Smart workers just over one in ten employees, but the potential pool is four

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Just over one in ten employees work remotely, even if the potential catchment area is much wider: at least 4 out of 10 employees could carry out smart working. The limited diffusion of smart working is affected by the different degree of feasibility of remote working in the various professions: the share of remote work varies from 25% for intellectual or executive professions to 2% for unskilled ones. The percentage is also linked to the different managerial ability to adopt new organizational models, which is lower in small and medium-sized enterprises.

Slower growth rates compared to the pandemic phase

These are data from a study released during a study day organized by the Inapp which highlights, more specifically, that in Italy just 14.9% of the employed carry out part of the activity by alternating face-to-face and remote work, but could be almost 40% considering potentially the services that could be performed remotely. In 2021, only 13.3% of the companies interviewed used this method. Therefore, a substantial share remains – around 2.5 million out of 19 million employees, but largely a minority – and above all the trend towards the spread of smart working is slowing down. The reference is the leap recorded in the midst of the pandemic, in 2020, when within a year it went – according to data from the smart working observatory of the Milan Polytechnic – from 570 thousand smart workers in 2019 up to 6.5 million, equal about one third of employees.

Fadda: opportunity not fully exploited

«It is an opportunity that has not been fully exploited, at least for the moment – comments the president of Inapp, Sebastiano Fadda-. Carrying out a profession that can theoretically be worked remotely is often a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for having the opportunity to experience remote work. The data does not show the shift in working paradigm that the pandemic seemed to have triggered, at least in our country: it is as if during the pandemic we had lived in ‘a big bubble’ and the return to normality was nullifying the potential of remote working, due to a reduced ability to introduce radical innovations in the organization of work which provides for a combination of remote work phases with face-to-face work phases”

In micro-enterprises, 84% of workers carry out non-remote tasks

The Inapp highlights that this reduced diffusion of smart working is affected by the different degree of feasibility of remote working in the various professions, but also by the different managerial ability to adopt new work organization models making use of new digital technologies, in a country like Italy where SMEs are widespread. Looking at the non-agricultural private sector, for companies with up to 5 employees, 84% of workers carry out tasks that cannot be performed remotely, but as the company size increases, this share decreases: 56.4% of workers carry out services that cannot be “remotized” among medium-sized companies with 50-249 employees and 34.2% among companies with over 250 employees.

More smart workers among graduates and employees of large companies

Those who carry out work that can be performed remotely are mainly graduates, employees of large companies, those employed in services and civil servants. Slightly above-average incidences are recorded among women, among residents of the North-West and in the Center and among people with a diploma.