South Africa’s TomTom Traffic Index

Peter du ToitI'm the founder of FutureWork IQ where I spend my time assisting businesses to improve their climate literacy so as to understand the projected impacts from the expanding climate crisis and how to adapt their workplaces in the face of these impacts.

The 2017 TomTom Traffic Index indicates that the average person commuting to work in Gauteng spends 18 (8-hour) days per year in traffic. (If you are in Cape Town 20 days)

So let’s say you have a team of 10 in your office. That would mean, your team collectively, by having to commute into work everyday, are losing 180 days of productivity. That is 6 months of productivity gone in a year!

That’s nuts.

KPMG’s report on the South African TomTom data concludes:

“The negative effects of congestion include the monetary value of the time spent sitting in traffic, impeded access, late freight deliveries, a lower quality of life for commuters, lower regional job growth and the loss of productivity. South Africa’s cities included in the TTTI have rush hour traffic that is far beyond the threshold and leads to negative economic effects.”

Smart companies are realizing that they can win back that time by turning on flexible/remote working. And are becoming about 26% more profitable than their peers as a result of the regained productivity. The thinking is “Let our competitors have their people sit in traffic while we use that time to gain market share.”

Flexible/remote working is a global trend for a reason. However, it needs to be carefully thought through. Don’t most things?

The basics that need to be in place to switch on flexible/remote working are:

1. A well designed digital workplace with digital collaboration and communication at its core.
2. Digitally literate employees who can function in a digital workplace.
3. A 21st Century results-only management style

As always if you would like to discuss designing a collaborative digital workplace for your team you can reach out to us here team @ futureworkiq.com