Smart Working

“Smart Working” – MARCH 2020_ Article by Massimo Berlingozzi_LEADERSHIP & MANAGEMENT

An article recently appeared in Bloomberg explaining how the world’s largest ever Smart Working experiment is currently underway due to the spread of the Corona Virus. Sociologist Domenico De Masi, who has always been a convinced promoter of this way of working, has also taken up the news to denounce Italy’s weak growth. De Masi argues that our delay is not technological but cultural, blaming a backward vision of work, based on control, for the greatest difficulty in getting Smart Working off the ground in Italy. The Bloomberg article also mentions this difficulty and the mistrust of managers for similar reasons, citing, however, a study conducted on a number of Chinese companies by Stanford University in 2015, which found increases in production of 13% in teleworking conditions.

The Smart Working Observatory of the Politecnico di Milano, in its latest report for 2019, estimates the number of smart workers in Italy at around 570,000, up 20% compared to 2018. Despite this positive result, the observatory’s report highlights a delay compared to other international realities, a fact that becomes much more substantial if we move from the world of large companies to SMEs and the Public Administration, where, despite the growth, the number of projects present is still low. On the other hand, the confirmations with respect to the highest levels of production, and greater satisfaction and engagement on the part of the workers involved in these projects are to be recorded as fully satisfactory.

The current growth spike, linked to the current emergency, can certainly be seen as an opportunity, but at the same time exposes us to the risk of smart working being perceived purely as a remote working condition. A wider and more stable adherence to this type of work, instead, requires an organisational and cultural transformation capable of generating a widespread awareness of the depth of the phenomenon, which cannot be reduced only to aspects linked to improved efficiency. It is not difficult to understand this if we consider that smart working is probably only one of the most evident aspects of the great transformations that the digital revolution is producing in our lives. For a long time, working meant going to a precise place, a physical space, which represented a social environment of aggregation capable over time of generating a “sense of belonging” and an “idea of community.” All this took place in a defined time, punctuated by precise rituals that separated the time of work from the time of social relations – private and community – what with the advent of modernity would be defined as ‘free time’.

We then realise that we are facing an epochal, anthropological turning point, which transforms, dissolving them to a large extent, the anchorages to the physical dimension of work, those referring to the concepts of speed, space and time. The dislocation of teams in different places, the destructuring of the temporal organisation, the whirling increase in the speed of communication systems, determine a radical change in relations within organisations. The absence of these references, which have remained essentially unchanged since the beginning of the industrial revolution, generates disorientation if it is not accompanied by a different awareness, based on new knowledge and skills.

What Competencies?

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The first step requires a review of the structure of the relationship between people: from a hierarchical logic, based on control – often direct, immediate, ‘on sight’ – to a logic that relies on trust between and towards people. It is necessary to move away from a rigid adherence to corporate hierarchy, to the value of skills and the idea of belonging to a single professional network. Doing this means transforming the management paradigm, focusing action on achieving objectives, overcoming the old constraint of performance measures such as attendance and time. For managers, it becomes essential to learn to accept that the employee completes the work by following his or her own path, with results that are sometimes even more effective than they would have been in the old way. A change of mindset that leads to recognising as a value, accepting and appreciating ways of working that differ from one’s own.

A perspective in which a flexible and empathetic mind becomes a prerequisite for success. Entering into relations with those who work a few thousand kilometres from our desk and whom we may only occasionally meet, requires a high level of awareness that can only arise from precise questions. One has to be willing and able to explore social contexts, cognitive processes and relational styles, organisational and personal cultures different from one’s own. Understand values, motivations and expectations regarding the future.

In the same way, to be able to really explore what is changing in organisations through the scenario unfolded by the Agile Work dimension, it is useful to ask who is the Smart Worker? What are the peculiar characteristics that distinguish him from the traditional worker?

Certainly we are dealing with a person with a strong sense of independence and autonomy. These characteristics may to a large extent coincide with a personal need and expectation, but they must then be translated into self-management skills, self-organisation, decision-making autonomy, the ability to define a context (a reference framework in a world of blurred boundaries), goal orientation and a strong sense of responsibility for results. And it is quite evident that with these characteristics, especially if the smart worker is an employee, the classic concepts of delegation and control must be redefined. This is a decisive aspect, but by no means a foregone conclusion, since the fear of losing control of one’s resources, remains, as we have seen, one of the major difficulties reported that risk slowing down the development of this new dimension of work.

How can these resistances be overcome? It is necessary to be aware that we are facing a profound cultural change that is by no means easy, but the answer to this unease can only concern the dimension of trust. The ability to build relationships based on mutual trust becomes an essential element of this change, which must take place through a redefinition of the traditional boss-collaborator relationship. The employee must accept, in return for greater freedom, to raise the level of responsibility, particularly with regard to results. The manager must be able to redefine his or her leadership style, renounce some of the classic privileges associated with hierarchical rank and put himself or herself at stake more on the level of interpersonal relations, which means accepting to ‘go down a few steps’, to confront each other in a more informal and equal manner. They should also be aware that all this is nothing but the inevitable consequence of changes in social relations. Communication cannot disregard forms, and in the face of ever faster, more direct, accessible and informal modes of communication, which have made it possible to disintermediate (thanks to digital tools) many of the relationships in which we are involved on a daily basis, the behaviours that people enact in communication exchanges, including their relationship with authority, have changed.

Strategically interpreting the scenario just described means being able to create the right balance between the opportunities deriving from online communication (indispensable for smart working: fast, direct, informal), which is very effective in terms of information but not very suitable for managing the more complex aspects of the relationship, with the ‘analogue’ component, the oldest part of our communication, fundamental for managing the emotional-relational aspects, which it is important to know how to exploit during face-to-face meetings, for work teams that communicate most of the time at a distance.

The processes described are already in place in many companies, and to be managed in the best possible way they require the development of specific programmes that will have to be particularly attentive to reconciling the demands for efficiency that will come from organisations engaged in innovation processes, with the needs and motivations of the people involved. The world of training can play an important role in this sense, aware of the strategic role it has historically played in accompanying and facilitating change processes by making major changes comprehensible and acceptable.