Smart Working, after Covid there will be no turning back - Lifestyle

During the lockdown over six and a half million Italians worked in smart working, at the end of the Covid emergency only a part of these will return to work as before. Most, more than 5 million, will not come back. It is the photograph taken by the Smart Working Observatory of the School of Management of the Politecnico di Milano, which in a research has highlighted the technological difficulties and the management of the workload but also the balance with the life needs of agile work, by overcoming prejudices and thinking about a new normal. In the most acute phase of the coronavirus there were 6.58 million emergency smart workers (2.11 million in large companies, 1.85 million in the Public Administration, 1.13 million in Small and Medium Enterprises, 1.5 million in micro-enterprises), about one third of Italian employees, more than ten times more than the 570 thousand surveyed in 2019. In September - the study calculates - with patchy returns, smart workers dropped to 5.06 million. But remote work - explains the Observatory - has now entered the daily life of Italians and is destined to remain there: at the end of the Covid emergency it is estimated that those who at least partially work from home will be 5.35 million. And 70% of large companies will increase the days of remote work taking them on average from one to 2.7 days a week, while one in two will modify the physical spaces. However, the study highlights how smart working has revealed the technological fragility of companies, even the largest ones. 69% of these, for example, had to increase the availability of laptops and other hardware tools. 38% gave workers the ability to use personal devices. Three quarters of public administrations also encouraged employees to use personal devices due to spending constraints and technology backwardness. 43% did not integrate the personal endowment of employees. Among the negative elements, the fact that a lot of teleworking and little smart working have been done: 29% of workers have encountered difficulties in separating work and private time and maintaining a balance between the two aspects (28%), in addition to experience a feeling of isolation towards the organization as a whole (29%). Among the positive aspects, in large companies the improvement of the digital skills of employees (71%) and the rethinking of business processes (59%). "The Covid19 emergency has accelerated a transformation of the work organization model that in normal times would have taken years - says Mariano Corso, Scientific Director of the Smart Working Observatory - Now it is necessary to rethink the work in order not to waste the experience of these months and to move to real smart working which must provide for greater flexibility and autonomy in the choice of place and time of work, fundamental elements to push greater responsibility for results ".