Throughout 2020, Covid threatens to blow up one million jobs in Italian small and medium-sized enterprises, for a reduction of the workforce equal to 10%. And we are not talking about collaborators, but about employees. The investigation raises the alarmCrisis, health emergency and work in SMEs”, created by the Fondazione Studi Consultanti del Lavoro between the end of September and mid-October on members of the Order who, since the beginning of the health emergency, have accompanied companies in managing the crisis.
The study underlines that adapting to the safety standards to deal with the Covid-19 emergency has been an important effort for many small and medium-sized enterprises, which have had to reorganize spaces, logistics, procedures and work. And now the new surge in infections has brought new difficulties.
In particular, 59% of consultants believe that today companies are equipped in the field of prevention (protective devices such as masks and gloves, sanitization of environments, social distancing). However, hardly any company would be able to bear the consequences of a new emergency. In fact, 44,7% of the interviewees declare that SMEs are on average little or not at all equipped to manage personnel in the event of contagion (direct or indirect).
In addition to the pandemic itself, the first place in the ranking of concerns is the need to have to deal with the layoff procedures (indicated as the main critical issue to be addressed in the coming weeks by 62,8% of consultants). Followed by the start of corporate restructurings (42,8%) and the reduction of the levels of productivity (42,2%). In fourth place is the management of staff needs, grappling with conciliation and quarantines, and its reorganisation.
On this last front, recourse to the smart working. Indeed, for 56,9% of Consultants, companies are doing everything possible to keep workers in the office, to the point that, on average, 8 out of 10 had already returned to the office at the end of September.
"The survey gives us a scenario that requires a broad reflection on how to avoid the worst, i.e. the closure of those companies that, thanks to the interventions of the spring, have tried to resist - comments the president of the National Council of the Order of Labor Consultants, Marina Calderone – There are good reasons to think that companies will return to pre-Covid turnover levels not before two years. However, the issue remains of how to face a 2021 which, hopefully, will be transitional”.
Meanwhile, from INPS let it be known that the recruitments activated by all private employers in the first seven months of 2020 were 2 million and 919 thousand, 38% less than in the same period of 2019. The contraction, particularly severe in April (-83%) , gradually diminished until July (-20%). The landslide involved all types of contracts, but was more accentuated for fixed-term employment relationships (intermittent, temporary, fixed-term).
