Rome – From today it will be less easy to work from home: due to the opportunity but also the burden of producing directly from home we are returning to the old rules. But the possibilities offered by smart work (reconciling family time, less pollution and congestion in cities, for example) have left their mark and an evolution of this instrument is now hypothesized. Not only that: the discussion on the short week is also starting to take shape in Parliament: the examination of the opposition's bill begins on Thursday in the representative office of the Chamber's Labor Commission.
Starting from today, the smart working guaranteed by the simplified procedures activated during Covid (for example for some pathologies) ends and it will only be possible to rely on individual agreements between company and workers. 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 growing compared to the 3.570 million in 2022, but well 541% more than pre-Covid. In 2024 it is estimated there will be 3.65 million smart workers in Italy, found 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 by decoupling smart working with a strictly entrepreneurial purpose, but on the other hand it has demonstrated its wide practicability and its benefits also on a social level”, observes the labor law expert Francesco Rotondi, CNEL advisor and founder of the LabLaw firm.
Again according to the Polytechnic of Milan, almost all large companies (96%) included smart working initiatives within them, largely with structured models, and with 20% of companies committed to extending the application to technical and operational profiles as well previously excluded. Smart working was also present in 56% of SMEs and 61% of public bodies, with structured initiatives present especially in larger entities. Smart working – the Polytechnic of Milan still found – has generated important effects on the environment: 2 days a week of remote working avoids the emission of 480kg of CO2 per person per year thanks to the reduction in travel and less use of offices. Important transformations also affected habits: 44% of those who worked remotely did so – at least on some occasions – from places other than their home, such as coworking spaces, other company offices or other places in the city. “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. “The starting point – he continues – for a mature analysis of smart working should be the rethinking of the modus operandi of subordination, which must increasingly tend to strengthen the link between the way of providing the performance and the results expected by the entrepreneur. This connection it is inherent in the very nature of smart working, as work that cannot be measured based only on the time of performance, with subjection to controls in the workplace, but also and above all based on the results produced”. Because of this “the need for a regulatory restyling is being discussed of the 2017 law, although the greatest criticality appears to be that which concerns the adaptation of the company organization to the instrument. Because a social demand has forcefully emerged that identifies smart working as a very effective tool for reconciling work, care and life times, which goes as far as invoking a 'right' to smart working”, he concludes.
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