Amid rising transport costs triggered by the fuel challenges in Zimbabwe, Econet Group staff have received a major boost as the corporate has started offering employees VAYA staff shuttles to commute to and from work and VAYA school shuttle services to handle their children’s school run.
“These two initiatives come with two-pronged benefits; providing affordable convenience to our valued staff teams, and increasing employee productivity as less time is now spent in fuel queues and on school runs,” said Mr. Eddie Chibi, the CEO of Cassava Smartech Zimbabwe.
VAYA staff shuttle service works by grouping employees who live in the same residential areas or zones and using similar routes in clusters of 5 to 10 employees to transport teams economically. The Staff Shuttle service is already in use by several corporate organizations, including BancABC, Boka Tobacco and Nyaradzo, among others.
The service allows employers to support their staff by reducing
their transport costs as well as having control when employees need to travel
locally on company business.
Mr Chibi said the VAYA school shuttle, which for now is still
only accessible to Econet Group employees as a pilot, worked in a similar
manner.
“Parents simply register their children in clusters based on
residential area and school location. The service facilitates all the picks ups
and drop-offs, and so providing a safe and reliable school run alternative,” Mr
Chibi said.
He said Cassava Smartech was looking to launch the service to
the public in September “just in time for the third school term”.
Commenting on the two products, Cassava On-Demand Services
CEO Mrs Dorothy Zimuto said the concept of ‘car-pooling’ – which is widely used
in Western countries – ensures socially-friendly, safe, and affordable means of
transportation to and from the workplace.
“Having our staff use the service daily has given us a direct
customer feedback system because now, more than ever, we have direct, actionable
feedback which we are using to understand and improve the service experience,”
Mrs Zimuto said, adding that this allowed the company to constantly improve the
VAYA service. “Our design teams have that much more experiential empathy and
design intelligence,” said Mrs Zimuto added.
