Leading global technology company, Zoho, has revealed that 31 per cent of Nigerian businesses now operate the hybrid work schedule, while most remote roles are held by individual contributors with limited collaboration requirements. It also reveals that hybrid workers face significant barriers to effective communication.
This was contained in its study, ‘The State of Productivity and Collaboration in Nigeria, 2024.’ The survey covered over 500 organisations with more than 50 employees nationwide. The findings reveal critical workplace productivity challenges, including the overwhelming impact of data silos resulting from fragmented systems and inefficient app usage.
The survey also highlights the growing demand for unified platforms, which can help businesses streamline employees collaboration. The study shows that 55 per cent of Nigerian businesses have adopted a fully on-site work model, while 31 per cent operate in a hybrid setup, and the remaining 14 per cent are in completely remote roles.
The survey also revealed that 51 per cent of employees use one to five apps daily, 35 per cent use six-10 apps, while 14 per cent rely on more than 10 apps.
App usage is higher among senior executives, with 81 per cent of the C-Suite employees using more than 10 apps, while 72 per cent of junior employees use 1-5 apps.
The most commonly used tools are for productivity and collaboration (68 per cent), followed by project management (47 per cent), business intelligence (47 per cent), and accounting (43 per cent).
Despite widespread app usage, only 50 per cent of the respondents track their tasks in a unified view, with higher adoption rates among the C-Suite (78 per cent) and senior leadership (63 per cent).
On productivity challenges and opportunities, the survey showed that for the Nigerian workforce, the biggest collaboration challenge is poor WiFi/data connectivity (80 per cent), across demographics. This indicates the need for solutions that have an offline mode and can work in lower data connectivity.
Other collaboration challenges are digital fatigue (54 per cent), and information spread across too many apps (45 per cent). For middle managers, the second biggest challenge, after poor WiFi, is communication with employees in a remote or hybrid setup.
According to the respondents, the most effective way to improve productivity in Nigerian workplaces is to enable quick access to necessary information from different apps (78 per cent), followed by adoption of new technologies like AI (72 per cent), and the ability to communicate from within business apps (55 per cent).
There is a clear demand for unified collaboration platforms bolstered with AI capabilities that can be integrated into existing software ecosystems. Such solutions will not only help in reducing the time taken to do the job, but can also reduce digital fatigue as one will not have to juggle multiple apps.
