The view from Tim Buthelezi ’ s office in the rolling hills of the KwaZulu-Natal Midlands . Working from home saves him from a daily commute and saves his employer , Zulu-lulu , 35 full 24-hour days a year in time lost to travel .
As any experienced business person will know , being adaptable is crucial in today ’ s fast-changing world . We need to be alert to the shifting business landscape and ready to change the way we do things if circumstances demand this . If we don ’ t evolve , we risk extinction . Recently , a study done by mobile workspace solutions company Citrix and the London-based Centre for Economics and Business Research ( CEBR ) looked at the likely economic impact in South Africa if we adopted a work-from-anywhere culture . The suggested result is staggering . Extrapolating from the more than 1 250 South African knowledge workers who took part in the study ( including lawyers , doctors , accountants , architects , software engineers and academics ), the study indicated that remote working via the Internet could add as much as 0.4 % to
South Africa ’ s gross domestic product ( GDP ). South Africa could do with that 0,4 % boost . According to Statistics South Africa ( StatsSA ), SA ’ s real GDP was estimated to have grown by only 1,5 % in 2014 , down from 2,2 % in 2013 . In the second quarter of 2015 , South Africa ’ s economy contracted by 1,3 % ( seasonally adjusted and annualised ) according to preliminary estimates of GDP released in August by Stats SA . Five of the 10 main industry groups shrank in size during this quarter-on-quarter decrease in overall economic activity — agriculture ( -17,4 %), mining ( -6,8 %), manufacturing ( -6,3 %), and electricity and trade industries ( -2,9 % and -0,4 % respectively ). The situation has hardly improved since . The Citrix-CEBR study also quoted other sit-up-and-listen numbers related to remote working :
42 | Issue 2 | Capital