At first it was a pandemic-related imposition, but now more than two out of three companies see remote working as an opportunity. According to a survey conducted by Aidp, the association of personnel directors, 68% of companies will continue to use home working even after the end of the Covid-19 emergency. In detail, 58% of companies will continue with smart working also in 2021, while only 26% plan to interrupt this experience between November and December of this year. In short, the judgment is largely positive: almost three out of four companies (74%) believe that the advantages of smart working are greater than the critical issues and 30% will make new organizational interventions inspired by the principles of smart working.
Yes, but how long do you normally stay at home with this way of organizing your work? It's good to clarify that teleworking and smart working are not synonymous: the first consists of always and in any case working remotely, while the second identifies a method of organizing work which provides for a more or less frequent alternation between home and office activities. In the coming months, in fact, over 70% of companies will reserve two or three days a week to smart working activities.
The Aidp also makes a ranking of those that companies consider the greatest advantages associated with smart working:
- time savings and travel costs for workers (69%);
- greater employee satisfaction and improvement of life in terms of work-life balance (64%);
- increased individual responsibility (46%).
On the other side of the balance, the disadvantages most frequently detected are
- the loss of social relationships (62%);
- the lack of separation between the home and work environment (32%);
- the risk of work overload (21%).
"The epidemic emergency has created the conditions, temporary and forced, for a sort of mass experimentation of working from home, which is different from the concept of smart working, as we all know - explains Isabella Covili Faggioli, President of Aidp - Our a survey among personnel directors highlighted two fundamental trends: the post-Covid period will see a sustained growth of smart working as a structural tool for organizing work with higher percentages than before; in the assessment between risks and opportunities, the latter have a very high perception of the critical issues that exist. Thus, a new phase of rethinking the future of work opens in which it will be necessary to balance the opportunities well with the disadvantages and above all a collaborative spirit will be necessary between the parties which avoids the polarization of the confrontation ".
