Because smart working cannot be the new normal: legal, social, economic problems
The question concerning smart working is once again topical, thanks to a (finally!) Progressive, albeit still slow and cumbersome, return to working normality. During the question time in the Chamber of Deputies, the minister for public administration, Renato Brunetta, was quite clear:
"Agile work can be used in an emergency but cannot project itself into the future […] Today, those who do agile work do not have a specific contract, have no objectives, have no technologies, plus there is no safety, see the case of Lazio , in short, it is an Italian home-based job ”.
A very clear position that I personally share and on which we have also had the opportunity to talk about it right here on Atlantico Quotidiano which month ago.
The question is legal, it is social and it is economic.
It is a legal question . Agile work is hastily confused with telework, even if it is a different discipline that responds to different business needs. The point of contact between these two institutes is represented by the flexible nature of the service which, by definition, is not necessarily performed inside the offices but can take place elsewhere: in the case of teleworking, in fact, the workstation is fixed, predetermined and known. by the employer and generally corresponds to the residence or domicile of the teleworker. In the case of smart working , on the other hand, the workplace is neither fixed nor known by the employer as the ultimate goal lies precisely in operational flexibility.
It is a social issue . There is no reason to be happy thinking of being able to work in slippers at home, or dreaming of being able to do it perhaps from a beach, for the simple reason that remote work is hyper-connected and hyper-controlled, thanks also to impulse of algorithmic technology and more generally of digital technology that have entered the management of employment relationships with both hands: the time spent on a file is verified, the duration of the connection, the employee's performance is instantly reported which, very simply, never stops working.
Other than laptop and Bermuda shorts by the sea! The best image is that of the Japanese Hikikomori , that is of those who remain closed in perennial isolation within the four walls of the house, and whose only light they see is the artificial one of their desk. A deep, intimate brutalization that penetrates into the innermost psychology of people.
It is an economic question . Because smart working has certainly simplified a series of procedures from data interoperability to how to conduct competitions and interviews, but living without going to the office means leading to the desertification of the economic fabric of our cities: bars and restaurants, not to mention clothing and footwear shops, live from the daily passage of those who work and go to the office. Closed at home, quite simply, we will not even have the urge to buy a new pair of socks, and our cities will look a lot like immense cathedrals in the desert, where men will live in their micro apartments.
A dystopian reality, it is clear, but it is better to see the brutal side of the matter in order to be able to clearly realize the other side of the coin.
But the story also has a meaning in what, more commonly, we can define the common sense of practical things. The work must be in the presence because each of us lives on social relationships, and professional growth inevitably passes through exchanges of opinion made in person, comparisons in meetings, pats on the back, errors corrected on video in presence: the human interaction cannot be excluded, the quality of work would suffer – which would undoubtedly be lower – but the overall psychological strength of those who work would suffer the negative consequences.
of forced cloister.
We need to rethink agile work as an aid to ordinary work, since the latter must always and in any case be physically present in the workplace.
The post Why smart working cannot be the new normal: legal, social and economic problems appeared first on Atlantico Quotidiano .
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Atlantico Quotidiano at the URL http://www.atlanticoquotidiano.it/quotidiano/perche-lo-smart-working-non-puo-essere-la-nuova-normalita-problemi-giuridici-sociali-economici/ on Fri, 10 Sep 2021 03:53:00 +0000.