Will smart working withstand the health emergency? Absolutely yes, even if downsizing slightly and exposing some problems that have emerged in recent months and are still unresolved. The observatory of the same name at the Milan Polytechnic is drawing up a map of smart working in Italy, which meanwhile gives the numbers: during the most acute phase of the emergency, smart working involved 97% of large companies, 94% of public Italian administrations and 58% of SMEs, per a total of 6,58 million agile workers, about a third of Italian employees, over ten times more than the 570 surveyed in 2019. In the so-called New Normal, when this nightmare is over but we will have become accustomed to the convenience of smart working (which does not mean teleworking tout court but a mix of solutions , under the paradigm of "working for results"), there will still be 5,35 million smart workers in Italy, of which 1,72 million in large companies, 920 thousand in SMEs, 1,23 million in micro-enterprises and 1,48 million in PA.
To adapt to this "new normal" of work, according to the Milan Polytechnic 70% of large companies will increase their remote working days, bringing them on average from one to 2,7 days a week, and also one out of two will change the physical spaces. Smart working projects will be introduced in the PAs (48%), the number of people involved in projects will increase (72%) and remote working will take place on average 1,4 days a week (47%), compared to the current average day. But is all this really so comfortable and effective? Not really, and the problem has not been and will not be only the technological unpreparedness of SMEs, half of which have not even been able to operate remotely, due to lack of tools, and have had to suspend their activities. However, even large companies have suffered from this aspect: 69% of these have had to increase the availability of laptops and other hardware tools and even 3/4 of public administrations have encouraged employees to use personal devices, due to the limitations of expenditure and technological backwardness.
But another big issue, often underestimated, is that of the so-called work-life balance, or the difficulty in separating work time and private time, which affects almost one in three smart workers. 29%, according to the Milan Polytechnic, had and still have difficulty "experiencing a feeling of isolation from the organization as a whole". The complicated work-life balance was also there first barrier to overcome for large companies (58%), followed by the workload disparity between some less busy and some overworked workers (40%), unpreparedness of managers to manage remote work (33%) and limited digital skills of staff (31%). In the public administrations, on the other hand, the greatest difficulties concerned the disparity in the workload (39%), then the balance between private and professional life (33%) and scarce digital skills (31%).
But despite these strains and difficulties, businesses and workers also recognize clear benefits. In fact, the vast majority of smart workers notice a positive effect of remote working on performance of the organization: 73% consider their concentration in work activities to be good or excellent, for 76% effectiveness has increased, for 72% efficiency and for 65% it has brought innovation to work. In large companies, the digital skills of employees have improved (71%), prejudices about smart working have been set aside (65%), business processes have been rethought (59%) and awareness of the resilience capacity of one's organization has increased (60% ). In the PAs, the most evident benefit is the opportunity to experiment with new digital tools (56%), followed by the improvement of workers' digital skills (53%), and the rethinking of company processes (42%).
“The Covid-19 emergency – he commented Mariano Corso, scientific director of the Smart Working Observatory – accelerated a transformation of the work organization model that in normal times would have taken years, demonstrating that smart working can involve a potentially very large number of workers, provided that processes are digitized and staff are equipped with adequate tools and skills. Now it is necessary to rethink work in order not to waste the experience of recent months and to switch to real smart working, which must provide for greater flexibility and autonomy in the choice of place and working hours, fundamental elements to push greater responsibility for results . We need to put people at the center with their needs, talents and uniqueness, structuring training, involvement and welfare plans that help people express their potential to the fullest".
