The pandemic situation that has evolved over the last three years has transformed several areas of our daily lives. The world of work has also had to face significant changes and observe the progressive affirmation of the so-called smart working, the future of work. A remote work solution that has been able to meet the needs of companies and professionals, revealing considerable economic, performance and even environmental advantages.
NotOnlyDesk considers the development of Smart working to be the beating heart of its project, and aims to analyse the current labour market by focussing on the possibility of making improvements to the current employment system.
The numbers of Smart working
In the last three years, Smart working has established itself consistently within the labour market conditioned by the pandemic. Today, beyond a progressive return to pre-Covid "normality", the remote work solution continues to be particularly used and developed and seems to represent the future of work. For example, the numbers collected by the Smart Working Observatory of the School of Management of the Milan Polytechnic relating to large Italian companies are striking. In 2022, Smart working involved about 91% (compared to 81% in 2021), counting a total number of smart workers equal to 1.84 million and an average of about 9.5 days of remote work per month.
Although these data reveal an inapplicable trend for small and medium-sized enterprises in our country (within which, between 2021 and 2022, there was a decrease in Smart working from 53% to 48% and an average of 4.5 days per month) it is important to emphasise that this downsizing is to be attributed to the perception of smart work by SMEs, understood mostly as a tool to cope with emergency situations.
NotOnlyDesk wants to transform this perception and, leveraging the countless advantages and benefits deriving from the spread of agile work (in terms of economic savings, psycho-physical well-being and environmental sustainability), create the largest existing coworking.
Pros and cons of Smart working: between environment and structures
It is finally undeniable that Smart working has led to a general improvement in the field of environmental sustainability and the psycho-physical well-being of workers.
With regard to the "green" advantages of remote work, a reduction in CO2 emissions of about 450 kg per year per person has in fact been calculated. Number calculated taking into account both the decrease in the movements of smart workers and the emissions from the organisations that have adopted agile work; but also identifying those additional emissions deriving from the smart solution. For a total impact, at the national level, of 1,500,000 tons of CO2 each year.
Even on the welfare front, the numbers are encouraging. An INAPP survey (relating to 2022) has in fact revealed that 69% of workers believe that Smart working helps the management of family commitments and 67% of them attribute greater freedom in the organisation of work to the remote solution. More generally, about 55% of workers promoted the smart experience, while recognising some of its limits. And it is on these limits that NotOnlyDesk intends to act, in order to make Smart working a comfortable experience for all those who decide to adopt it. Organisations and companies that choose NotOnlyDesk can in fact ensure their employees adequate, easily accessible workstations and, in doing so, solve those problems related to domestic isolation (complained by 64% of workers) and the consequent lack of development of relationships between colleagues (60%).
NotOnlyDesk is strongly convinced that the future of work is Smart and works to increase its already considerable strengths and to close its critical issues. Only in this way can the vision of a national and, in the future, global coworking become a reality.
