Poletti. Flexible working hours. The Italian cases

Fedaisf editorial staff

November 30, 2015

From Ducati to Sanofi, from Vodafone to American Express: "smart" work is starting to spread even in the Bel Paese.

From "smart working" we talked several times. The possibility of working from home or from any other location at different times from those that mark an ordinary day in the office (or factory) is a custom that is slowly establishing itself in Italy as well. The recent utterances of the minister Poletti on working hours – which should not, in his opinion, be considered a totem – have reawakened attention to these new methods of employment, prompting us to investigate how widespread they are in the Bel Paese.

Let's start from Ducati taken for example by the same Minister of Labor where employees are paid a kit which makes them essentially autonomous. A real revolution compared to the old assembly line, with workers who can manage and organize themselves, without having to coordinate (except when strictly necessary) with colleagues. A practice that also seems to affect the Aermec spa (which produces, among other things, refrigerated counters for supermarkets) where employees can autonomously assemble their pieces, "freeing themselves" from rigid and unchangeable shifts.

And we come to the tempo variant which is the one that animated the debate sparked by Minister Poletti. There are companies like the Vodafone which have given some employees the opportunity (for now 3,000 have been involved on an experimental basis) to work from home two days a month. Provided that the tasks that have been assigned to them are completed within the established deadlines. A model that also the Telecom And Unicredit seem willing to follow while the pharmaceutical company Sanofi (as already told in a previous article) went further by allowing employees who live far away to perform their duties from home once a week. However, it seems to have gone the furthest of all American Express who decided to apply it "smart working" at full capacity in its new headquarters in Rome. Result? Employees can choose where and when to work from. As long as – it should never be forgotten – they achieve the objectives indicated by the company.

Published November 30, 2015

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