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The health crisis has given a strong boost to Smart Working, the so-called agile work. The benefits of this operation, carried out with the support of the government, are evident: among these we find better time management, higher productivity, less traffic and pollution, and greater inclusion for people with reduced mobility.
But in addition to these undoubted positive factors, there are other strongly negative ones. Not surprisingly, some time ago, the mayor of Milan, Beppe Sala, had raised the alarm: in the long run, “agile work” can cause feelings of isolation, anxiety and depression (the so-called “cabin syndrome”).
The reasoning presented by the first Milanese citizen also includes the hidden costs linked to the massive expansion of smart work: only in the Lombard capital, thousands of bars and restaurants are at risk of closing due to emptying of offices.
Confesercenti: Huge Costs with Massive Smart Working
According to the indications provided by the Ministry of Labor, currently in Italy there are around 1.6 million workers working in Smart Working, eight times higher than pre-pandemic levels.
From a study carried out by Confesercenti, it appears that the massive use of Smart Working by more than 400,000 employees employed in the metropolitan area of Rome implies a for the generalized economy of 130 million per month and puts 6,000 businesses at risk of closure.
The so-called agile work, found the president of the Confesercenti of Rome and Lazio, Valter Giammaria, could be tolerated during the confinement, but now it is turning into a boomerang. Smart Working, notes the Association, does not attract those who should receive services, like all citizens, who often find offices closed, spend hours on the phone looking for answers or wait for answers to emails that will probably never arrive.
The use of so-called agile work, specifies the Confesercenti Rome note, must be articulated on different contractual bases, with its own tools and organization of work and presuppose the digitization of thousands of obligations that are still carried out manually and directly in the corresponding offices.
“Here because resorting to mass agile work is wrong, prolonged in the months without contractual trajectories and work organizations, services and host city. […] The lack of spending in the commercial tourism and services fabric of the city of Rome exceeds 130 million per month ”.
Corporate America goes remote
Similar situation in the United States, where the pandemic has caused an increase in remote work that could be permanent. According to an MIT study, dozens of thousands of workers who provide various services to the offices they run the risk of losing their jobs.
In recent months, giants of the caliber of JPMorgan Chase, Ford, Twitter and REI they announced plans for remote work. On Friday, Pinterest said it will pay a $ 89.5 million fine to cancel the lease of its new large San Francisco office due to the increased use of remote work.
More remote work means fewer business trips, which in the United States represent 60-70 percent of the total, lower consumable costs (Xerox in the last quarter saw a drop in revenue of almost 35 percentage points and Aramark, which supplies food catering, -45%) and lower income for all those companies whose work is based precisely on proximity to the workplace (Starbucks has estimated an annual loss of $ 2 billion.)
The reduced need to physically travel to a workplace promises to revolutionize the real estate, given that housing demand in cities like San Francisco is already in sharp decline and that rents for buildings and offices will also take a severe hit in the coming months.
