Generali, the collapse of the Hadid Tower sign and more: smart working policy for business continuity

Today everyone is on smart working. After the collapse of the sign, being able to give notice to the workers gravitating around the Citylife headquarters in Milan, allowed the Generali insurance company to preserve both the health and safety of its people and business continuity. With a simple union notice and email to the workers it switched to smart working mode, without having to go through the Caudine forks of negotiations that would certainly have delayed operations. It is not a question of cynicism, but of health and safety and operability, in this case. In others of social and environmental sustainability. Issues that represent a real risk in companies and cities and on which smart working can act as a real policy.

Eni is one of the multinationals most sensitive to health and safety issues, as can be seen from the more than 6,000 annual drills carried out in the various offices to get used to safe behaviour. In one of the first smart working agreements signed with the trade unions, Eni has included a chapter entitled smart working for extraordinary situations, which provides the company with the possibility of arranging, also at a territorial level, to use agile work for temporary continuous or fractioned periods, according to the organisational methods it deems most appropriate, informing the trade unions in good time. Among these, Eni's agreement also indicates causes of force majeure, for example, special situations such as calamities (snow with consequent road or transport blocks), pandemic events, weather events, events of national and international importance such as the Jubilee.

And it is precisely to the Jubilee, an event of global dimensions, that the framework agreement of the Municipality of Rome, together with the Lazio Region and the Metropolitan City with the employers' organisations and trade unions refers to promote and strengthen smart working among public employees and tried during the Jubilee period in order to manage the increased traffic and the critical mobility issues in the capital by offering workers the opportunity to work more remotely.

The stories are different but in common they have the fact that, whatever one thinks of smart working and the union agreements that provide for it, having it and having it or not can make a difference in operational management. In the first case it can be guaranteed, in the second, especially in large companies, there is the issue of the technological preparation of work organisation and union agreement. With an email Generali has switched to smart working mode - which is scheduled for 3 days a month and is part of the broader Red working plan, to which almost all of its people (98%) adhere - securing workers and operations. Like a policy.