The news silently passed, even in the most authoritative newspapers reports that this year the universities of South Italy recorded a 25% increase in new admissions compared to 2019. This is reasonable since the risk of a new lockdown is always upon us. Students prefer to stay close to home. From home, hundreds of thousands of people continue working. In fact, after the lockdown in March, many people have never seen their offices again. Several companies have decided to close their offices to save on rental costs and bills and perpetuate the habit of smart-working. Leaving empty diners and cafeterias during the lunch hour.
We wondered what was happening by asking these questions:
What is smart-working? What doesn’t?
Everyone talks about it and as always few know its real meaning. Before the pandemic, almost no one in Italy practiced smart-working. Suddenly, companies decided to give their employees a turbo charge, forcing them (we don’t use a random word here) to innovate. Because innovating is cool.
The results are very varied. There are those who at first tried to kill their tablet by pouring acrylic colors of their children on it or others who posted Instagram stories while sipping coffee from the terrace of the house during a call with colleagues, while someone else flushed the toilet live. Humanity is beautiful because it is varied.
Today the situation is starting to settle down. Almost everyone has learned how to mute the Zoom, and even 4 out of 5 smart workers feel happy with their condition.
Let’s start from the basics.
Since we are Italian we must speak English. Each time the reason for this choice remains a mystery. It could also be an appropriate choice if at least we knew how to speak English well. Smart in England means “intelligent”, on the contrary in Italy, smart also takes on the meaning of “fast”.
When the concept was coined abroad, of course, they uniquely had the term “intelligent” in mind. So here is the meaning of Anglicism revealed:
SMART WORKING = INTELLIGENT WORK
If then smart – working is in itself intelligent, why are we doing it in such a stupid way?
We most likely already have the answer at hand. What the Italians did during the lockdown and continue to do today is NOT smart-working. Instead, it is homework. That is the art of replicating the same toxic modalities that occur in the office on the sofa at home.
Are you stressed out by the calls? It’s a homeworking.
Do clients and colleagues not give you respite even at night? It’s a homeworking.
Do you feel a slave to the system? Exact! It’s a homeworking.
Smart-working as it should be understood consists of ways of working that make it intelligent, therefore it should limit frustration and stress to the maximum to bring out better results and quality of life.
In the Italian legal system, smart-working is defined by law no. 81/2017 which outlines the type of activity. So it says:
“Agile work (or smart working) is a modality of execution of the subordinate employment relationship characterized by the absence of time or spatial constraints and an organization by phases, cycles, and objectives, established by agreement between employee and employer; a method that helps the worker to reconcile the times of life and work and, at the same time, favor the growth of his productivity.”
The definition seems quite clear and immediately gives the idea of how many of us are working from home in the wrong way. Let’s go and see what are the 6 golden rules to make our work really smart.
If then smart – working is in itself intelligent, why are we doing it in such a stupid way?
We most likely already have the answer at hand. What the Italians did during the lockdown and continue to do today is NOT smart-working. Instead, it is homework. That is the art of replicating the same toxic modalities that occur in the office on the sofa at home.
Are you stressed out by the calls? It’s a homeworking.
Do clients and colleagues not give you respite even at night? It’s a homeworking.
Do you feel a slave to the system? Exact! It’s a homeworking.
Smart-working as it should be understood consists of ways of working that make it intelligent, therefore it should limit frustration and stress to the maximum to bring out better results and quality of life. In the Italian legal system, smart-working is defined by law no. 81/2017 which outlines the type of activity.
THE WORKSPACE: according to the law, work can be done anywhere. Spatial flexibility is a well-established right. However, an orderly business needs a well-ordered space. Our perception of reality changes from environment to environment and stimulates our ability to respond to stimuli. In a nutshell: we tend to relax in a hot tub meanwhile we are more predisposed to a state of alert in a dark alley at night. It is very important to recreate an ideal environment in which to carry out our activities. A desk, a computer, and a chair to remind us that work is a mixture of alertness, reactivity, and reflexivity. So they are strongly discouraged: the sofa or worse the bed and deck chairs by the pool.
TECHNOLOGY: another essential element in addition to space is the technology that must be adequately developed. Here things could be much better. In 2019 the EU researched the digitization of citizens and it emerged that almost 1 in 5 workers would need more IT training. Also outside urban areas, only 4 out of 10 people have fast connections. Not to mention the fact that many small and medium-sized businesses do not have complete computer databases.
AVOIDING TOXIC ROUTINE: Other elements that distinguish the smart-worker are the agility and organization with which the work is optimized. Empty hours are often wasted in our offices without doing anything to then reach very high production peaks to meet deadlines. Not to mention those countless four-hour meetings where we talk about nothing and no decisions are made. It is, therefore, necessary to optimize all this by allowing work to flow easily throughout the day, without wasting unnecessary time that could instead be dedicated to family or hobbies. A remote call cannot be as long and useless as an office meeting. Each participant should regulate their interventions by limiting themselves to reporting only the essential and indispensable things. The smart worker has no time for useless chatter. The interventions must be prepared first, shared in a lineup, and then clearly exposed (possibly by activating the microphone when it is your turn). In general, being ORGANIZED is the secret to living peacefully.
SCHEDULING: Obviously part of the organization concerns the management of times. Work is really smart if the employee is autonomous in managing time and starts and finishes working when he or she most desires, without the company imposing it on him. Our production capacity and attention vary from person to person. Some people are more productive at 6 in the morning and others who are more active at night and prefer to wake up at noon.
A DIFFERENT FORM OF NEGOTIATION: historically we are used to a form of employment contract which, in addition to requiring the presence of the employee on-site, is limited to working hours. Also, the company is committed to providing an office with computers connected to the internet and other useful services. As we have seen, none of this can be true for the smart-worker who does NOT work hourly and does NOT use the services provided by the company. Smart-working contracts should provide for purposes that relate to the objectives achieved and not the working hours employed. The company commissions an X objective and the employee, according to his times and working methods, completes it within tot. So easy, so smart. Goodbye delays in the workplace and goodbye hyper-control syndrome.
TRUST: for all the rules listed above to work, it is essential to establish a relationship of trust between the employee and the employer. This helps to create a sense of pride in the employee as he truly becomes “faber suae Fortunae” in accomplishing a goal. We all remember that sense of frustration we felt as teenagers when our every move at school was controlled by the teachers. Why continue to perpetuate this way even as adults? It is necessary to emancipate to feel responsible. Trust is ultimately the essential human element these days for a company to be considered mature. The employee will be proud to bring home the results, staying at home.
In this regard, we are witnessing the proliferation of applications used by companies to constantly monitor employees. Webcams that take photos every fifteen minutes, apps that check the location of employees, and algorithms that calculate searches and activities performed by staff on the computer. Can this kind of control be defined as a relationship of trust? How would you feel to work like this?
We have seen what makes smart-working an applicable reality. However, our society has started some hasty changes taken by the anxiety of COVID. Haste, as we know, is bad advice and it is, therefore, necessary to take time to reflect on four other aspects that would make smart-working a mere utopia:
ALIENATION: historical courses and appeals, that is, history tend to repeat itself and humanity hardly learns from its mistakes. Already Marx at the turn of two great industrial revolutions had warned humanity of the danger of alienation of man in front of the machine. Even today the problem remains relevant. Spending hours and hours in front of a computer often risks alienating us from reality. The advice is to take your time to take your eyes off the monitor and use it in recreational and leisure activities. We always remain human after all.
HYPER-PRODUCTIVITY: best friend of alienation, hyper-productivity belongs to the wrong concept of smart-working. We remind you that smart in English does not mean “fast” but “intelligent”. Our society requires absurd performances to follow the economic process and respect the dreaded “time factor”. Also in this case it is not possible to understand the reason for this excess of productivity that pushes people to remain glued to the computer for hours and hours. The human being is limited by nature, the effort to produce more is at the expense of the health and quality of the final product. The motto is Quality and well-being above all else.
LACK OF PRIVACY: working from home means inserting a nucleus foreign to what is my private environment. The eyes of our manager and colleagues enter the intimacy of our living room through the webcams. The risk is that the company conquers the employee’s private space to deprive him of the freedom to be an independent individual and separate from the company logo. We reiterate that trust and respect should be the foundation of the employee/employer relationship.
HYPER-SAVING: with the proliferation of smart-working many companies have decided to close their offices to continue all the work from home. This results in savings in terms of rent, internet connection, bills, and stationery. Costs that however go to the burden on the employee who will have to independently procure the material with which to work. If on the one hand, the company saves, on the other the employee pays the costs. A smart-working contract should provide for a default expense reimbursement to help employees meet material costs. On the other hand, they put their internet connections, their computers, and their electricity at the service of the company. It is not virtuous that the employment relationship is reduced to being so deeply parasitic. Therefore, companies should not rest on the expectations of easy savings but should continue to actively invest in the employee’s well-being.
In conclusion, smart-working has contributed to leading our society towards a new era of digitalization. The profound changes that await us depend on the choices we make in the future.
If smart-working manages to take hold in the right way, it will help redefine the world of work in a more qualitative perspective. We will all be able to regain our natural spaces and devote more time to our loved ones and hobbies.
On the contrary, continuing on this road where with a false name we mask what is teleworking, we will build a society that is increasingly alienated, cold, and unprepared for emotional survival.
At Hydrogen, we have tried to create a work ecosystem that can be empathetic and optimal for our employees. So that the quality of our work is always the highest possible.
