The future is already here: Well-being is going digital

It took thirty years and a health emergency, but the issue of the digital divide has returned to the top of the list of priorities (and challenges) of our society. It has done so in a renewed form: the digital divide that was created in the 1990s between those who could afford access to the Internet and those who could not is now being addressed in new terms and also affects businesses. Making full use of the technological innovations available does not prevent the development of a new potential gap between those who can master them and those who cannot. How can we act preventively? What is the role of companies in this respect? We discussed these and other topics with Giovanna Pensalfine, Head of Human Resources at Societe Generale Securities Services in Italy.

What will the digital divide look like in 2022?

From a certain point of view, digitalisation today is like speaking English a few years ago. Mastering a foreign language made things easier and in some contexts it was difficult to envisage a career without it. Today, however, it is recognised that knowing only one's mother tongue is no longer enough. The same goes for technology, whose adoption in the workplace (now almost certain) can pose the risk of creating a new digital divide. I think about three years ago: not all employees knew how to use the online meeting platforms and this lack of knowledge and skills could be a problem in the execution of their work.

How do we bridge this gap?

We have to remember that we are not all aligned when it comes to new technologies. The reason for this is age: there are analogue generations and other digital natives, who have lived these last years in a very different way, between those who had to learn new ways of communicating and those who already had the most innovative languages. Between the two, there is a journey of 30, 40 years. In this respect, I think that to bridge the "modern" digital divide, we need not only technical training, but also a transfer of knowledge, an approach that unites, that is inclusive.

What does this mean?

The main risk is that the corporate culture is divisive, that it is not based on the establishment of consistent values such as responsibility, kindness and, above all, trust.

What are SGSS's concrete actions in this regard?

In the company, we had already started smart working before 2020, a practice that we consider central to the well-being of our employees as well as to the environment. This is also confirmed by research, including the one promoted by the Politecnico di Milano, an institution with which we actively collaborate on these issues. In fact, the study "The Spread of Smart Working - 2022" showed that the welfare levels of smart workers are higher than those of full-time and non-agile remote workers; the planet also benefits, with emissions savings exceeding one million tons in Italy alone. However, adapting to full remote working was not easy, as it meant to perform our tasks without the 'organisational parachute' provided by the company. The experiments we conducted were aimed at understanding how we could best equip ourselves, as well as promoting a new culture, a hybrid of presence and distance. I'm thinking of the virtual coffees in the morning and the meetings conducted with the video on: it was important to replace the distance with the sight of a familiar face, also to avoid that feeling of loneliness which, in the long term, can affect the employee's mood and, consequently, the quality of the services provided.

It is also possible to bridge the gap by training your employees. What is your experience?

As we have always valued a skills and knowledge-based organisation, it was crucial for us to teach our employees how to make the best use of the available technology and how to ensure the same level of security when performing daily tasks. The aim was not only to train them on new skills to be acquired, but also on the behaviours to be put in place, in order to maintain a constant level of risk in the management of operations.

What is the role of virtuous companies in this context?

Companies must be aware of their responsibility towards clients (as producers of goods and services) and employees (as employers). The objective is twofold: to maintain a high quality of supply for the former and to promote the well-being of the latter. The company must be able to organise communication between the skills that different people have proven to have or have shown a willingness to learn. Finally, only with a generational pact of inclusion between the different souls of the company will it be possible to obtain a distinctive competitive advantage.

All the figures on smart working (and not) in Italy

Article published in WeWealth in December 2022.

Source: Data from the study La diffusione dello Smart Working¹ - 2022, conducted by the Smart Work Observatory and presented last October. The report is an initiative of the Politecnico di Milano School of Management and was carried out in collaboration with osservatori.net and various partner companies, sponsors, supporters and patrons. The methodology included: a survey on flexible spaces, which interviewed 87 managers of coworking and business centres; a survey on large companies, with the views of HR and IT managers from 209 organisations with more than 250 employees; a survey on small companies, with 555 organisations with between 10 and 249 employees; a survey on public administrations, with 409 public organisations with at least 10 employees; interviews, with 30 company cases; and a survey on workers, with 1000 respondents, carried out in collaboration with Doxa.