Tekedia Institute is honoured to welcome Mr. Anngu Orngu to Tekedia Mini-MBA which begins Feb 7, 2022. Mr. Orngu is the Senior Special Assistant To The Benue State Governor on Student Affairs. In 2022, Tekedia Institute will be training thousands of young people from Benue State on entrepreneurial capitalism and business systems through Tekedia CollegeBoost, a mini-MBA designed for students. Welcome, the Food Basket of the nation.

Connect with us to learn how Tekedia Institute could help the young people of your LGA, state and community. Visit Tekedia Institute school.tekedia.com

Our Faculty members come from respected local and global institutions like Shell, Flutterwave, Microsoft, Coca Cola, MTN, Schlumberger, Access Bank, Jobberman, etc.

In addition to antitrust scrutiny, the Big Tech is reckoning with increasing workforce revolt that is gradually becoming a threat to their business growth. Amazon, Apple and Facebook have recently had to deal with workers’ fight-back in forms of resignation, attempt to unionize and unusual protests.

These companies have for years kept their workers under total control, that apart from leaks, the companies had had little to nothing to worry about when it comes to employees’ behavior. But there is an evitable shift from the status quo that the companies are inadvertently bending the rules to accept.

On Christmas Eve, a group of Apple workers demanding better working conditions in the company’s stores, staged a walkout.

The walkout had as much as 50 workers who the organizers said they called out of work on Friday, complaining about issues ranging from insufficient paid sick leave and a lack of pandemic hazard pay.

This is coming on the heels of Amazon’s settlement Agreement with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), which concedes some measures of unionization rights to the e-commerce giant’s workers.

Amazon workers, who have been in loggerheads with the company over their attempts to unionize, got a reprieve after the settlement allowed them the right to, among other things, organize a union around the company’s facilities, which Amazon previously forbids.

In its share of the employees’ troubles, Facebook has seen more workers challenge the status quo in 2021 than ever before. The bombshell of the year being the leak of concealed findings of the social media’s internal research by Frances Haugen, Facebook’s former product manager. The findings reveal that Facebook knows how much harm it causes but chooses to ignore it – choosing profit over morality. The revelation attracted a senate committee hearing with Haugen’s testimony.

In addition, Facebook has lost a bunch of talents this year. The decision of the employees to leave has been largely attributed to dissatisfaction with happenings in the company.

In August, the #AppleToo hashtag became a trend after the Apple Together worker group organized an online protest. The group which consists of anonymous accounts from current and former Apple employees, made hundreds of tweets alleging instances of verbal abuse, sexual harassment, pay equity issues and other problems at the company.

Janneke Parrish, a former corporate Apple employee who helped support organizers of the walkout, said that while those participating in Friday’s action represent a small fraction of Apple’s 80,000 employees in retail and beyond in the U.S., it is still “significant” to have workers speak out against the behemoth tech company.

“Apple workers are fed up with being unheard,” Parrish said, adding that Friday’s action aims to “make sure people are aware of how retail workers are being treated.”

Last month, Parrish filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) claiming she was fired for helping coworkers share their experiences of sexism and other discrimination at Apple.

Parrish isn’t the only Apple employee who got fired for attempting to challenge the status quo. Ashley Gjøvik, a former Apple product manager, was terminated after attempting to organize workers, sharing stories of sexual harassment. She also filed an NLRB complaint against Apple.

The organizing group, Apple Together, asked people to support workers by boycotting Apple products on Christmas Eve.

Like Apple, Amazon has had growing complaints from its workers since the pandemic began. NLRB’s database shows that more than 75 complaints of unfair practices had been lodged against the Cupertino behemoth.

Google has been on and off the hook.

The firing of workers as a deterrent mechanism is proving not to dampen the spirit of others who have been coming out of the shadows. Though the employees’ fight-back has been largely seen as insignificant, the recent uptick and support from NLRB is indicating that the Big Tech will have a fresh concern to worry about.

There may be nothing more frustrating for an entrepreneur than a day without a schedule, except a day where you have scheduled a lot more than you can possibly get done. Just like we sometimes loosely say that there will always be work to do on a farm, there is always so much to do in a startup and as you scale up and expand, the list grows.

In drawing up a list or setting a goal, there are recommendations to make it SMART – Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Time-bound. These are general recommendations but entrepreneurs find them useful. I would like to add one or two things you should ask before adding any item to your to-do list as an entrepreneur.

Is it important?

There are a lot of things to do, ranging from mundane or routine tasks to highly critical ones. Before entering a task into your schedule, calendar, or to-do list, ask yourself whether the task is important?

Can it be ignored without dire consequences? Is it one of those things you just do for the sake of doing it, and not because it really achieves anything in the long run? If the task is not important, skip it. You want to keep your list as lean and practical as possible, instead of crowding it with unimportant tasks that may tire you out.

Can it be delegated?

Some tasks are important, but you do not absolutely have to be the one to get them done. There are tasks that can be delegated to someone who is equally competent on your team. If it can be delegated and you are certain that the assignee can deliver the same or even better quality than you would, take it off your list and delegate it. If you do not have a team member who can handle it, you have to do your analysis and decide if it would be cheaper (time and money) to outsource. This can help you free up your calendar a bit and focus on higher priorities.

Can it be postponed or rescheduled without consequence?

A task may be important but not so time-bound that you cannot reschedule it. Can you do it tomorrow? If you have decided that this task cannot be delegated but is not time-bound either, you can move it down your to-do list. This tip is not a way to justify procrastination, but simply means you should appreciate your time as a valuable, finite resource and decide to attend to the most pressing matters first.

Does the task unlock other tasks?

Does this task unlock other tasks? Are there other things I will not be able to do until I get it done?

A task may not be important on its own, but might be a gateway task that unlocks some important tasks. When I say gateway, I mean it opens the way to other tasks which cannot be done unless it is out of the way. For instance, there could be a not-so-important meeting which is holding back other employees or staff from carrying out their own tasks. As a team, you work in a chain and these are tasks that you need to get done for others to get their tasks done too.

Once you have spotted out a gateway task, place it at the top of your list and get it done.

Can it be automated?

We are in a digital age that may soon be largely powered by artificial intelligence. If it is possible to automate a task, especially recurring tasks, get it automated as soon as possible.