Day In the Life of a SafeBoda Operations Associate

4 min readSep 28, 2021

You might have seen snippets from the work-life at the Okada Geng office, heard about the free food and the jolly people. But what’s a full day like working as a SafeBoda employee?

Let’s get a peek following Malcolm Douglas-Chinda around for a day. Malcolm is an Operations Associate working in the Riders’ Performance and Engagement (P&E) subteam- Ensuring onboarded riders stay with and are happy riding for SafeBoda. The role has him immersed in data sorting and analysis, brainstorming sessions, community management, etc. Shall we?😉

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7:00AM

Up and doing some yoga! Flexing some muscles to slow afrobeats music playing from my speakers.

8:25AM

Dressed and ready for work. I order a SafeBoda, get one in a few mins and head out. Enroute now, I ask the rider to make a quick stop for me to get a cup of coffee.

9:00AM

I write my to-do. A few daily constants are:

- Check sheet for the activity of riders onboarded the previous day.

- Outbound calls to riders that almost hit the bonuses the previous day.

I do my routine check on the metrics sheet (Our performance database) — For the previous day, I check the Total ride numbers, Customers/Riders cancellation, Daily active riders, First-time active riders, etc.

A picture of a workstation featuring a laptop, a coffee cup and a notepad — But first, coffee.

9:30AM

Brainstorming sesh with the subteam led by my Team Lead, Olusola.

I start with a dramatic “Welcome to my TED Talk’’ which has my team members rolling their eyes. It’s a team of 5.

Today we talk about how to make our online rider communities engaging. Someone suggests we have riders send their rides history to the community group- Top performers are rewarded with airtime/gifts. We also review our ongoing campaign- the SafeBoda appreciation campaign which has been a success so far.

Image showing Malcolm with colleagues working and looking at their laptops

10:00AM

I begin to look at data sheets to track the activities of Kindergarten (new) riders. I sort through the data to make inferences for possible action points.

I put together a report to reward top-performing Kindergarten riders, I share with the Fraud team to vet, then with the Finance team for the rewards.

Image of him at his workstation, looking at his laptop

11:AM: Meeting with the Marketing Team

We start by mock dragging each other for Riders (my team) and Customers availability (Marketing team). For a ride-hailing company, getting the balance right between the availability of riders and customers is key.

After the jokes and jabs, we plan a roadshow slated for later that week aimed at riders onboarding and customer acquisition.

12 NOON: Lunch time!

My second favourite time of the day (Dinner is my first).

Lunch for today is yam porridge, vegetables and fish. I go grab my lunch and go back to the Ops office.

Image of a plate of porridge, vegetables and fish

As the resident DJ in that space, I open Spotify on my PC to play Mood by Wizkid. I look around to see a few heads nod. Yup, not the resident DJ for nothing😊

I walk to another room in the office to check up on the P&E agents (A team that helps us call inactive riders, find out why they churned, and try to reactivate them).

1:00PM

I track the performance of reactivated churned riders and analyze.

I watch an interesting YouTube video about an airplane that time traveled. My best friend says I like conspiracy theories and always want them to be true. She’s always right but not on this one😑

2:00PM

I prepare slides for the General Operations Standup on Friday- Collate data on Riders’ activity and list every key thing we’ve (my sub-team) done so far in the week.

3:00PM

I open the heat map to know the number of ride requests we have and drivers that are online so I can predict what the collated performance data will look like the next day. God no go shame us🙏

Image of a team of 5. One male, one female, one male, one female and one male (From L-R) — Riders’ Performance and Engagement Team

4:00PM:

The Ops Manager requests data of riders that did a low number of rides between particular dates and how they did after we called/sent comms to them. I pull the data and share it with him.

I did some outbound calls to riders that almost hit our bonus tiers to encourage them to do more.

5:00PM: COB!

I close my laptop and go to other departments to say hi to friends there.

5:30PM

I carry my helmet and order a ride to Kilimanjaro to buy dinner. We pass by the gym I’ve been saying I’ll register at for 4 months now, I take my eyes off the gym and focus on thoughts of the good things coming at the end of the ride. :))

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