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methere is no way back. We are already in the labor revolution. Traditional concepts such as office, belonging, productivity, professionalism will be totally or partially rewritten. And we at Generali are completely within this flow. We made our choice. Monica Possa, Global Generali Group Chief of Staff and we asked her to tell us how a service giant is managing smartworking in an emergency and what options will be implemented when it is fully operational, that is, post-vaccination. The answer could not have been clearer: remote work will affect, albeit in a modular way, 100% of Generali’s employees.
Let’s start with the numbers: how many employees, how many women, and what is the average age?
We are almost 72,000 in the world and 17,000 in Italy. Women in 1919 had reached 51%. The world average age 42.5 years, in Italy 44.3.
Did you have agile work before the virus?
We started in December 2018 with the 2020-21 Strategic Plan that linked it to the digital transformation processes. When Covid emerged, 62% of the countries in which we are present implemented it on an experimental basis. But in Italy this option, which existed, was not valued and its use was very limited.
Has the epidemic erased these scruples?
Suddenly. We insured all of our people in two weeks and remote work became “the” way of working at Generali. Few professional figures remain in the office: some employees from information support services, logistics, office management and security.
Do you prefer remote and not smart work?
Smart work should be something richer. It implies greater harmony with digitization, empowerment of the person and the transition to performance measurement through the achievement of objectives. An ongoing but unfinished process.
A service company does not lose sight of the customer. How has this relationship changed?
Again it has evolved. We set the goal of being available and close with the different tools, digital or telephone, and we have achieved it.
Have you used company climate surveys during these months?
Yes, to find out how employees were adjusting and we recorded our gratitude for how the company had ensured personal safety. Then, we recorded the willingness to learn new things that allowed us to accelerate the retraining plan, launched independently of Covid. At the same time, we have transmitted to our people the contribution of not exaggerating with the pace of work, of maintaining a human dimension. We didn’t want the remote to be synonymous with cold, mechanical. At office work there are many opportunities to socialize and belong, such as meetings, a chat at the coffee machine, or a lunch break. This warm informality should not be missed, you just have to rethink it. In some cases the departments have self-organized with daily group appointments or even leisure snacks, all digitally.
What conclusions does the monitoring lead to?
That we must build the new normal, begin to foreshadow what tomorrow’s work will be like in the name of professionalism but replicating the typical nature of exchange and interaction in the office. We think that innovation needs presence, that is why when building the work of the future we will take into account the role of the office, we will not cancel it. It is no accident that after the summer we felt the need to reconnect with our employees and we opened up to a gradual return. Thanks to a special application we have regulated traffic, guaranteeing assistance shifts of up to 2 days a week, which allows us to guarantee maximum security.
People wanted to go back. Doing it 100% would have caused fear and the change allowed us to reconcile security and presence. We have installed spaced stations, even scheduled the executions of the elevators with reduced capacity. Finally, 10-15% of employees in the office. No more, even wanting an employee you cannot do it every day.
Have you measured the effects on efficiency?
Productivity is key to us, but in recent months I have never heard operational managers complain about poor efficiency issues, people have taken risks. Thanks also to a performance management system, everyone was assigned their own goals. Until now we are used to evaluating productivity annually, perhaps in the future we will find other methods and frequencies to measure the added value produced and the contribution given.
Have you had a piracy problem?
Fingers crossed, we didn’t get any cybersecurity criticism. Our structures have monitored and activated the necessary measures.
What conclusion of this experience?
Simple: we will never return. There will be a balanced way of working between office and remote. An employee will have the opportunity to work at full capacity, as well as from the office from wherever he wants, from the place of residence or from the coworking or from a second residence in the country or by the sea. It will be an individual choice. The office will continue to be important as a center for aggregation, training, relationships and belonging.
What if travelers residing in the same city asked to open a branch?
I don’t think we are going to open branches, an old way of looking at things. We are interested in reducing travel but above all we are interested in having a different relationship between our employees and their work, more balanced, more in tune with the needs of the family.
What proportion of Generali employees when they are fully operational, that is, after the vaccine? How many in smartworking and how many in the office?
Everyone will still have the ability to work remotely. Not all week, with different frequency depending on responsibility. We will organize everything in a modular and flexible way. We plan to build this revolutionary step in dialogue with the trade union world, at the European and local level. Next week, for example, I will see the European Works Council of Generali, the trade union body with which we have started a dialogue on these issues at group level. So far we have found openness, as happened with local union representatives, and we want to write this fragment of the future together.
In short, the Generali employee of tomorrow will be a centaur, half employee and half self-employed. why?
I accept the summary and add that it will be a way to attract the talents of the future, the millennials, who are more attentive than their parents to freedom and flexibility. We will offer everyone, young and old alike, a more streamlined work environment, remote relocation showed us how many paperwork could be cut and we are doing it.
We speak of people but of revolution also of spaces. You will free up offices, you can save on rentals. What will happen to historical settlements like Mogliano Veneto or emblematic ones like the Citylife tower?
The offices will remain central but will change shape. The released spaces will be dedicated to creativity, meetings and customer relations. We are working on it. They will look like coworking with a strong openness to the outside. The rental savings may be there, but it is not the decisive motivation.
To govern the revolution, do we foreshadow a law or a bargain?
A regulatory infrastructure of the law is needed but then it is necessary to have rules that adjust to the needs of the company and the people, and therefore negotiation will be the queen. It is important to seek new solutions, there is no going back and we hope to find smart government partners who share the spirit of freedom and responsibility that true smart work requires.
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