WHAT IS THE FUTURE OF KNOWLEDGE WORK ?

Recent research by Atlassian shows that 25 billion hours of work are lost in Fortune 500 companies due to ineffective collaboration. In addition, managers in these companies believe that only 24 percent of their teams are engaged in truly critical and creative activities.

Why is this happening in companies that should be at the frontier in terms of efficiency and productivity?

Engaging knowledge workers on clear, and participatory goals with incentives and communication flows directed at productivity and innovation, reducing unproductive meetings and bureaucracy, and harnessing the potential of Ai in the organization of work are extremely problematic issues without a major overhaul of labour laws, work processes and culture.

New technologies, new markets and new problems, and a landscape of digital nomads, freelances, senior workers, dual earner families, entrepreneurial employees, slash workers and workers in inland areas are challenging organizations to find new answers and new ways of working in response to a complexity now irreducible to pre-covid dynamics.

According to LinkedIn, as of January 2024, the number of applications for remote work roles was about double the number of other vacancies available, Office space costs will plummet 40% and 1 in 3 professionals will have multiple micro-businesses by 2034.

If we imagine that this issues applies to private companies as well as public organizations and institutions and the life and career choices of millions of working men and women, it becomes clear how better work organization can have an extraordinary impact on personal autonomy , productivity, competitiveness, susteinability of economy and society.

THE WAY OF DIGITAL PLATFORM ENTERPRISES

One possible way forward for increasing productivity and regaining competitiveness through better organization of work, at the same time protecting and empowering workers, is through "digital platform enterprises or new digital plat-firms."

A new emerging typology of digital and global ecosystems characterized by processes, technology and culture, enabled by Ai, that favours higher levels of productivity and innovation, thanks to a peculiar ability to foster autonomy of peripheral and independent teams, while maintaining consistency and control over participatory and sustainable outcomes.

There are many international cases of companies getting ahead of the competition in a wide variety of sectors in recent decades using some features of this model. Just think of Big Tech or other companies like Haier, Unilever, Handelsbanken, Novartis, Burtzwoorg, Unilever, Michelin, Thales, Vinci to name a few cases. These companies are outperforming the competition by solving the problems of coordinating, managing and hiring the most skilled workforce to offer better products and services to their customers and users.

Indeed, the new infrastructure of these platforms minimizes bureaucracy, i.e., those activities with which no clear value is associated by customers, users and stakeholders, and avoids the crystallization of vested interest, i.e., those dynamics of individual interest and internal resistance within organizations that are potentially contrary to the corporate interest.

Indeed, the platform organization enables a work structure that maximizes and enhances the contribution of individuals and teams on activities whose value is explicitly recognized by customers, users and stakeholders.

In addition, the platform structure enables the minimization of recruiting, outsourcing, and m&a costs, overcoming national barriers, and improving access to technical expertise, increasing the inclusiveness of the organization, and fostering the continuous re-generation of internal capabilities.

Finally, platforms, if well regulated, allow workers a strong stability of the employment relationship coupled with greater flexibility in choosing assignments, work schedules, training paths, and support services

However, these advantages arise from a strong commitment to organizational change and the presence of management, shareholders, and institutions with experience and expertise in introducing and managing these new organizational models.

ARE ITALY AND EUROPE HEADING IN THE WRONG DIRECTION ?

The ISTAT 2024 Report, well commented by Federico Fubini, an italian journalist, takes a good picture of the resistance to innovation in Italian companies, where productivity in the knowledge economy is decreasing instead of growing ( see Unioncamere analysis of Eurostat data ), and where the Public sector is on its way to some shy incremental improvements, but still insufficient to face current technological, demographic and social challenges.

In Italy, unlike other countries in Europe, the end of the pandemic has marked the gradual exhaustion of remote working. The public sector was the first to announce RTO with the Ministry of Public Administration's Directive of December 29, 2023. In the private sector, simplifications for frail workers and parents of children under 14 lapsed in March 2024.

In Italy, the risk is to return to a logic of control, despite the fact that the processes and culture of work have changed profoundly. Professionals and workers now seek flexibility and recognition of their life goals and time. It is no longer just a matter of protecting the fragile, but of engagement and retention of talented people in organizations.

Better digital organization of work is indeed a key issue in producing technology, preventing organizations and companies from being merely passive users of technology produced by third parties. 

Almost none of Italy's large companies are under 50 years old, however, and consequently resistance to change is not surprising. There is an almost complete lack, not only in Italy but more generally in Europe, despite decades of initiatives to stimulate innovation, of a new lever of tech, digital, large, high value-added companies capable of competing on a global scale, as is well explained by a recent article by Wolfgang Munchau, a German journalist, on German companies. 

It will be interesting to see, then, whether the new "european agenda" for productivity and competitiveness , which starts from the recognition of the technological lag behind the U.S. and China, will succeed in stimulating an evolutionary leap in public policy, perhaps hosting unprecedented initiatives and reflections on the strategic relationship between organizational frameworks, technology, innovation and society.

The main feeling is that current incentives and policies are ineffective if public and private organizations have such significant difficulties in turning financial resources and investments into meaningful activities.

At the same time, this frontier of innovation in organizational frameworks can be a great opportunity to get ahead of the market by recovering positions in attractiveness and competitivess.

COLLECTIVE AND PUBLIC POLICIES TO BRING DIGITAL PLATFORM ENTERPRISES AT SCALE

Surely this path cannot be traveled with traditional policies and by managers whose skills area great in traditional models but lack of dynamism and innovation in the new digital economy context.

To deploy these experiences at scale also must be added a review of the system of rules, contracts and regulations on Labor, designed in a pre-digital context, adapting them to the present and the near future with an approach that is both systemic and operational.

While there are in fact about 28 million platform workers in Europe, 72 percent of whom are engaged in online activities and 28 percent in "on location" activities, 92 percent of these workers are classified as self-employed and complain of poor protections.

In addition to the issue of classification, there is also the emerging intervention of algorithmic management that also requires a rethinking of administrative rules and processes.

On this issue, we can start from a recent Amendment to the Collegato Lavoro, on which there is an opening by Italian Labor Minister , towards a new blended category of permanent/freelance workers, and a proposal for a platform-based national bargained contract for Digital Labor, discussed in depth by unions and associations such Italian Tech Alliance, Manageritalia, Cna, Associazione Nomadi Digitali and SLC Cgil with the support of a large group of labor lawyers and professionals.

Secondly, once the "Platform Work Directive" is transposed into national law, the European Commission will have to find ways to bypass the bureaucratic boundaries between 27 still nationally managed labor markets that make organization and cooperation on a European scale extremely complex.

A new European digital platform business sector would go a long way toward increasing productivity, inclusion, innovation, and revitalizing a society and future perspective on par with other areas of the world.

Perhaps faced with new problems and a new geopolitical context, we need to start with innovation in Labor policies rather than in monetary and fiscal agenda.