Smartworking Proven Beneficial to Both Companies and Employees

USING RIGOROUS METHODOLOGY, PAOLA PROFETA AND MARTA ANGELICI RECORDED GAINS IN PRODUCTIVITY, WELLBEING AND WORKLIFE BALANCE FOR EMPLOYEES IN SMARTWORKING BEFORE THE CORONAVIRUS EMERGENCY

By the time Covid19 is just a bad memory, millions of employees forced to work from home will have developed first-hand experience of smart-working, a kind of organization that frees our work from the constraints of time and place. Through a randomized experiment conducted before the coronavirus emergency, Paola Profeta (Bocconi University and Dondena Centre) and Marta Angelici (Bicocca University and Dondena Centre) concluded that the flexibility of smart-working increases the productivity of workers and improves their well-being and work-life balance.
 
In a rare case of randomized controlled trial (the gold standard of scientific research) regarding smart-working, the authors divided 310 white-collar and blue-collar employees of an Italian multi-utility in two groups: 65% of them were granted smart-working one day a week for nine months, while 35% went on working as usual. Productivity, well-being and work-life balance of the two groups were monitored throughout the experiment using data provided by the company and questionnaires completed by the workers of both groups and their supervisors.
 
Companies will appreciate that the productivity of smart-workers, measured by various indicators, grew, and workers will like the rise in well-being and the improvement of work-life balance.
 

	Smart-workers used 5 less days of leave in 9 months compared to workers who had not been granted flexibility.
	Compliance with deadlines was 4% higher for smart-workers.
	Smart-workers were 5% more satisfied with their life and 8% more satisfied with their social life.
	Smart workers recorded 8% more capacity of staying focused, 7% less loss of sleep due to concerns, and 12% less feelings of stress.
	Smart workers declared that working hours adapted to private life in 6% more cases and devoted 15% more time to household chores.

 
«Smart-working is not and cannot be considered a gender policy», Prof. Profeta says, «but, as men recorded the most evident surge in time devoted to family care and household chores, an important side-effect of smart-working seems to be a better balance in family roles».
 
Employees fully exploited time flexibility, while the working place was almost always the employee’s home .
 
The current coronavirus emergency has driven companies to grant smart-working for a wide range of jobs, thus revealing that it is feasible both for routine and for non-routine tasks.  «But the experience is not planned and full-time. In the current  conditions, the sense of social isolation could be stronger than usual, and the same is true for the gender balance effect», Prof. Profeta concludes.

by Fabio Todesco