the risks of the summer internship at the time of smart working – Corriere.it

Internships in ghost offices where, thanks to the hybrid work and the holidays of colleagues, it is difficult to learn a trade from scratch. This is the snapshot taken from the latest study by the Financial Times on the world of work and its contradictions. The economic newspaper has collected the testimonies of dozens of young graduates who find it difficult to gain experience in the summer with no one to train them. The Ft explains how in 2022, the number of internships and summer internships returned to pre-pandemic levels with the Institute of Student Employers, which in a survey conducted on 168 large employers, found a 7% increase in hiring compared to to 2019. For this summer, companies said they hired as many or more interns as last year. With a not insignificant detail: many offers provide for remote internships or placement in offices where the staff are mostly smart working. Which means little learning on the job.

The problem also affects Italy where thousands of traineeships are activated in the summer. Doing a quick search on LinkedIn there are over 2200 announcements in July in Milan alone. Not to mention the options abroad (even remotely) as in the case of internships at the Guggenheim Museum. It is good for our country to make a clarification: given that the internship is not an employment contract but a moment of training, in the post-pandemic the so-called smart internship, i.e. the remote internship, should have been overcome as an emergency tool linked to Covid -19. It should therefore be the exception and not the rule.

As the Best Stage 2023 guide of the Republic of Interns recalls: Smart internshipping is possible only if four fundamental criteria are met: the training objectives of the internship can be traced back to professional profiles that allow the experience to be carried out in this way; at a practical-logistical level, the internship can be carried out even without the intern being present on site; the host agrees to this modality; and the intern has (or receives) the IT tools to be able to carry out the internship from home. With lots of documentation relating to the “remote” mode.

In fact, the exchange between the young trainee and those with more experience in the company remains essential for training. So much so that companies that adopt smartworking are experimenting with a new management of internships. To put it in the vocabulary of human resources, at the time of hybrid work, in fact, a structured onboarding is needed, to be carried out in presence and in absence. A people engagement system that allows the intern to feel welcomed, involved and an integral part of the team. A widespread strategy is to identify several tutors able to follow the juniors according to shifts and based on their presence on site. So that there are no holidays or smart working that he cares about.