Contract within a month.

The news arrives in Italy on the smart work front, this “flexible work” that has become a practice in the past two years. The Minister of Public Administration, Renato Brunetta, has announced that a contract is now ready aimed at regulating access to and management of smart work in the public administration, and that it will be a package of measures parallel to the vis-à-vis the employment contract. The contract will handle the regulatory part, and it should see the light within a month

“We are going through a magical moment. GDP grows by 6% – Brunetta added to the Festival of Innovation – if the green pass strategy works and if this wave, says President Draghi, means reopening, we are traveling about 7%. It is a stellar circumstance. Amazing, but this thing can’t be ignition, it has to be structural. I’m thinking of that number 7 years, which by chance is also the term of office of the President of the Republic”

Smart Business Boom: Lights and Shadows

The need to organize so-called “quick work” – which, in its original concept, is not limited to remote work, but includes a series of other features to improve times and results – has become urgent in the past two years, given that today it is about 5 million Italian. And that for many of them and for companies, it was a leap into the dark without the necessary tools, preparation, and preparation.

According to the concentrationOsservatorio smart work From the Management School of Politecnico di Milano, in 2019, only 570,000 Italian employees had tested it, rising to nearly 7 million in the first shutdown, when most businesses closed for health reasons. Politecnico di Milano expects 5 million “smart workers” to be the Italian plateau over the next few years, with some changes, however, regarding the methods applied in emergency situations. Thus work is no longer 100% smart, but more flexible, to alternate with work in existence.

Many private companies have already moved in this direction by providing flexible spaces for employees, in fact, not fixed but bookable according to needs, and activating a series of resources capable of allowing workers to re-create the optimal working environment at home. On the other hand, others decided to return to “traditional” work as quickly as possible, asking employees to return to their desks and leave the room for one day, a maximum of two days per week of smart work.

At the base of the different options there are of course different opinions regarding the productivity of workers, as well as the nature of the work that affects the possibility of being able to do it in the best possible way within the walls. From home or in any case in places other than a traditional office. Some studies have shown, for example, that smart work has positive implications for both productivity and pollution (in light of cutting emissions to reduce travel), and that if done correctly it helps maintain a greater work-life balance, highlighting All aspects in a recent study by some researchers from Stanford University and Chicago.

On the other hand, there are aspects that this concern is impossible to ignore especially some types of work and workers. Bars and restaurants, for example, have suffered a lot from smart work, losing stable customers, and in many cases smart workers finding themselves working without rules or limits (hours and tasks) and without even a proper technological platform. Moreover, in public administration, in some cases, ‘flexible working’ has been found to be simply work carried out remotely and has had repercussions on office efficiency. So it’s no coincidence that Bronita announced that she wanted to Sharp reduction in percentage of employees per year in smart work, reaching 15%.