The all time only traffic solution

Traffic is bad. Traffic has economic costs. It has emotional costs. It has time costs. It has all sorts of costs including messing up your car as it snails at the lowest gear each day guzzling more than the fuel it should had it been faster. But traffic, on South African routes to work, is part of our lives and is here to stay. Costly, drama queen-styled solutions have been invented to cap it to no avail and still some are being undertaken which, unfortunately, will fail too. Well, I propose a cheap and saving solution that can nip traffic for good.

The solution, ironically, lies in a problem. The problem of office space. Whilst I worked at the Sunday Times, there was constant talk about the lack of well accommodating office space. At the Sandton PR agency I worked for, there was some hussling and squeezing about fitting in every project-religious worker comfortably so they can be productive. At my current company, Unisa and the Centre for Business Management, space is a mother of all headaches, amidst the humugus buildings arrayed on that hilltop.

Let me cut to the chase. Imagine that at least 50 percent of the office workers were given the non-cost attached incentive of working from home? Imagine this was done on a weekly, bi-weekly or monthly rotational basis to allow the other 50 percent to swap the incentive. They only come to the office when they need to, and this wouldn't be at the religious time that everyone heads on the extremely clogged roads - it may be at 10am, at 11am or any given time just to come to a team meeting or to pick up a new project on delivery of another.


Such a scheme would work wonders. Traffic would be nipped in the butt. Production would be upped in some way. Hell, in my company of the future that I'm sitll wet dreaming about 80 percent (if not all) of the workers will work from home, from coffee shops, from their mothers homes, from hospital canteens, from gym from anywhere you can get network access to the internet to fast track communication.

I don't see any reason why this is not done already. On a larger scale at least - for I suspect it may be done by other companies ran by smarter CEOs and HR Directors.

Why would it work:

• Because people love incentives that taste like this and working from the comfort of their home would be far more exciting than in the office. Just hand out mobile internet cards and a laptop to them, if they need them
• Bosses can get more production because somebody left on their own - experienced Tom, Dick and Marry of course - will be compelled to feel more obliged to submit work on time than somebody feeling that having come to the office means you have come to work, whereas we know most have just come to galavant and drink coffee
• It could have a tremendous savings both on the running resources of the company and reduce the meaningless chatter that achieves nothing
• There would be less piggybacking. You work from home, solo or co-ordinating with anyone via new communication technologies, you become more accountable and feel you can't let down your team
• Because it would simply be a lifestyle of the future for such a company

Counting on the Gautrain and other montrous politicians wet dreams that only cause waste and sow a perfect corruption platform will not kick the bad traffic phenomena. And with the rapid development of stacked townhouses everywhere, we are bound to experience the India type of traffice on our non-developing, non-widening South African roads .

It'll be simple ideas and methods that safe the day. Just get the workers to show their project timeliness and deliverables, then let them go work from home. You may be amazed at the accountability production - it may be the same as at the office or even better.

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"Judge of a man by his questions, rather than by his answers." - Voltaire