Our "Vitesse Coffee" and the truth about smart working

The topic is trending, and soon we will probably watch a TV series starring smart workers, aka remote workers. Perhaps it won't have the same success as Suburra (but that's about dirty rather than smart work). However, it will provide us with a glance into how the world and habits are changing, waiting to determine if the after-covid will resemble our "normality." Most probably, no.

For us, the "before-COVID" was already like this. Might this be the reason why we feel this topic so fondly: we already wrote about it in one of our blogs in April, illustrating the right reasons for opting into it, and again in July with an overview of the tools to do it better.

During the last nine months, someone has been blessed with discovering what can be done in the so-called smart working. We have been practising it for nearly ten years and have long known that "distant" and "proximal" are misleading adverbs. People can be close and feel very far at the same time, or the other way around.

Every morning we take a coffee altogether - virtually. That's what we call "Caffè Vitesse," a video call during which our core team does three essential things every day: they say good morning, look at each other in the eyes, discuss their daily commitments. Pay attention to it; in many "traditional" offices, none of this happens regularly.

Sociologists and observers blast us with numbers to make us at ease. In Italy alone, remote working saves us three thousand tons of CO2, 7000 kilos of nitrogen oxide, and 600 kilos of fine dust every day, meaning that all this is good for our health. Unless, in the day of working at home, you crunch a handful of chips and take a sip in the Nutella jar: in which case, the next control will tell you the harsh truth.

Time management can finally be effectively used, the needs of professional and private life can finally reconcile. Well, it's easier done in a 200 sqm penthouse rather than a classic two-bedroom flat, especially when the children are home.

As for couple relationships, consequences of stressed relation by excessive attendance are still unknown: better ask the neighbour about the noise of broken dishes, if any. The truth can have different shades. The companies seem to like smart working (90% increase in large, 73% in medium-sized, 37% in small, 18% in micro-companies) and their employees too, but this doesn't mean that everything is fun and games like in the Walt Disney movies.

Smart working can cause issues as well, and you need to check on them. It is funny, for example, to record that 72% of professionals say they have increased their productivity, but there's no word about whether their bosses feel the same way about it. 

The only certainty, which is the main foundation to successfully implement the smart working philosophy, is the result's culture: the quality of the outcome, rather than the allocated time, has to be measured, to go with efficiency, and punctuality in performing the tasks.

And that's where the machine gets stuck sometimes.

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