In addition to the Labor-b column that aims at giving a direct voice to companies and giving them the opportunity to tell and share successful experiences, today we meet Luca Casati, top manager of Allprojects, a Milanese company operating for over twenty years in the field of construction and its related services.
Luca good morning and thank you for your availability. You were one of our first clients to truly understand that the world of labor legislation has undergone a profound revolution and that it was therefore necessary to intervene promptly at an organizational level.
Yes, as a member of the board of Allprojects but also as human resources manager of my company, I realized that – at the end of the lockdown – the job market had undergone a profound evolution and that my young front lines needed support, structure and new tools to organize their work.
Smart working is not bringing work home, it is rethinking times, tools, methods of communication and execution of work; it is not improvisation, but method and professionalism.
I realized that – to maintain company performance – it was necessary to start from the organization of resources and give them new tools and suggestions to face the new daily working life.
In Labor-b I found a partner who allowed me – in a short time – to organize an online training course that could respond to business needs, in order to rethink the organizational model and start operating immediately in a different economic context, where creativity and flexibility are fundamental ingredients.
Can you tell us in detail how the course was organized?
First of all, I identified the resources to involve: 6 resources divided into two subgroups of 3, based on their personal characteristics. As highlighted by Labor-b, online training has its own peculiarities compared to the classroom or traditional training.
Creating homogeneous groups that could “pierce the screen” and interact with serenity between them was a fundamental element for the success of the project.
Having defined the participants – Smart working resources who in turn should have managed remote collaborators – we agreed upon training delivery times that were compatible with normal working activities.
From a distance, using Google Meet the training was very simple, reducing travel times and also generating savings on direct costs.
On the content level, what has been offered to you?
Labor-b did not immediately offer me a course on regulatory and labor law aspects; this is an aspect that I have addressed at a later stage. We have worked on two macro-themes: communication, as Smart working brings with it a new way of communicating / knowing how to communicate and to live the team and work organization remotely with a focus on deadlines, schedules and correct balance between working and professional life.
These are the two pillars of the training which was conducted with 4 modules lasting 2 hours each alternating with two moments of individual confrontation between the resource and the Labor-b People Advisors. On these two occasions, cases of managing remote collaborators were analyzed, collecting operational suggestions on communication and monitoring of resources.
The alternation between theory, practice and concrete cases has certainly contributed to giving vitality to the course and to allowing immediate application of the principles learned. As a company, I needed to immediately introduce a different way of communicating and teaming up, since my collaborators were very used to office life and dynamics.
Understanding that communicating face-to-face and communicating remotely without losing the corporate spirit and the sense of belonging are not the same thing, was a great step forward and a first great success.
It was also interesting to understand which are the characteristics that must be developed by a Smart Leader and which instead by a Smart Worker: as a company it is in fact essential to understand that not all resources are adaptable to the new organizational model.
Improvisation does not help, you have to invest in resources and accompany them with method and tools in order to create an organization that is functional to achieving business results.
How did your collaborators experience the training?
I am fortunate to work with resources closely linked to the company, committed to achieving results and this greatly facilitated the work. Of course, approaching a different working method at a time when certainties lose some of their content was not easy.
Some resources found it more difficult than others, but in the end it was also a way to get to grips with corporate communication flows (not only from top to bottom, but also between equal levels). So the course designed for my collaborators, gave great suggestions on areas for overall business improvement.
Getting back to processes, flows and the passing of information between the various resources allowed me to question myself also about some company dynamics that will have to be revisited and improved.
Through my collaborators I was therefore able to identify areas where the company is called to improve and grow if it wants to achieve the development goals it has set for itself.
What suggestions could you give?
I’m certainly happy with the business investment made, a motivational lever for my collaborators in a difficult time. I would like to have the other managers of the company attend the course to allow them to apply a method of communication and organization of homogeneous work within the group.
I would like to understand how companies in my field are moving and understanding – not from an “industrial espionage” perspective but as a benchmark – how companies and associated firms like ours are moving and organizing. The future requires a lot of flexibility and innovation and comparison is without a doubt a necessary element.