Smart working at the final exams. After the emergency phase, which has forced many companies to make a virtue of necessity, the time comes when the new way of working enters into union agreements and in many cases becomes one of the options for carrying out the activity.
Growing numbers
If the outbreak of the pandemic had brought about 9 million Italians to work from home in the spring of 2020, last year smart working affected 7.26 million people, 32.5% of the employed. An almost triple number compared to the 2.46 million recorded in 2019. The figures emerge from a study conducted by the INAP (National Institute for the Analysis of Public Policies), entitled “Remote work: implementation methods, tools and the workers’ point of view ”, conducted on a sample of 45 thousand people. In particular, it emerged that 11.6% of Italian workers in 2021 resorted to smart working once a week, while half from three to five days.
Structural changes
So far the data acquired, which have been affected by the various pandemic waves. With the number of infections that is decreasing, a new phase begins, with companies and the Public Administration that in many cases will adopt agile work no longer only in emergency situations, but as part of the working system. The general level of satisfaction among workers pushes in this direction (seven out of ten interviewees expressed a positive opinion), but also the awareness on the employer front that this path allows to reduce costs (from utilities to the leasing of spaces, up to many cases to meal vouchers) and increase staff loyalty. However, there are some critical issues. The workers interviewed by INAP indicate the lack of sociality in the first place, followed by the increase in the costs of domestic users and the difficulty in disconnecting from work, given that the PC at hand pushes many companies to consider employees always available .
Looking for solutions
These are issues that are addressed by organizations committed to regulating agile work for the season of the “new normal”, often resorting to listening and sharing with staff. So far, in fact, only in 16.5% of cases the organizational change has occurred through a collective agreement (therefore presumably through the intermediation of trade unions) and in 14.3% through individual agreement. In the other cases, however, there was no formalization.