Offices fill up again and companies reopen and welcome employees, putting aside the lockdown but not smart working. Covid has changed the world and, on the labor front, nothing will be the same. Certainly, the return to GDP growth is heartening. Despite the Green pass, however, some habits of the pandemic boom period will not be abandoned. Just take a quick turn of the horizon between companies to see that agile work has made it through. Many lenders, for example, have decided to continue on this path. Two days a week we work in the office and the rest at home. It will be like this from 1 November in Unicredit, the second largest banking group in the country. “As already mentioned - writes Unicredit - we take this opportunity to remind all colleagues who work in the central structures that from November 1st they will be asked to return to the office for at least two days a week. We will follow up with further information on this issue and on the return procedures ".
Flexibility
This will also be the case in many companies, where the password becomes flexibility to ensure greater employee satisfaction and ensure greater productivity. Trade union agreements and understandings with the individual worker will then make it possible to set the stakes. "The data speak for themselves, half of Italian workers want to work in a hybrid way, a quarter even in full remote: here lies the challenge for companies, the ability to truly build a smart way of working, overcoming the concepts of time, stamping, control and building work by objectives ”, explains Alessandro Rimassa, founder of Radical Hr and one of the leading Italian experts in future of work. Concepts that recall those written in black and white in his publications by the sociologist Domenico de Masi who for years has been talking about the need for teleworking and the possibility of initiating actions for agile work practices.
The searches
A recent research developed by LinkedIn and published by Ansa, on the future of work in Italy, highlights how perception is changing also in our country. The report shows that 47% of Italian professionals who participated in the survey prefer a hybrid model between working in the office and working from home, 30% would prefer to work full-time in the office, and almost 23% full-time. from home. The data is particularly important for women: 52.9% showed a greater preference for smart working.
The preference for the hybrid model also emerges from Accenture's report “The Future of Work: Productive Anywhere” recently published by Il Sole 24 Ore. Conducted in March on a sample of over 9,300 employees on an international scale and in different sectors, the study also shows that 40% of the interviewees believe they can be productive and satisfied whether they carry out their profession completely remotely, or physically in their company or following a hybrid model.
The primary goal of those who want to work even remotely is to better reconcile personal life and work. Furthermore, they want to reduce the problems associated with commuting. In this scenario, therefore, the return to the office is not seen in a negative way, but what is asked and that many companies also consider positive is to implement a hybrid formula, in which remote work is reconciled with company dynamics.
Irreversible model
Not all companies and not all businesses will be able to apply hybrid models, but the largest and most digitized ones will certainly be able to make progress. According to the Smart working Observatory of the Politecnico di Milano, in fact, this formula is “now irreversible” and in large companies there will be a consolidation and extension of agile work. The near future, therefore, will be characterized by better flexibility. Not only. In this context, technological solutions are fundamental, especially since a scenario is envisaged in which the “cloud”, that is the IT cloud in which to store data, will greatly facilitate the new forms of agile or hybrid activity. Just think of everything that was done before when physically visiting a customer and of the modern forms of meetings on the Zoom, Teams and more platforms, to show how much time and effort can save companies.
"Investing in training is the only possible solution, because this time there is the health of companies at risk: companies that do not implement hybrid work and true smart working will lose their workers - starting with the most talented - putting them at risk growth and stability of the company itself. The LinkedIn research, on the other hand, is clear: already a quarter of workers, among those called back to the office, have asked for flexibility of days and hours: to allow people to overcome the contrast between work and private life and to help workers develop a true "Life Balance" and "Wellbeing" will enter, on a par with salary, among the things that will allow companies to attract and retain talented people ”, concludes Alessandro Rimassa, founder of Radical Har and curator of the research carried out for LinkedIn.
