VGG takes Pole Position in Deploying Remote Working Initiatives
With activities across most parts of the world gradually grinding to a halt following the stay-at-home order in most countries as humanity battles, the economic and social impact of the rampaging novel Coronavirus (COVID-19), Venture Garden Group (VGG) has announced a full transition to remote working mode with minimal business disruption.
In an online chat with journalists, Chief Executive Officer, Bunmi Akinyemiju said the remote working protocol is built into the company’s culture and the fabric of its regular operations, so temporarily closing down physical activities at its iconic campus, Vibranium Valley, by activating 100% staff remote work, including “essential services” like customer support, was not a difficult call.
“Given the exigencies of commuting in a busy metropolis like Lagos, we decided a long time ago to design our system such that, staff can work remotely occasionally. Although we never anticipated a situation where all staff will have to work remotely simultaneously, as we have now, this fundamental step has allowed us to transit into remote work mode with minimal (if any) business disruption, ahead of government’s directives and for the safety of our stakeholders”, explained Akinyemiju.
To further buttress its point on deploying remote working initiatives, the company also announced the forthcoming graduation of interns from its maiden Virtual Internship Programme (VIP) for tech talents across the globe. The program saw undergraduates and graduates alike develop much-needed competencies in applications’ User Interface/User Experience design (UI/UX) and website design (using HTML, CSS, JavaScript, React), programming languages (Java, Python), hosting of websites/applications, versioning, business logic, data management, etc.
Speaking on the initiative, Akinyemiju said, “In 2019, we decided to provide upskilling initiatives for burgeoning tech talents across the country free of charge. We have always believed in the future of work being digitally enabled GIG workers, and this inspired the re-design of our internship programmes converting the structure from a previous physical to a purely online programme, while continuing to leverage the expertise of our staff as our faculty. What we found was a huge demand for the programme with more than 1,000 participants joining this programme from continents all across the world. This was only possible through the remote learning approach we introduced, and we are very pleased with the quality of interns in the programme. In fact, we recently had several participants from the programme join our companies as full-time staff, the selected winners of a keenly contested coding challenge facilitated in February after three months of intensive learning.”
When tasked with a question on initiatives VGG is introducing to service customers during this trying period, Mr. Akinyemiju shared the bold steps being taken across the VGG companies. He said, “Following the successful rollout of our remote working initiative, we have started helping our customers replicate the same for their businesses. We are also working with them on strategies for meeting their business goals despite the crisis. Through our venture capital arm, GreenHouse Capital, we are working with startups, governments and sister tech companies to birth solutions to address salient problems to stem the COVID-19 spread or cushion the impact of this crisis on the Nigerian people. With the transformative work technology has done in Nigeria in the last decade, we are very confident that smart solutions have a pivotal role to play in curbing the spread of COVID-19 and we are on the hunt for such solutions. More interventions will be rolled out in the coming week with some partnerships across other industries to support more Nigerians stay at home as we contribute our quota to flattening the curve and stopping the spread of this virus.”
In operation since 2011, VGG is a holding company and investor in several fintech companies addressing payment and data inefficiencies in various sectors and providing solutions for public and private sector companies.