Smart working: a practical guide on how it works

There are many public and private companies, both small and large, that have experimented with a different way of operating with their employees and contractors, and are seeking new balances to cope with the
world of work of the future
.

If the pandemic of Covid-19 brought smart working to center stage, it was then the many benefits of telecommuting that prompted realities to wonder how to proceed, whether to ask their workers for a mixed regime of office presence and remote working or to shelve the experience.

What is smart working

Before even analyzing its benefits, it is necessary to understand why it is called smart working and what this mode of work consists of.

A term adopted from Anglo-Saxon culture, sometimes translated into Italian as “agile work,” doing smart work does not simply mean working from home. It is a management philosophy that aims to provide workers with flexibility and autonomy in choosing their own times and places to perform their tasks.

Smart Working is based on three basic principles: flexibility of place and time, technology, and change of corporate culture.

Unlike telecommuting, smart working is a contractual form between company and employee within an employment relationship. For this, the definition given by the Ministry of Labor itself may come in handy: “Smart working is a mode of execution of the employee-employer relationship, characterized by the absence of time or space constraints and an organization by phases, cycles and objectives, established by agreement between employee and employer; a mode that helps the employee to reconcile work and life time and, at the same time, encourage the growth of his or her productivity“.

In smart working, workers can perform their work by alternating their presence on company premises with days without a fixed workstation, subject to the daily and weekly work limits defined by the Law and collective agreements.

How to do smart working in Italy

The law governing smart working in Italy is from June 2017. Specifically, the Jobs Act on self-employment reports measures to protect non-business self-employment and measures to encourage “flexible articulation in time and place of employment.”

It is the 2019 Budget Law that later amended Article 18 of the Jobs Act and inserted paragraph 3-bis. According to it, the employer must give priority to smart working requests made by female workers for the three years following the end of the mandatory maternity leave period, and to requests from workers with children with disabilities.

With the arrival of the pandemic and the beginning of the emergency period, the regulations were adapted with the February 23, 2020 Implementing Decree No. 6, which provided “The suspension of work activities for enterprises excluding those that can be carried out in a home-based mode, i.e., remote mode“. Thus,simplified access to smart working was allowed for private companies and the public administration, even in the absence of the individual agreements required by current regulations. To curb possible disruptions, the Reopening Decree decided for the extension of simplified smart working until August 31, 2022.

However, there is no shortage of willingness to take the obligatory experience offered by Covid and incentivize its spread to companies and administrations: the national protocol of Smart Working in the private sector, dated Dec. 7, 2021, introduces new protections between workers and employers.

Adherence to Smart Working must be voluntary and an individual agreement must be signed, clarifying duration, modalities, tools and locations. The protocol also introduces protections for frail workers, women, and the disabled. More articulated is the situation in public administration, but even here the legislation is making progress. In fact, the Ministry has published guidelines for the PA Smart Working contract, providing guidance to administrations on how to organize contracts.

Smart working, how it works

Smart working is first and foremost a change in the concept of work and a different way of collaboration between worker and company, which is improving in terms of lifestyle for the former and productivity for the latter.

To work, smart working necessarily goes to change the culture and organizational structure of work. In fact, the relationship is set on goals to be achieved instead of hours to be worked, and control is replaced by trust as the basis of the hierarchical relationship.

If the company then has less need for physical space, it is at the same time called upon to offer the worker devices and technological tools that enable remote work, from laptop PCs to dedicated software.

In practice, smart working involves work by the employee being performed partly inside the company premises and partly outside, but without establishing fixed locations and times. The limitation that remains is the daily and weekly working hours defined by national contracts. One can work anywhere, without taking breaks at predetermined times, and the mode of work focuses on achieving goals.

The performance of work then requires the use of digital remote coordination and communication tools, devices and software that enable task sharing, meeting and video calling, and communication within teams and divisions.

Would you like to learn more about smart working? Then read our article:
“Smart wor

king: lights and shadows.”
.