain;
  • Improve IT infrastructure for users/customers’ best experience;
  • Development of competency framework for public sector in relation to novel way of working-from-home; and
  • Evolve an overall ecosystem to support the novel way of working-from-home.

Addressing the transport issue if there is a meeting to attend:

This figure explains about the transportation issue faced by employees when there is a meeting to attend. This bar diagram shows the different ways of transport such as own transport, office transport and government bus being used by the staff for attending meetings

Impact of technology in work from home:

Evaluation of wireless data package compared to the previous broadband

Overall, the results of the NISTI employee survey indicated that the employees experience relatively high levels of satisfaction with the technology support they receive from NISTI: They provide individuals who work from home with a technology kit that includes either office PCs or laptops, sim cards (telecommunication), and wireless router as requested.

This figure reflects the efficiency of the wireless data through wireless broadband (router) which has been received by work from home employees.

Each staff was given a Cable and Wireless broadband router with different data package according to their usage, and the chart shows that two-third of staff were very satisfied with the connectivity and reliability of their internet package. One third of the users staying in remote areas with unpredicted connectivity problems are not satisfied with the Cable and Wireless router.

Impacts on the government in relation to work at home pattern:

• The government would be saving a lot on utilities (electricity bill, water, maintenance of the property, garbage ), paying rent and other office supplies e.g.: paper, ink and other consumables;
• May help government centralised procurement system to work;
• The number of sick leave will reduce significantly and therefore removing the huge burden on our health care system, traffic jam issues, which seem unsolvable for the moment;
• Getting people to work from home will definitely reduce the traffic on the road during peak hours; government may find it difficult to organise instant meetings or find immediate staff to work on emergencies;
• Helping government to better trade its carbon footprint.

Conclusion:

• According to the case study, complete working from home cannot be done by NISTI but adopting flexible-hour-system is more relevant to NISTI’s mandate which requires office space to implement major projects
• NISTI staff are using their own resources (Machine, Infrastructure and Utility) due to lack of proper infrastructure in work-from-home pattern. The employer has not provided adequate resources, support and incentives to embrace and promote work-from-home system.
• There is no framework and policy of working from home/ flexible working system from government and private sectors.
• Ministry of Finance has not supported the monetary needs which is lacking for organisations to work from home.
• There is widespread demand for flexible working but the significant policy drivers such as government and private sector have not improved or implemented flexible working.
• NISTI’s case study therefore is the best guideline / action learning tool for the government and private organisations to have an insight on enabling flexible working system with supporting tools for professionals to have a better working environment.

Recommendations:

• Complete working from home can be done in an emergency situation like the outbreak of the COVID-19 but a flexible-hour-system is more relevant to NISTI’s mandate which requires office space to implement major projects
• An organisation requires support from the Ministry of Finance to ensure that all its necessities (within reason) are met to enable staff to work from home such as filing facilities, purchase of equipment and machinery for the home office.
• The government needs to relook at its different policy to ensure that it is aligned with working from home.
• The focus should shift from the traditional way of keeping people in an office space, who ideally might be there doing nothing but look for a way of implementing mechanisms of measuring the work delivered regardless of where it is delivered from.
• Working from home works in the developed countries and it is a huge relief on government spending and if implemented in Seychelles, with its technological connectivity, the government shall reap the benefits in the long run.
• There should be schemes to facilitate the buying of IT equipment e.g. laptops, printer for home as staff are a bit reluctant to take responsibly of these equipment at home e.g. pay per installments

Contributed by NISTI