The CIO’s role has also changed and unless CIOs are savvy about the way they align work from home with the new way of doing business, they will drown the innovation that has become so much a part of the new era of working. This is the message from Lorna Hardie, regional director of VMware, and Ian Jansen Van Rensburg, VMware’s chief technologist for Sub- Saharan Africa.

“The impact of remote working is significant,” says Hardie. “It involves both a physical and psychological experience and the requirement to keep Covid-19 compliance uppermost in mind. “Managing a distributed workforce means a collective effort from the C-suite down and outcomes-based assessment. You need to be effective in retaining, nurturing and building talent and this requires thinking outside the box.”