What you need for a useful agile work in the Public Administration
In the PA, administrations need to be quickly equipped with those indispensable avant-garde technological bases that allow them to integrate agile work into their own organizational cultures. The in-depth analysis of Alfredo Ferrante, ministerial manager, after the Brunetta-Orlando circular
As a result of the meeting of the Council of Ministers on 5 January, during which a decree-law was approved that introduces new urgent measures to deal with the health emergency, in particular in the workplace and in schools, it was announced that the ministers for public administration and labor and social policies have signed a circular to sensitize public administrations and private employers to make full use of all the agile work schemes already present within the respective contractual and regulatory regulations.
It is known, in fact, that the increase in the contagion curve, due to the spread of the Omicron variant of Covid-19, has necessarily led to re-evaluate, especially for the public sector, the decision , referred to in article 1 of the decree ministerial October 8, 2021, of the "return in the presence of all staff".
We also know that in reality the various administrations have largely followed up the decree, and the subsequent guidelines , with adequate prudence, making available a wide range of activities accessible to the request for smart working and generally providing for an adequate staff rotation, avoiding, as far as possible, coexistence in the same spaces, given the obligation to show the green pass for access to the offices. L
However, a rapid surge in infections has mixed the cards on the table : here is the decision to ensure that the employees of the PA continue to be required to work most of the time in presence but doing the math not on the mere weekly segment (3 days in attendance, two remotely), as in the vast majority of cases it was done, but over the year or, in any case, over a multi-month period, as anticipated by the Department for Public Administration in response to a FAQ of 4 January: “Each administration can schedule agile work with a weekly, monthly or multi-monthly staff rotation. This allows for the use of smart working with ample flexibility, also modulating it, if necessary, on the basis of the trend of infections, taking into account that the prevalence of work in presence contained in the guidelines can be reached even at the end of the programming. In summary, each administration will be able to balance agile and face-to-face work according to the organizational methods most congenial to their situation, also considering the epidemiological trend in the short and medium term "and, adds the circular," the contingencies that may affect their employees (as in the case of short quarantines from contacts with coronavirus positive subjects) ".
Let's recap : the principle remains that for each worker who accesses the institute of agile work (which is and remains a voluntary choice, governed by a contract subject to various conditionalities), the execution of the service in presence as foreseen must be prevailing. to art. 1, co. 3, lett. b) , of the ministerial decree of 8 October 2021. However, in the circular, an appeal is made to "flexibility and intelligence", as the "main pillars on which each administration is free to organize its activities, while maintaining the services rendered to users unchanged. ".
Unfortunately, it is a question of very limited flexibility, as Luigi Oliveri explained in an articulated manner: it is true that, theoretically, it could also be decided to keep employees in 100% smart working for even long periods, of a few months. , but in any case there remains the need to ensure that, on an annual basis, most of the time in attendance is calculated globally for employees. And, asks Oliveri, "what happens if an employee agrees on a smart working of 3 months, between January and March, to deal with the emergency and, then, in the autumn, there was yet another wave that would recommend another 3 months, for an overall 50% or more of remote work? ".
It is clear that the suggestions contained in the circular cannot and do not intend to go beyond a contingency and necessarily neglect the long period , which remains the responsibility of the previous decree.
It must certainly be noted that, thanks to the wide vaccination coverage, the recent epidemic wave does not seem to have serious effects: nevertheless, not only the understandable concerns of individuals for themselves and their loved ones remain to be considered, but also the multiplier effect of possible quarantines and absence from the workplace.
We can only share the aspiration to structure the institution of agile work in an intelligent (and, hopefully, sufficiently flexible) way and make it an integrated lever of the organization of public work, leaving behind us the emergency experience of the hardest months. of the pandemic.
And it is more than correct to reiterate that, as an organizational lever, smart working must be used, according to the specific and peculiar needs of the individual structure that decides to adopt it, in order to work better and with better results, always keeping in mind the repercussions. on the users of services, citizens and citizens.
The virus, however, goes on its own and follows paths that do not coincide with the picture we have been painting for months . If the common purpose is not only and not so much that of returning to normal, trying to live with Covid using the formidable weapon of vaccines, it is equally essential to maintain a high degree of adaptability to effectively deal with the changing extraordinary nature of the situation.
We are well aware that a more modern and efficient PA is the backbone of the hoped-for success of the reforms of the National Recovery and Resilience Plan: in a scenario in which the general picture is evolving with impressive speed, there is no need to be anchored to ideological prejudices on the part of none , but it is necessary to aim, for example, with ever greater determination, at quickly equipping administrations with those indispensable avant-garde technological and IT bases that allow them to effectively integrate agile work into their own organizational cultures and long-term strategies.
The alternative is to engage in rearguard disputes that history has long ago rendered obsolete: we cannot afford it.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/economia/cosa-serve-per-un-utile-lavoro-agile-nella-pubblica-amministrazione/ on Thu, 06 Jan 2022 13:31:55 +0000.