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“We pulled the trigger on this decision some time ago,” Webafrica chief commercial officer Greg Wright told MyBroadband. “Mweb are working remotely, much like the Webafrica team.”
Webafrica shifted to a full remote working model on 30 April 2022 and shut down its Cape Town offices in February 2023.
Unbeknownst at the time, this was towards the end of the Covid-19 pandemic, with South Africa experiencing one final surge in infections in May 2022 before the disease appeared to become endemic.
In 2023, Webafrica acquired Mweb from Dimension Data for an undisclosed sum. The companies have merged their operations, but continue to operate as independent brands.
Several property agents, including Baker Street Properties, Anvil Property Smith, and Cape Space, are currently listing Mweb’s old offices for rent at R150 per square meter for the 7,899m² space.
The City of Cape Town recently acquired the property from Spear REIT. The transaction received Competition Commission approval in October last year and went through in November.
“The disposal of the property, which forms part of Spear’s commercial office portfolio, is aligned with management’s capital recycling strategy,” the REIT said at the time.
According to the property listings, the building comes fully fitted with furniture, appliances, CCTV, and various redundancy measures to maintain a 24-hour working environment.
The building has two floors that offer a combination of largely open-plan working areas, training areas, managers’ offices, an executive suite with HR and finance offices, boardrooms, and meeting rooms.
There is a canteen area with a large terrace to cater to the entire facility and ample ablutions, strategically positioned to accommodate high-density staff requirements.
The building also has a substantial parking allocation, with five bays per 100m², including a mixture of open, covered, and basement bays.
Webafrica all-in on work-from-home
Asked what benefits Webafrica was realising from shutting down the Mweb offices, Wright said their initial reasons for doing so more than three years ago haven’t changed.
“If anything, they have been validated further,” he said.
When Webafrica first announced its shift to full remote work in May 2022, CEO Sean Nourse said they weighed the decision carefully before implementing it.
“The main concern in the decision is how it would affect the staff’s wellbeing and productivity, as well as how it will affect their customer experience,” Webafrica CEO Sean Nourse said.
Webafrica’s offices were open to staff to use during lockdown. However, they found that very few staff members would choose to come in, leaving the building eerily quiet.
Rather than forcing staff to return to the office, Nourse said they continuously evaluated the situation and surveyed staff to determine their preferences.
The overwhelming consensus was that staff found working from home offered far more benefits than returning to the office.
Webafrica provided employees with the equipment they needed to perform their jobs optimally, and they can do so in the comfort of their own homes.
“Remote working has exceeded our expectations in terms of employee productivity and the savings our staff gain by not travelling to work,” Nourse said.
“On average, by working from home, we save our employees approximately 2.5 hours a day in traffic and with rising petrol costs, remote working drastically reduces the burden of these increases on our staff’s pockets.”
Webafrica found that employee productivity increased by 20% and employee happiness, which is measured quarterly, is at an all-time high since moving fully remote.
The move also made it easier for staff to tend to family matters, and the company’s recruitment efforts have also benefited.
“If remote working can give our staff that extra time to spend with their children or make family responsibilities easier on them, I’d say it’s definitely worth it,” said Nourse.
Nourse also said they could now reach a much wider talent pool, unrestricted by geographical location.
Webafrica is focusing its hiring efforts in areas where customers live to give back to the communities that support them.
Photos of Mweb’s old offices
