Complete Guide to Remote Workers’ Internet Data Usage in Lagos/Ibadan

How much internet data do your remote workers need in a month to work effectively from home? Should you even hire remote workers? These questions or a variation of them have become the subject of conversations for business owners with more people either electing to work from home or businesses in Nigeria being forced to choose this option for various reasons.  So, in this post, we will give you a breakdown of how much internet data remote workers will require to work from home in 2022.

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Why Opt for Remote Work

Before March 2020, the concept of remote work was alien to many companies in Nigeria because the country is mostly a physical workspace society. However, after the first case of COVID-19 was discovered on the 27th of February, 2020, the Federal Government advised employers to start a work from home culture. State Governments took the lead by announcing that civil servants work from home. As the pandemic persisted and the lockdown was imposed, many in the private sector were faced with two choices; work from home or have their company go out of business.

Today, there are many reasons why employers may choose to have their employees work from home. Some businesses are simply best suited to a work from home culture. The high cost of real estate might make it more practical for businesses with less than 5 employees to choose to work from home. Also, when an employee lives too far from their place of business and would be spending several hours to and from work, working from home is a great option.

The type of business one engages in can also make remote work practical. For example, with many organisations now doing business online, there has been a growing need for digital assistants that would manage their online profiles. Some of these organisations have opted for hiring remote digital marketers. And so the question arises: In addition to the stipend they will be paid, how much internet data would these remote workers require monthly?

How Much Internet Data Do Remote Workers Require?

So how many gigabytes (GB) of data will a remote worker need to work effectively in a month? In our experience, it takes between 15 and 20 GB/month to perform the essential tasks of running Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or LinkedIn pages. These tasks basically involve sharing text-based posts and sending emails.  

In Lagos, most of these digital marketers/ interns reside in places around Alimosho Local Government Area, some parts of Surulere and a handful live on the Island. In Ibadan, they reside around Bodija and Ring Road. Internet Service Providers whose networks can be trusted not to impede their work are MTN and Airtel. People on Glo and Etisalat often report outages of service.

So, with N5,500 you will get 20GB worth of data for those on the MTN network. The same goes for the Airtel network. You can get a mega data plan for 30 GB for N8,000.

However, what if the work will involve photography and uploading heavier graphics? In that case, their internet data usage may go as high as 50-100 GB/month. You should then explore buying a MiFi or WiFi router and spending as high as N20,000- N30,000 on unlimited data. In Ibadan, you also have new entrants like I-World and SmartCiti Fiber to choose from.

It is always best to determine what the internet data usage per month will be and what networks works best in the location where the remote worker lives to prevent frustrations associated with internet outages.

Now that You Have Hired a Remote Worker, What Next?

Another problem most business owners have with having remote workers is that they are unable to tell whether their remote workers are actually spending time working or they are carrying out other activities.

Unfortunately, there is no foolproof way of ensuring that workers are actually working at home. All you can do is assign them the work for the day and once it is done, you should be happy with that. Having an idea of how much time is required for specific tasks will go a long way in ensuring that neither party feels cheated.

Additionally, it helps to negotiate work terms. For example, are you paying per day, per post or per graphic? You have to decide what is in your best interests and use that as the basis for negotiations.

If you are thinking of creating a strategy that would work for your business or wanting to hire an agency so that you don’t need to worry about whether the work is actually getting done, Slvr Wlf is here to help.