The End of Nine-to-Five
The Dawn of Smart Working: Crisis as a Opportunity
Now that we are forced to work from home, we are realizing that it is not mandatory to go to the office every day; you can achieve results and high productivity even without being tied to the usual nine-to-five mentality. Many studies are also coming out to tell us that in the absence of a vaccine, social distancing could have to continue for a long time, perhaps even until 2022.
It is therefore the right time to evaluate a new form of work, the so called Smart Working. The main advantages are:
Increased flexibility and independent management of working schedule
You could think of a single weekly meeting to set goals and priorities and evaluate the progress of previous week work, and then use the rest of the time independently, organizing your own schedule. The point must no longer be to work a predetermined number of hours, but to achieve goals and deliver results within an agreed deadline. The emphasis is on promoting higher levels of staff empowerment and autonomy, to maximize benefits coming from new technologies and new working styles and to allow employees to achieve a better work-life balance.
Less time lost in rush hours’ traffic
Each of us spend roughly an hour a day for home-work trips. Assuming for example 3 days a week of Smart Working, you could save about 12 hours a month. 144 hours per year. It would mean recovering about 1 week of life wasted behind the wheel every year. Obviously this is especially true for managerial figures or office employees. However, having fewer people on the street will also save time and stress for workers.
In a context of social distancing it could also be reasonable to separate workers into shifts, by extending the total production time from the standard 8 hours, to 12–16, so as to have fewer people in the factory at each time, consequently further alleviating also the average rush hours’ traffic jam.
Reduced Expenditure for cars and meals
Assuming to travel on average about 50 km every day for home-work journeys, you could save 150–200 km a week or around 7500 km/year. It would be equal to a saving of something in the range of 500–1000€/year, only for the reduced fuel expenditure.
To this we should add a reduced expense for maintenance and probably also for insurance, assuming rates linked to the actual use of the vehicle.Even the expense for the purchase of the vehicle could be reduced, since the same vehicle would last for a longer time.
Finally, reducing days in office from 5 to 1–2 every week, would also reduce the meals expenditure.
The total saving could be in the order of 2000-2500 €/year, which for many people could be worth one additional month of salary or even more!
Reduced Pollution
We all have seen the satellite images of these days, coming from China, Italy, Spain, USA and so on. Staying home made air pollution drop right away.
Let’s consider for example the Italy numbers. It has been estimated that up to 5 Million workers (around 22% of the whole workforce of the country), could use Smart Working policies. In 2017, only 305000 were actually doing it. For simplicity, let’s assume to take this number up to 1 Million. Like we said, every worker could potentially avoid something like 7500 km/year.
Multiply that for 1 Million, and you will have 7,5 Billions of km saved every year. The main pollutants emitted by cars with a average Euro4 engine are:
CO2: 200 g/km
NOx: 0,06 g/km
PM: 0,023 g/km
Now if we multiply these numbers for 7,5 Billions of km every year, we could avoid the emission of something like:
CO2: 1,5 Millions of tons/year
NOx: 450 tons/year
PM: 173 tons/year
By extending these calculations to the whole world, it has been estimated that 214 million tons of CO2 could be saved, which is equivalent to what could be removed from atmosphere from 5 Billion trees.
Reduced Social Costs
Emissions have a high social cost, being responsible for climate change, with all its harmful effects and causing the reduction of the immune system, the appearance of tumors, chronic respiratory syndromes, cardiovascular problems and so on. These costs has been estimated, for the main pollutants that we have considered here, as follows:
CO2: 41€/ton
NOx: 9500 €/ton
PM: 159000 €/ton
Let’s go back to the Italian numbers: multiplying these values for the total of pollution that could be avoided, it can be deducted that a social cost of around 90–100 Millions of € could be avoided every year. If Smart Working could spread to that total of 5 Millions of workers mentioned before, a potential saving of 500 Millions of € could be achieved every year, only from a reduction of traffic. Without even considering the decrease in car accidents, the reduced road maintenance required, the reduced use of law enforcement on the streets and so on.
By extending these calculations to the whole world, it has been estimated that around 8774 Billions of € in social expenditures could be avoided every year
Increased Productivity and Reduction of Absenteeism
The Observatory for Smart Working of the School of Management of the Politecnico di Milano, has estimated an increased productivity of around 15%, with a reduced absenteeism of 20%. This could be worth 13,7 Billion of € every year in Italy.
To give you another figures 4 Trillions of € of savings per year in the US alone are estimated as a direct result of remote working by 2030 due to improving productivity, reducing fixed overheads and increasing agility.
It is complicated to make a global estimate, but I guess it could be way over 10 Trillion of €.
In conclusion, encouraging smart working is mandatory. It would have been even without considering the Coronavirus and the required social distancing, but now it is even more so. I would say it is both a moral obligation, to guarantee the safety of citizens and social obligation, given so many advantages. Time has finally come for a change of mentality and to embrace a new way of working.