Smart work, work from home: Eni to the permanent revolution.

Most of the largest companies in the country are reopening, and the problem that senior managers will likely have to address in their morning meetings will be deciding how to provide quantitative / organizational continuity to smart work experiments. It is true that even in August there was an intense debate in the newspapers about teleworking, but between desk analysis and the concrete reality of companies there is usually a mismatch and that is why it is convenient to go to the source. And we have chosen Eni as our medical record. Here, in the words of Claudio Granata, director of coordination of human capital and acquisitions, a balance of the experiment during the closure and the group’s programs not only for the fall but also for the post-vaccination period. And if not the announcement of a labor revolution, we are very close.

Let’s start with a photograph: how many employees are there and how they are distributed?
The direct ones are 32 thousand, of which 21 thousand in Italy. The 11 thousand who work outside national borders can be divided into 5 thousand who have a task compatible with smartworking and 5 thousand who operate in plants and platforms. Employees in Italy in turn are divided into 15 thousand, also with tasks that allow smart work and 6 thousand in plants. The stock of female personnel is around 26% but the flows are more consistent. Finally, the average age of 46 years but the propensity to be digital does not present excessive differences between the so-called natives and the others. Let’s say we like the new.

Did you experiment with smart work before the pandemic?
Yes, involving some 4,500 people, the vast majority from the commercial sector due to an intrinsic need to be in constant motion. They are joined by 350 employees who, depending on specific needs (new parents, particular pathologies, disabled family members) had requested them. From a gender point of view, the ratio was fifty fifty. All this before closing or when, on February 26 in Milan and on March 5 in Rome, we closed our offices in just 24 hours.

Since then we have entered the massive experimentation phase.
S. I’ll give you the figures: 21,000 workers around the world have worked remotely, of which 15,000 in Italy. Thanks to this sudden dislocation, we were able to eliminate the risk of generating positive Covid cases. And in no time, we provided our employees who did not have 3,800 laptops to work from home. An incredible effort made on very difficult days.

How did you combine speed and security?
Obviously we already had a cybersecurity protocol that endured in the face of the emergency. But from January 1 to April 30, we faced 568 hacking attempts, 50% more than in 2019. And 262 of what are technically called “incidents” were induced by the introduction of remote work. Eni’s structured corporate network defended the system well and we had no problems. The attention of everyone at Eni contributed to this result and they were always very careful to follow the instructions given by the company. We didn’t even have to resort to additional investments because we have a budget to ensure that the data protection systems are constantly up to date. I’ll add a few more numbers: In the first month and a half of the lockdown we had 803,000 conferences for over 8 million minutes. And 23 thousand accesses to our knowledge management system dedicated to the exchange of knowledge and information. Well, we managed to secure all these exchanges without any problem.

When the data peaked and decreased, did you make any changes to the “all households” scheme? How did you monitor the effective participation of everyone in the activities?
About 15% returned to the office. One thousand of the 7 thousand people returned to San Donato, where all the technical activities were concentrated. Rewinding the tape we can say that the transition from the office to the home was sudden and traumatic, but it did not affect the relationship between the workers and the company. We have not registered absenteeism problems or issues related to the rigidity of schedules. On the contrary, great availability.

Have you seen an increase in productivity?
We have some performance indicators. VPN connections grew by 700%, video conferencing by 50%, connections via Skype by 140% and those from Teams by 3,900%. But beyond the numbers, we have registered great behavioral justice. A virtuous mechanism was generated. Perhaps you have also told the traditional spirit of belonging that has always linked Eni employees.

So far we have relived what happened. But with the resumption of activities in full swing, what ideas do you have? How will the experiment continue?
Much will depend on the external scenarios that the health authorities are going to provide us, but in a hypothesis of coexistence with Covid with spread rates such as those seen in June-July, we are thinking of a return to the offices of around 40% of the workforce . In the worst case or even in the face of a second blockage, we could close everything in 12 hours.

But when it is fully operational, in a post-vaccine scenario, what will be the dislocation of its workforce?
We believe that up to 35% of employees calculated in a single day can work remotely. Then the OUs will define rotations and additional needs. We should get to involve a total of 7,000 people in Italy. If things go well, that percentage could also grow in the future. Ours is a welcome to agile work.

In recent days, the CEO of the Leonardo group, Alessandro Profumo, said that everything we are talking about requires a profound change in the organization of work. You share?
Of course, we will have to update our management schemes. Smartworking requires knowing how to work in a matrix and therefore not based solely on the guaranteed vertical scheme of the hierarchy. Eni has always believed in the matrix, working horizontally is already a habit among us and that has allowed us to face non-presence without trauma. The desire to experiment later in the culture of the society and its people. I’ll give you an example going back to the Covid emergency: the head of exploration activities, a very important function in our business even in the energy transition scenario, has informed in time that all the geologists could have worked remotely. It was a huge advantage to know that a technical area could do this and not just staff functions.

Does not the non-presence stress the middle leaders who see themselves transmitting inputs in the presence and cannot do the same when they have to transmit them themselves?
Of course, I haven’t seen some of my staff members since February. And I am convinced that direct comparison is necessary, aggregations are useful. As a team, coexistence improves decisions but also collaboration in remote “presence” and how to get used to new models of life and work. So we need to go ahead and take all the data this experiment will provide us, including the limits.

With 35% in smartworking, many offices will be free. Will you turn it into an opportunity to save?
In theory we could do it because we are on a lease but we also have contracts to respect. We can think that the spaces that were to be liberated could be taken to house startups, hubs, technology accelerators. In Italy, the fertilization of new initiatives proceeds too slowly, it could be a great opportunity for start-ups to be close to large companies and always very useful to discuss with those who have new ideas and undertake new business initiatives.

There is a debate on whether it is necessary to review the agile labor law or act through negotiation. What is your opinion?
Some regulatory changes may be necessary given the weight of the discontinuities that smartworking brings with it, but I would also like to take advantage of the negotiation tool to make the labor law rules as effective as possible for companies and people who in this case are the true protagonists of this transformation.