The battle for hybrid office and home work in SA

Global networking company Cisco appears to be at odds with SA corporate culture as it fights the return to the status quo of personal attendance at offices, and continues to advocate hybrid work environments.

During Covid-19 lockdowns many companies had to adopt remote working to continue operations due to strict restrictions on movement.

Using technology, businesses — particularly those in professional services — could go on operating during the pandemic. Realising the benefits and flexibility of remote work, some organisations adopted permanently a hybrid approach in which work can be done at the office or remotely.

While this shift also led to savings on office rentals for some companies, a number of business leaders are fighting for things to return to what they were before the lockdowns, which means staff being at the office full time.

Smangele Nkosi, GM of Cisco SA, argues that hybrid work is the way of the present and future. Valued at about $187bn, Cisco is one of the world’s largest technology companies. It makes and sells networking hardware, telecommunications equipment and other products.

“We’re a major champion of hybrid work. In fact, our studies indicate that it’s here to stay. We’ve done research in SA. South Africans are saying that hybrid work should stay. We can’t go back,” Nkosi said.

In a study of 27 markets, SA was found to be one of the countries where employees are most in favour of fully remote work, drawing the nod from 33.5% of respondents.

According to research firm Morning Consult 55% of employees said at the beginning of 2022 that they would consider quitting their jobs before returning to the office.

Globally, one of the first highprofile business leaders to take a stand against remote working was Netflix founder Reed Hastings, as early as 2020. More recently a leaked email to employees from Elon Musk made headlines with the Tesla CEO saying “remote work is no longer acceptable”.

“Yes, I guess some of the business leaders are concerned that maybe they’re losing the culture,” Nkosi said. “It’s one of the debates. Just look at our office. We’re demonstrating it.”

Cisco’s new offices in Midrand’s Waterfall precinct have little assigned seating, with most spaces used for meetings and teleconferencing. Employees are expected to come in, but only once or twice a week.

“Our office space has changed. Before [the pandemic] about 80% of the office was geared towards individual seating. But now, it’s the inverse because we want to increase the level of collaboration.”

And, of course, Cisco sells hardware and software products geared towards hybrid work. It sells desktop computers, teleconferencing systems for offices and boardrooms, and has a video conferencing platform for businesses called WebEx, akin to Zoom or Microsoft Teams.

When the technology group reported third-quarter earnings in May, chair and CEO Chuck Robbins said “The shift to hybrid cloud, 5G, 400G, IoT, hybrid work and the explosion of applications are driving the increased need for nextgeneration networking, connectivity, security and observability solutions.”

Such is the belief in hybrid work that Cisco has a division dedicated to this business, its third-biggest earner. But the unit’s income is down 7%, due to drops in meetings and calling and contact centre offerings. The unit has also been hit by global supply chain disruptions affecting hardware sales.

“We see work as not ‘a place to go’ anymore. People work anywhere, anyhow, with any device. They can connect anywhere,” said Nkosi. The group is to introduce holograms (pictures of whole objects, shown in three dimensions) as part of WebEx, she said.

“So this is what we’re going to drive within our customer space so that business leaders are not afraid to drive the journey of hybrid work,” said Nkosi.

WE SEE WORK AS NOT A PLACE TO GO ANYMORE. PEOPLE WORK ANYWHERE, ANYHOW, WITH ANY DEVICE. THEY CAN CONNECT ANYWHERE Smangele Nkosi GM of Cisco SA