Exploring Employee Perceptions towards Smart Working during the COVID-19 Pandemic: a Comparative Analysis of Two Italian Public Research Organizations

Marco Cellini,Massimo Crescimbene,Fabio Di Felice,Lucio Pisacane

doi:10.1007/s11115-021-00559-9

Abstract

Of all the socio-economic changes caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, the disruption to workforce organizations will probably leave the largest indelible mark. The way work will be organized in the future will be closely linked to the experience of working under the same institution’s response to the pandemic. This paper aims to fill the gap in knowledge about smart working (SW) in public organizations, with a focus on the experience of the employees of two Italian research organizations, CNR and INGV. Analysing primary data, it explored and assessed how SW had been experienced following the implementation of governmental measures aimed at limiting the spread of COVID-19.

Highlights

Among the socio-economic changes caused by the Covid-19 pandemic outbreak the disruption to workforce organizations will be the one to most likely leave an indelible mark
The data shows that most respondents were women, older than 46 years, been working in their institution for more than 11 years and fall under the category of researchers and technologists (Table A2 in the Appendix reports the data on the demographic characteristics in CNR and INGV samples)
To understand how research institution employees experienced Smart Working (SW) during the pandemic, the questionnaire surveyed the main positive and negative aspects they experienced in the implementation of SW

Summary

Introduction

Among the socio-economic changes caused by the Covid-19 pandemic outbreak the disruption to workforce organizations will be the one to most likely leave an indelible mark. The way public and private organizations will organise work in the future. The social distancing and the confinement, imposed to reduce the contagion, forced governments and public organizations to reorganize their workforces into new forms as per pre-existing concepts such as Smart Working (SW), Telework (Huws et al, 1990), Flex Work, Working From Home (WFH), Alternative Work Arrangements (Gil-Garcia et al, 2014). For many organizations the governmental responses to the pandemic forced the adoption of SW as the only viable alternative during the emergency, and the experience will give impetus to future schemes as well as an incentive to promote SW. There has been limited attention given to SW in the public sector and on its impact on effectiveness, quality of working life, and family life (Decastri, et al, 2020)

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Conclusion