One week after returning to the office with mandatory green pass come first smart working guidelines for civil servants. The new rules, which will be established by contracts and individual agreements between the PA and the worker, were presented this morning by the Minister of Public Administration, Renato Brunetta, to the unions.
Due the basics to start from: it will be the administration that will have to provide its employees with the "necessary technologies" to work and a balance between the worker's work and private life will have to be guaranteed. "Today's discussion was necessary because, pending the definition of renewals and therefore the regulation of smart working in contracts, but also the approval by 31 January of the integrated activity and organization plans (Piao), we think it is useful for the 32 Italian administrations to be able to count on smart working guidelines that anticipate what will be foreseen in the contracts”, Brunetta explained, underlining that “From the end of January we will have structured, regulated, contractualized and organized smart working outside the emergency, which will have to fully form part of one of the ways of organizing work in the Public Administration, concluded the minister.
SMART WORKING IN THE PA: THE GENERAL RULES
The public administration that intends to use smart working must guarantee "the invariance of services returned to users” but also “adequate staff rotation authorized to perform agile work, ensuring in any case the prevalence of face-to-face work for each worker". Hence the text containing the guidelines presented by Minister Brunetta to the unions. It will therefore not be possible to work remotely 5 days out of 5, but it will be necessary to alternate agile work with office work, however spending most of the days behind the "official desk".
INTERNET AND TECH TOOLS
In no case, the worker in smart working will be able to use your landline to work from home. Workers must be provided "suitable technological equipment” and only “the internet connection provided by the employer” should be used to access the applications and services of your institution. The aim is to protect "the absolute confidentiality of the data and information processed during the performance of smart working" . Two methods of access have been established: the cloud, if it has been activated by the administration, or the VPN.
SMART WORKING AND DISCONNECT
Smart working civil servants must be guaranteed an adequate work-life balance. For this reason, workers will have the right to a "consecutive daily rest period of no less than 11 hours to recover of psychophysical energies”, exactly as provided for in the contract for face-to-face work. The guidelines also recall that smart working can be done without time constraints "within the maximum daily and weekly working hours established by the CCNL". The worker also has the possibility of requesting hourly, personal, family, trade union permits and those of law 104. On days when smart working is done - the text clarifies - "it is not possible to carry out overtime, travel, disadvantaged work, work carried out in conditions of risk”. For service needs, the employee in smart working can be called back to the office at least the day before. Return to service does not entail the right to the recovery of unused smart working days.
PUBLIC EMPLOYEES: OK FOR REMOTE WORKING TOO
The guidelines also establish the possibility of opting for "home teleworking". In this case the employee will have to comply with the time constraints, in the same way as the office. It will be possible to work from home, in coworking or carry out one's own "decentralized work from satellite centres" activity. The administration will be required to check the eligibility conditions and the risk of accidents, at least quarterly.
INDIVIDUAL AGREEMENT
No more emergency remote work. Everything must be established through an individual agreement between employer and employee in which to establish the duration (possible early termination), times, methods of exercise and power of control.
