Smart working e Ricerca: il punto di vista dei Ricercatori e Tecnologi dell’INGV

The health emergency due to Covid-19 has projected the employees of the Italian public administration into targeted and, essentially, forced smart working for everyone. This, together with the immediate benefit of mitigating the effects of the pandemic, has brought out the advantages and disadvantages of its application to the world of Research. Through an analysis of the differences between technical-administrative services and research activities, and taking as a reference the National Collective Labor Agreement, we want to highlight, in this article, the unresolved issues of the full application of smart working also in view of the application a smart working organizational plan that the Public Research Institutes administrations must prepare annually. The aim of this article is to emphasize the specificities of the Research with respect to administrative management with a view to constructive collaboration and to improve the functioning of the Institution. A survey of 585 Researchers and Technologists of a large Italian research institute, the National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology, clearly showed the positions of the employees on the key points of the question of the application of smart working, that respects the dictates of the National Collective Agreement of Researchers and Technologists regarding the autonomy and freedom of research enshrined in our legal system based on the Constitutional Charter. The analysis of the results may promote the identification of possible harmonization between smart working and research activity to find the model that meets one's needs and characteristics that can be shared by the entire scientific community of Italian Public Research Institutes and both advantage of working well-being even in health emergencies.