Smart working is changing: starting today the one guaranteed by the simplified procedures activated during Covid for those suffering, for example, from certain pathologies ends and it will only be possible to rely on individual agreements between the company and workers. At the same time, the extension of smart working in the private sector for parents of minors under 14 expires.
A new phase for a growing phenomenon: after the peaks of the pandemic and a gradual reduction in the last two years, in 2023 remote workers in our country will settle at 3, 585 million, slightly up on the 3,570 million in 2022, but 541% more than pre-Covid. In 2024 it is estimated there will be 3.65 million smart workers in Italy, as found by the Smart Working Observatory of the School of Management of the Polytechnic of Milan.
In this scenario "we therefore return to the model established in 2017. Covid had led to a massive use of the tool, which migrated from organizational innovation towards an emergency purpose. This generated two system effects: on the one hand, detaching smart working from the strictly entrepreneurial purpose, but on the other hand it has demonstrated its wide practicability and its benefits also on a social level", observes labor law expert Francesco Rotondi, advisor to Cnele, founder of the LabLaw firm.
"The first phase of skepticism was followed by a phase of excessive optimism, which in some respects underestimated the need to combine smart working with the 'organizational style' of companies", underlines Rotondi. For this reason, the need for a regulatory restyling of the 2017 law is being discussed, even if the greatest critical issue appears to be that which concerns the adaptation of the company organization to the instrument. Because a social demand has forcefully emerged which identifies smart working as a very effective tool for conciliation of times of work, care and life, which goes as far as invoking a 'right' to smartworking", he concludes.
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