Remote working in Italian SMEs during COVID-19. Learning challenges of a new work organization
ISSN: 1366-5626
Article publication date: 25 January 2022
Issue publication date: 5 July 2022
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to analyze how remote working has been carried out during the first wave of the pandemic in Italian SMEs, representing at the same time an organizational challenge and an excellent opportunity for individual and organizational learning.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper involved 60 Italian SMEs of various sectors and 330 employees: 217 clerks (average age 42) and 113 managers (average age 48) belonging to different functional units and with a different education backgrounds. Two different questionnaires, one addressed to clerks and one to managers/executives who coordinate the remote working activity, were prepared and sent. This paper investigates the issues of perceived productivity, technological preparation, coordination, programming and control with specific attention to how the participants faced the remote working experience from the learning point of view.
Findings
Before the pandemic, Italian SMEs did not feel the necessity to adopt a structured policy on remote working. The COVID-19 emergency has forced them to consider that working remotely is possible and can produce benefits and positive results for what they learned in terms of autonomy, motivation and trust, to the detriment of physical presence, which is not as fundamental to ensure productivity.
Originality/value
While large, formalized and structured companies encountered modest difficulties being already technologically and culturally prepared for remote working, the big challenge was that of SMEs, who found themselves obliged to adopt it. This paper examines how Italian SMEs lived and evaluated the switch to a new work organization and turned it into an occasion for workplace learning.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
The Authors wish to thank Confindustria Piacenza for the willingness to collaborate and for providing the fundamental contacts for the realization of the empirical part of the research.
Citation
Barabaschi, B., Barbieri, L., Cantoni, F., Platoni, S. and Virtuani, R. (2022), "Remote working in Italian SMEs during COVID-19. Learning challenges of a new work organization", Journal of Workplace Learning, Vol. 34 No. 6, pp. 497-512. https://doi.org/10.1108/JWL-10-2021-0132
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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