On Thursday evening, the Council of the City of Johannesburg approved the Multi-Party Government’s Hybrid Working Policy – the first of its kind for any city or government in South Africa.
The Hybrid Working Policy is based on international best practice and aims to increase productivity and morale of employees while reducing costs and the carbon footprint of the City. This is in line with the Executive Mayor’s priorities of ensuring that Johannesburg is a city that gets the basics right and aims to become a well-run smart city for our residents.
To achieve these priorities, we need a professional and efficient staff complement. Employees are the engine of the city, and we want to strengthen Johannesburg’s status as an employer of choice – allowing us to attract the best and brightest. This policy will allow those employees who are not required on the frontline of service delivery to execute their daily responsibilities with flexibility as they contribute towards Johannesburg’s Golden Repair.
To attract and retain the very best talent, it has become important to recognize the fast-changing global landscape of work/life balance for all employees. The Covid-19 pandemic accelerated existing work to achieve these goals and introduced the “new normal” for the entire world. We benchmarked our policy on local and international companies with similar employee numbers in the banking and technology sectors, which found that the implementation of such a policy will decrease carbon footprints, reduce traffic congestion, and realise savings from property rentals and other associated costs with these buildings, such as IT infrastructure and security services.
The city will now embark on a proactive assessment of all of our corporate buildings to determine the optimum space requirements of its workforce, which can then be equipped as the office of the future with hot desks, breakaway rooms, and dynamic spaces that can increase collaboration to break down the silo effect that blocks productivity.
I would like to thank the team that made this project a success: Serena Pienaar, Mergendrie Naidoo, Mari Tooth and Elsabet Vorster, under the leadership of the Acting Executive Director – Dr Hennie Labuschagne. We will continue to develop innovative and proactive measures to ensure that Johannesburg works smarter for its residents, and continues the important work of the Golden Repair.
Ends
Media enquiries:
McKinnley Mitchell
Communications and Stakeholder Manager
Office of the MMC for Group Corporate and Shared Services
McKinnleyM@Joburg.org.za | 078 800 3047
26/06/2022
