Chief Executive Officer of Jobberman Ghana, Kwaku Agbesi, has disclosed that some 244,000 companies have their business models as a result of Covid-19.
The pandemic which led to the imposition of some restrictions, according to him made them unable to navigate their way through.
“We noticed that lots of companies were going through challenges during the Covid-19 period. A lot of them did not know how to navigate their way through so we tried to put together a guideline document to help them”.
He said these companies are now relying on digital solutions such as mobile money and the internet for sales transactions.
“People were less likely to go out and companies, therefore, had to adapt to serve the needs of the people in those times. Companies also needed to ensure that they were still providing the needs of their customers irrespective of the times”.
Mr Agbesi also noted that, sales were the most sought-after job function now with customer service and support experiencing the highest decline.
Digital solutions to drive sales
According to him, this was due to the fact that companies realized that they needed salespeople to drive revenues.
“Sales went up but it was more of the telesales or the virtual sales”.
Additionally, he intimated that firms within the agriculture sector and related industries used relatively more digital solutions. Firms in the accommodation and food sector were the least adopters to digital solutions.
“With the hospitality industry, we all expected that to be the case due to the fewer travels.
“There is a lot of innovation within the agriculture sector at the moment, with lots of producers adopting technology in their day-to-day activities. This is a good thing because agriculture is the bedrock of our economy and if we are able to apply technology, it will be best for us”.
COVID-19 changing phase of business
On his part, Executive Coach and Leadership Facilitator, Mr Chris Diaba, said the findings of the report did not come as a surprise. He further stated that the changing phase of work now was mainly due to Covid-19.
“Any piece of work that focuses on measuring and helping us to be able to pinpoint potential areas that there are gaps and gives us the opportunity to fill them is great, so I commend them for this report.
“Covid-19 and its happenings did not so much become the factor that is impacting the future of work. What Covid-19 did was to speed up the process in a massive way.
“A lot of these companies knew that they needed to change how they work; it was more around what they particularly needed to change and the areas of focus. Covid-19 brought the reality very forcefully to us”.
Chris Diaba
Mr Diaba pointed out that work was no longer a place someone goes to but something the person does.
“Organisations must rethink the focus and level of their investment into brick-and-mortar assets. They must change their performance management matrices to refocus on remote management and virtual leadership. There must be a shift from presenteeism to productivity”.
