The development of the recent – and worrying – events related to the ongoing conflict in the Middle East offers an opportunity to return to discussing remote work and, more generally, the ongoing transformations in the public sector. As is known, the European Commissioner for Energy Dan Jørgensen recently urged EU member states to adopt behaviors useful to counter the ongoing energy crisis: in a letter sent to European delegations, Jørgensen highlighted the need to follow the recommendations formulated by the International Energy Agency (IEA), which include, in addition to reducing highway speeds by 10 km/h, increased use of public transport and car sharing, the extension of remote work where possible.
Premising that, for mere convenience of exposition, remote work, smart working, and agile work are used here interchangeably, it is interesting to note how this tool is also used to counter the effects of sudden crises. Fortunately, we are far from the emergency caused by the Covid-19 pandemic: faced with a catastrophe of global magnitude, working (forcibly) from home for a good portion of public and private employees represented, despite the inevitable precariousness and improvisation of the moment, an effective barrier to the blocking of the State’s fundamental functions. However, the exhortation from Brussels represents, after all, not only a move of elementary common sense but also an acknowledgment that remote work is now a permanent component of contemporary work, whose adoption can have very practical impacts on everyday life. Consider, for another example, certainly less dramatic, the Framework Agreement stipulated in October 2024 between the Extraordinary Commissioner for the Jubilee, Roberto Gualtieri, and the local social partners, aimed at encouraging greater use of remote work in conjunction with the predictable city congestion during the Jubilee year.
In recent years, there has been an ambivalent attitude towards remote work: initial enthusiasm was followed by a wave of retreat and return to origins, with dramatic steps backwards by large multinational companies and many hesitations by public administrations. Nonetheless, acknowledging that smart working has taken root, as also evidenced by the interest that new generations reserve for agile work when seeking employment, what seems arguable is that the tool, in a perspective now complementary to in-person work (hybrid mode), proves more effective the more flexibility and adaptability to the contingent situation are ensured.
Resorting to an increase in smart working days to try to mitigate the effects of the energy crisis becomes, however, more complicated when looking at the Italian public administration, for which, as is known, the criterion of so-called prevalence of presence provided by the decree of the Minister for Public Administration of October 8, 2021, is still in force, according to which “the execution of the performance in presence must be prevalent for each worker.” Well, after five years of field testing and after the introduction last year of a detailed regulation of the institute in the National Collective Labor Agreement (CCNL) for the Central Functions sector for the 2022/24 three-year period, the reference made at the European level can constitute an opportunity to start a reflection on the need to maintain the prevalence of presence, both in light of the experience gained so far and due to an organizational context that will see increasingly marked changes (rectius, upheavals) in the short and medium term, such as the entry of artificial intelligence systems into administrative daily life. In a socioeconomic framework of profound transformations (just think of the unstoppable aging process of the population and the advantages and disadvantages regarding the public sector), the risk for the PA is, in fact, to settle on rather irrational rear-guard positions that make it increasingly less competitive.
Public administrations have so far moved along the limit indicated by the 2021 decree, albeit in a highly heterogeneous framework: the principle of prevalence of presence, in fact, can be implemented very differently depending on the calculation method (weekly, monthly, multi-monthly basis), making the concrete applicability of the institute quite different. The point that seems supportable is that there is no evidence demonstrating a negative impact on the performance of administrations following the introduction of smart working. It will be said that the latter still have a long way to go to be considered fully efficient. Very true. However, the issue is another: if the direct relationship between remote work and a decrease in performance does not appear proven, any effort to regiment agile work becomes less useful, while it is strategic to fully develop its potential. In other words, instead of asking where and for how long people must sit, it would certainly be more fruitful to decisively intervene in processes, refound working methods, and perhaps attract talents. Moreover, it becomes very difficult to appreciate the need to guarantee the prevalence of presence at the workplace when a certainly not negligible part of the tasks performed by public employees are, in fact, now detached from the physical office thanks to the use of the Internet and IT technologies.
A recent INAPP study highlighted how the public sector encounters greater difficulties in fully embracing the advantages of flexibility possible with remote work, also due to the need to ensure prevalence, compared to often more effective and less constrained employment of organizational models in the private sector, where remote work goes hand in hand with organizational practices aimed at promoting work by objectives, also thanks to investment in technology and space reorganization. Above all, “the rediscovery of working autonomously has led to a push to organize processes differently, also through a clearer definition of objectives, times, and areas of responsibility, along with greater attention to corporate communication and constructive feedback.” The future is already here, and it affects both companies and the PA: “managers used to having direct contact with staff will therefore have to readapt by focusing on motivation and employee empowerment (those used to the ‘manage and control’ model now have to motivate and organize).”
If the time seems ripe to reconsider the axiom of prevalence of presence in public offices, there are still issues to be resolved. To name just a few: the persistent tension existing between the two sides of the institute, which is both an organizational lever to be activated by the entity and a work-life balance tool for families; the high appeal for access to smart working by workers and the need to keep alive bonds and relationships among colleagues and with management; the need to clearly identify those functions that are not suitable, or less suitable than others, to be performed remotely; the indispensability of adequate IT infrastructure and related training to fully leverage technology; finally (and above all), the essential reorientation of the management leadership style to better govern a dimension that often still appears foreign and exceptional.
To complete the picture, according to ISTAT, smart working represents a stable and structural mode of work organization, a true “lifestyle” particularly evident in areas with higher organizational and institutional density, in qualified professions, among graduates, and in sectors with higher cognitive content, contexts in which work by objectives, the use of digital technologies, and professional autonomy are now integral parts of work practices. The prevalence of hybrid forms – with a significant share of workers alternating presence and remote work – also indicates that smart working is perceived as an ordinary element of the evolution of organizational models, destined to remain over time because it is consistent with the needs for efficiency, work-life balance, job attractiveness, and territorial sustainability that characterize the production system and, increasingly, also the public administration.
Three elements, in conclusion.
The first concerns the role of management. If it is admitted that, due to the potential of the tool and its intrinsic flexibility, relying on preset percentages for days to be worked inside or outside office walls is of little relevance, which may vary according to changing organizational or personal needs, its management can only fall to the manager of the individual organizational unit, who possesses all the contextual information. This point directly refers to the functions and responsibilities of management, which, under current regulations, is responsible for work organization, objective definition, resource coordination, and results evaluation.
The second relates to the approach to be followed in the concrete management of the tool. Between choices left to the individual and centralization of decisions, a collaborative dynamic referring to the team seems decidedly more fitting, balancing individual needs with organizational ones: as noted by the Smart Working Observatory of the Politecnico di Milano, the collaborative approach is correlated with the best results in terms of worker engagement, organizational performance, internal well-being, with a positive effect on workers’ sense of belonging to the organization. It is a strategic investment that, however, requires commitment: a particularly difficult step for an internal culture that struggles to act outside of known and rigidly predetermined procedures.
The third and final element recalls the need for an enabling framework. Remote work still has many potentials to express, especially regarding the development of autonomy and empowerment of the individual worker, but it is not a magic potion: it is a tool that can provide a decisive contribution to strategic innovation all the more if inserted in a context where transformation objectives are sufficiently clear and adequately supported and where the formalistic-bureaucratic model weighs less in favor of the effectiveness of administrative action and working for results.
