Smart Working: when wellness is synonymous with productivity

The lower the stress, the better the performance. This is why the most advanced companies invest in the quality of employee time.
According to a recent study by the American Psychological Association, 42% of people say their stress levels have increased significantly over the past 5 years. Stress, even if of a different nature, strongly affects work performance, increasing phenomena such as absenteeism and the lesser-known presenteeism, i.e. going to work while sick, not fully engaged and therefore under-performing.
This is why the most advanced companies attentive to economic and social transformations are increasingly deciding to invest in their employees, helping them to improve their physical and mental health. An example of this is the evolution of the concept of smart working, which is leading to a real redefinition of the role of the worker. It is becoming less and less common to measure the work production factor in terms of units produced per amount of time spent; nowadays, it is measured in terms of quality and, above all, as the ability to achieve set objectives. All of this has enormous repercussions on the ways in which work is managed and how it is offered.
On the one hand, in fact, the classic industrial model is definitively disappearing, the model in which time (hours worked) and space (factory rather than office) were the two essential coordinates for designing the function of labour productivity. Now people are given the flexibility, autonomy and the freedom to choose where and when they work. This entails a strong sense of responsibility, in addition to assimilating and sharing the idea that working essentially means achieving results for a common good, one’s own good, the good of colleagues and the good of the company.
On the other hand, the evolution of smart working implies an equally profound change in the paradigms of personnel management and, more generally, managerial systems. This translates into new human resource policies, through the introduction of forms of interaction and collaboration typical of this innovative way of working, accompanied by choices oriented towards the organisational well-being of people in order to keep workers physically, psychologically and socially in good health. In an increasingly competitive market, one of the main objectives of companies is to increase productivity, focusing on the most important factors that influence it so as to boost employee performance.