According to a study released at a study day organized by theInapp in Italy at least 4 out of 10 employees could carry out their work remotely, while at the moment it appears that only one in ten employed work from home. The analysis, in particular, has shown that on the limited diffusion of smart working the different degree of feasibility of remote work in the various professions has an impact: the share of remote work varies from 25% for intellectual or executive professions to 2% for unskilled ones. The percentage is also linked to the different managerial ability to adopt new organizational models, which is lower in small and medium-sized enterprises. And then there is the question of the change in the regulation of remote work, extended in a simplified form only for the frail and for those with children under the age of 14.
Report numbers
In Italy just the 14.9% of employed people carries out part of the activity by alternating face-to-face work and that remotely, ma could be almost 40% potentially considering the services that could be carried out remotely. It is therefore a substantial share, approx 2.5 million out of 19 million employees. In full pandemic, in 2020within a year – according to data from the smart working observatory of the Milan Polytechnic – we went from 570,000 smart workers in 2019 to 6.5 millionequal to approx one third of employees. In 2021, only 13.3% of the companies interviewed used this method. Those who carry out work that can be performed remotely are mainly graduates, employees of large companies, those employed in services and civil servants. Slightly above-average incidences are recorded among women, among residents of the North-West and in the Center and among people with a diploma.
Lost opportunity
“IS an opportunity not fully exploited, at least for the moment – commented the president of Inapp, Sebastiano Fadda -. Carrying out a profession that can theoretically be worked remotely is often a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for having the opportunity to experience remote work. Give data that change of working paradigm does not emerge that the pandemic seemed to have triggered, at least in our country: it is as if during the pandemic we had lived in “a big bubble” and the return to normality was nullifying the potential of remote work, due to a reduced ability to introduce radical innovations in the organization of work which provides for a combination of remote work phases with face-to-face work phases”.
The reasons for the low diffusion
The Inapp explained that on this reduced diffusion of agile work by adopt new organizational models of work that are based on new corporate policies and make use of new digital technologies, in a country like Italy where SMEs are widespread. Looking at the non-agricultural private sector, for companies with up to 5 employees, 84% of workers perform tasks that cannot be performed remotelybut as the size of the company increases, this share decreases: 56.4% of workers carry out services that cannot be “remote-controlled” among medium-sized enterprises with 50-249 employees and 34.2% among companies with over 250 employees.
