Not all companies have had to quickly adapt to the new paradigm of smart working. There are companies that had started agile work projects well before the epidemic of Covid-19 and who have benefited from their foresight. Employees also benefited both because the transition from working in the office to working at home was not problematic, and because companies that were already dealing with the topic of smart working did not confuse it with teleworking. “Smart working is not the simple transfer within the home of what you do in the office – he explains Claudia Filippone, chief Hr officer, communication & institutional relations di Rina, the Italian naval register -. It is a completely different organization of work that serves to guarantee the employee greater flexibility and independence and the company greater profitability. The worker in smart working must not be controlled but accompanied and directed; the manager must develop so-called soft skills that help him make the most of the opportunities of agile work. Among which there is also the possibility of not interrupting operations in complex situations such as that caused by the epidemic “.
Rina, which today has 2000 employees and about the same number abroad, launched a pilot smart working project in 2018, relying on the technology of Microsoft and subsequently accompanied its development by intervening on all the aspects involved. The Genoese company has for
example restructured a second office, to which 400 employees refer, in a logic of co-working and unassigned desk. And now it is the turn of the central building, where particular attention will be given to the canteen as a place of interaction. “The role of the office remains fundamental because it is the place for exchange and discussion, an activity of great importance for a certification and engineering consultancy company like ours – he continues Filippone -. Thanks to the technological tools we are equipped with today we can carry out an audit of a ship remotely and this means that the latter no longer has to be stationary in port but can also sail, provided of course that it is authorized to do so. In the maritime field it is a real revolution ”.
In the process of organizing the smart working Rina then initiated a confrontation with trade unions to reach an agreement that found the support of almost all the employees. The agreement, which entered into force on April 1st, provides that you can work up to a maximum of 12 days a month remotely and has been structured to guarantee the worker the right balance between work and private life, contemplating well-established rules. precise for the right to disconnect. Each employee who adheres to the agreement can carry out his own business
working, always within the limit of the daily and weekly working hours foreseen by the contract, with full autonomy in the organization of one’s time in the time slot 7.00-20.00. Smart working can be carried out in any suitable place, including company offices other than those to which one belongs, and the provision of a good meal is also provided for the agile working day.
Today, after almost four months of running in, about the82% of the entitled persons have joined and of these more than one in two (58%) opted for 12 days a month. “These are mainly people with families, who have declared that they save at least an hour a day for the commute to work”, concludes the head of human resources Rina. In terms of results, the organizational model adopted by the Ligurian company has already proved to work: despite the pandemic, the 2020 it closed with growth compared to 2019.
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