Is working in smart working worth it? While on the one hand companies like it more and more, with 75% of companies already working to develop a company policy, on the other employees like it less due to the high bill of electricity and gas bills. These are some of the results of the research conducted by Radical HR in collaboration with, among others, PwC Italia "Smart working in Italy - present and future scenarios", with the aim of photographing the current situation and reflecting on future trends of smart working in Italian companies.
A theme that everyone discusses, but how has it evolved and is it evolving in Italy? What are the policies implemented by Italian companies? Are there differences between large companies and SMEs? There Research answers these questions and provides answers collected from concrete case studies that show how our companies deal with smart working.
Smart working increasingly in demand
Research data proves that the smart working it is increasingly establishing itself as a flexible and culturally accepted phenomenon in our country, with a quarter of companies leaving their employees the freedom to choose the days in which to work from home. There are also positive developments for the number of days granted, which in almost a third of companies (about 27%) amounts to two days out of five. In addition, the number of companies that do not want to grant smart working to their workers continues to decrease, going from 14,1% last year to 13,5%.
This is increasingly pushing companies to implement corporate policies for smart working: in fact, around 75% say they are moving in this direction, of which 50,6% have already developed them while 22,2% are working to make them.
Smart working is more popular in the North than in the South
However, the situation changes significantly depending on the size and origin of the companies: if we look at large ones with more than 10 employees, 68% already have a corporate policy on the subject; on the contrary, among companies with fewer than 10 employees, the figure drops to 25%. In addition to this, the territorial disparities are evident: compared to the northern regions, in southern Italy the number of companies that have implemented policies dedicated to smart working is extremely smaller.
Difficulties
However, the research highlights a few critical issues: 57,8% of companies declare that smart working makes it difficult to maintain a good level of employee engagement; for 56,6%, it is difficult to make the company attractive and retain talent; 48,5% struggle to convey the corporate culture through smart working.
Furthermore, the data highlights that only 18,9% of HR believes that smart working has an impact on talent management and only 26,9% detects a positive impact on performance management.
As also pointed out Alexander Rimassa, founder of Radical HR, in reality smart working “turns out to be much more effective for more professionals seniorwhile also increasing their productivity. On the contrary, it is undeniable that it can generate some problems for the figures junior , making it more complex to convey not only the corporate culture, but also the skills necessary to do one's job in the best possible way".
Reason why hybrid forms of alternation between smart working and office work would be more effective.
Is working in smart working worth it? More to businesses
The use of smart working cannot ignore the current context. With the high energy costs, has explained Andrea Malacrida, country manager of The Adecco Group and founder of Phyd, "both employees and companies find themselves reevaluating their priorities in relation to this tool". Among the advantages it guarantees, in addition to savings on bills (expenditure which, however, must be borne by the smart worker), the potential increase in savings on the costs of managing physical spaces (especially for small businesses) and the effect it can have in terms reduction of absenteeism. For the workers, the disadvantages are above all the increased insulation and obviously the fixed costs.
This is the reason why, Malacrida points out, "we are seeing the birth of new interesting forms, destined in some way to change the labor market". For example, the City of Milan, to reduce heating costs, he proposed smart working on Mondays and Fridays and face-to-face work on other days. Or you start thinking about the introduction of the short working week. "A solution destined, without a doubt, to carve out more and more space in the public debate", according to Malacrida.
