SUSTAINABLE COWORKING - When we talk about sustainability we immediately think of "green" solutions. In fact, behind this word lies a much broader meaning that refers not only to greater attention to the environment but also to man. This includes coworking that aims to be sustainable by proposing solutions more attentive to the health of the worker and the planet.

Coworking as a sustainable solution

Coworking is the sharing of work spaces between people who do not do the same work and they do it also for companies that are often very different from each other. With the coworking however cohabit a same working space being able to all take advantage of common services. This activity allows many advantages including working in smart working, staying close to your home, but not having to turn the house into a studio. The employee thus has the opportunity to stay close to his family while being integrated into a real working environment. Home and work remain so distinct.

Coworking, however, also implements other sustainable solutions. It allows a reduction of waste, a decrease in consumption, recycling, reuse of materials and very high. Bringing together different realities also allows us to create innovative ideas that aim at sustainability in other areas.

Having spaces shared by workers attentive to sustainable solutions also leads to the choice of environments and furnishings green and beneficial to human health and planet.

A platform that makes coworking even more sustainable

If coworking is already sustainable, the idea of Sercam Advisory  and Advepa Communication will help make it even more eco-sustainable. The pandemic has shown us how Smart Working has helped to reduce road congestion and consequently air pollution. The Life Prepair report shows that in the first quarter of 2020 in the Po area where 40% of the population, which generates 50% of the national GDP, recorded a "sudden reduction of some of the main sources of air pollution."

However, not everyone is enthusiastic about definitely switching to smart working because, if on the one hand it is more eco-sustainable, on the other it loses on other requirements related to the sustainability of the working environment. That’s why the virtual coworking platform comes into play. It is a project that aims to reproduce offices and people with 3D reality. The best explanation is the president of Sercam Advisory Marco Ginanneschi:

"The users of the virtual studio are represented by avatars (in human form) who interact with each other (through chats and video-chats) perform the normal activities of office and meeting/ meeting with the clients of a studio.

The associate or secretary of the studio is assigned not only an avatar that represents him in the studio but also a back-end software, directly connected with the 3D virtual environment, through which normal office operations can be carried out.

The virtual studio is made up of Multiplayer technology that allows the presence of avatars (of the studio and the client) in the same virtual environment and interactions between them."

From emergencies to needs

It is no longer possible to return to a world that is completely equal to the pre-dawn world, especially in the work environment. Solutions have been discovered that from an emergency response have become a necessity. The important thing now is to resolve certain unsustainable issues in the long term and give guarantees to workers.

To learn more about the future of smart working, click here.

SMART WORKING - The pandemic has put us in front of the need to transfer work from offices to their homes. For many this transition was brutal, while others realized that they were preparing for this transition long ago. This is because the technologies had already shown us how it is possible to work from any place. If today smart working has the advantage of meeting the needs dictated by restrictions, yesterday and tomorrow it helps especially in being able to weave relationships with customers from all over the world without having to move.

When we start talking about smart Working

Smart working, which appeared for the first time in the Italian legal system in 1998, as a first trial of public administrations to authorize forms of work at a distance, began to take shape with Law 81/2017 with a new discipline that allowed an alternative to traditional working practices, with an immediate adoption by many technology companies, which made it a new philosophy of thought, with surprising results on productivity probably deriving from the condition of "comfort zone" of the employee that is put in a state of autonomy, with the possibility of better reconciling personal and professional life.

There is no doubt that the phenomenon of the pandemic has led to an enormous increase in the adoption of a new way of working, especially in services, which is still affecting almost 5 million workers, so as to make it necessary to extend until 31.12.2021 the emergency measure of smart working "simple" without therefore the need for individual agreement between company and employee.

The future of smart working

According to the Smart Working Observatory of the Politecnico di Milano the numbers are exponential: at the end of 2017 the smart workers were 305,000, at the end of 2019 they had reached the figure of 600,000 and to date the number has grown almost ten times more.

From 2022, there will certainly be a need for legislative measures to take account of worker protection mechanisms with new forms of contract and remuneration, where it is desirable a serene comparison that can be measured in special committees composed of companies and unions to monitor the experience of agile work on a large scale and solve issues that are creating debate in recent months: the rules to avoid the permanent connection of workers to computer tools, the right to compensation for expenses on broadband connection, the prohibition of work in public places and many other similar cases of operation still to be regulated.

Undoubtedly, the emergence of early March 2020 has profoundly changed the methodology of work and the way of communicating within the company, revolutionizing not only the computer systems in adoption but above all the fluidity of internal information systems.

The need for teleworking training

In Smes, which employ more than 95% of the workforce in our country, the information system is poorly structured and often chaotic as if on the one hand there is an absolute "freedom of exchange without defined rules" on the other hand there is the dispersion of knowledge from outside that can be decisive in the strategies that management wants to adopt on the guidelines of the policies indicated by the Governance.

the main necessity will be for the companies that to invest in the formation of the workers in smart working, activity that comes among other things financed from contributions to lost fund that some regions (in primis Lazio and Lombardy) have effectively disbursed to maintain and strengthen human capital endowments on the territory.

The obvious reduction in the costs of rents and utilities, due to the remodeling of the required workspaces, could release new resources to invest in professional skills that can be used at any time and especially without travel restrictions, to the benefit of corporate budgets that for 2020 had a zero travel costs and staff travel.

New needs will also arise and attention will have to be shifted to alternative team building modes within a group, where balances will no longer be determined by a chat in front of the coffee machine, but they will need different moments of communication and aggregation.To learn more about the benefits of virtual encounters, https://finanzeinvestimenticriptovalute.it/en/opportunities-for-virtual-meetings-from-the-covid-19-crisis/

RECOVERY PLAN - Hopes or certainties? - The Bel Paese is still trying to find its way out of the heavy economic crisis caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. In this regard, the Recovery Plan comes into play, which in this article is explained by the economic expert Marco Ginanneschi.

Recovery Plan - Hopes or certainties?

So far the only certainty we have on the Recovery Plan is the sum of the available resources of 248 billion euros for Italy, but it is necessary to clarify first of all the terms of the various plans and programs that would otherwise be synonymous, without highlighting the differences of species that are not only technicalities but that help to understand the wide range of resources available.

The Recovery Plan regards the complex of the plans, inclusive of those previewed from the Next Generation EU that has the greater slice with 235 billions and a temporal horizon of use until 2026 and is composed for 191 billions from the Recovery and Resilience Facility (RFF)31 billion from the Complementary Fund and 13 billion from the React-EU programme.

The most important part of these funds is the almost 70 billion in subsidies, without of course disregarding the importance of all the rest of the amount of subsidized loans.

PNRR: National Recovery and Resilience Plan

The PNRR (National Recovery and Resilience Plan) is divided into 6 main missions:
digitisation, innovation, competitiveness and culture

• green revolution and ecological transition

• sustainable mobility

• education and research

• social inclusion

• Health 

For the rest, for those who want to deepen the structure of the plan, on all government sites we have an excellent, but perhaps not as convincing, description of the needs and objectives to be achieved, in a meticulous but understandable way.

Who would disagree with the context analysis in the front pages? We provide in detail the percentages, statistics and trends on the state of health (or perhaps on the state of illness) of the economy of our country, the impoverishment of the population, the contraction of GDP, the increase of the public debt, the rise in unemployment and all the other elements that make us even more greedy about the unique opportunity we have to rise again.

Recovery Plan: only hope?

The danger is that it becomes a rescue doughnut where clinging with all the strength we have, we risk to fall to the bottom because we are broken in movements and actions. Here, then, even more, is the need not only to understand where to intervene, but above all the methods that must be used for a systemic coordination of the entire administrative system that must start again with the simplification of procedures, that obviously do not loosen the verification regulations, but that optimize the authorization processes for faster and slimmer investigations.

The hope of all is to be able to start again building solid foundations on which to land the projects described in the PNRR presented by Italy and not risk that it can remain only the "dream book" not realized.

In the last few days we are witnessing a political clash in the dilemma: reforms now or reforms to a future political government?

Once again the short-sightedness of the political class is leading us to self-destruction, as demonstrated by the trend of Italian GDP in the last twenty years pre-covid compared to other European countries. That’s exactly what’s not working! We are a divided country that can not be united even in emergencies, when you risk wasting time on the color of the bib to wear when the race has already started and everyone else is running.

Few comments

Just one point: is it possible that when we talk about reforms we need to talk about doing everything together? Tax, justice, health, school, social policies, we know that we are behind on everything but if we start to want to do everything together we risk, as usual, doing nothing.

At the moment, all we need to do is get a grip on the administrative simplification and the code of public contracts (which many people like to call, in non-technical jargon, the procurement code) if we want to make effective but above all efficient use of the funds that have been allocated.

The hope of all is to be able to start again building solid foundations on which to land the projects described in the PNRR presented by Italy and not risk that it can remain only the "dream book" not realized.For more information about the world of work, click here

To learn more about Marco Ginanneschi, click here

STATE AID - May 2021: the economic crisis due to the Covid-19 pandemic is rampant globally still affecting "the beautiful country" that is trying with all its strength to rise again. We have an economic expert on the sensitive issue of state aid and subsidies: Marco Ginanneschi.

State aid: really useful?

Economic policies over time have impacts often very different from those advocated by legislative interventions because the variables are many and the timing and responses of the market are not predictable, with the event, very often, distortive effects that can drastically reduce the expected benefits.

The crux of the final months of the pandemic, between "powers of fire" and the endless versions of "decrees refreshments", in addition to the frantic race to update in real time, at the expense of professionals in the sector and businesses, is creating the desired effects to reduce damage to the real economy?

The challenge has just begun: will we be able to use more than EUR 220 billion in six years in an appropriate and transparent manner, when we have spent half as much as EUR 48 billion in the last seven years of the 2014-2020 programming period?

The productive world seems to sink more and more in the quicksand of the bureaucracy that prolongs the times of wait of the subsidies, until now seen like the only breath of oxygen for the business survival. We probably forget too often that for the company survival is not enough, as the "going concern" that should have a solid foundation to project development and growth.

State aid: emergency measures

The perspective vision is flattened, Most entrepreneurs are forced to chase the emergency measures that are causing the head to bend on the primary needs and contingent taking away the space necessary for the planning of a strategy even only in the medium term.

State aid, which is given in a rainy and confusing manner, would seem to prolong the agonies already begun in the pre-covid era, since our memory, too often short-term, seems to have overshadowed the fact that we had almost a decade of growth around zero of our GDP.

If we look at the spending capacity of European funds we find the real answer: Italy, in the twenty-year period that has been taken into consideration, is the penultimate place in Europe on the spending capacity of the funds allocated and, in addition, all too often used on projects that have not led to expected economic benefits in the medium to long term.

If the objective is survival, then the measures adopted can be acceptable, but if we have the ability to look at a different horizon, then we need to relaunch energy infrastructure, technological development, protection of the environment and, above all, policies for adequate social protection.

These are all macro-themes present in the document presented in the EU for the Next Generation funds that could cause a "second renaissance" in Italy.

The challenge has just begun: will we be able to use more than EUR 220 billion in six years in an appropriate and transparent manner, when we have spent half as much as EUR 48 billion in the last seven years of the 2014-2020 programming period?

Key word: De-bureaucratisation

The response times of the Pas must be cut back quickly through more streamlined and transparent procedures, including a revision of the code of public contracts, which should at least be closer to criteria for the functioning of other more virtuous European countries.

Why does Italy have a GDP growth of less than 8% from 1999 to 2019, when Spain, France, England and Germany reached a growth of between 32 and 43%?

If we look at the spending capacity of European funds we find the real answer: Italy, in the twenty-year period that has been taken into consideration, is the penultimate place in Europe on the spending capacity of the funds allocated and, in addition, all too often used on projects that have not led to expected economic benefits in the medium to long term.

The high road is therefore an effective programming involving stakeholders on the territory through short and incisive stages of public consultation, a careful check on the progress of projects and finally a timely reporting of the resources used, otherwise we risk having a powerful offscreen in hand without the instructions for use for driving. In order not to skid at the first curve, this period of preparation will be essential to test all the skills we can put in the field.

We can still win the game of our future!For more information about the world of work, click here

Innovative tools in the governance of Smes - In this article Marco Ginanneschi, Chartered Accountant, Statutory Auditor, and Lecturer in Business Management Degree at Link Campus University, addresses the issue of innovation in the governance of small and medium-sized enterprises.

Innovative instruments in SME governance

When we talk about Governance, we always think about the models of large multinational Holding companies or Spas, while in reality the concept is much broader and especially affects Smes that want to achieve a virtuous management of their company.
The first great obstacle for small Italian entrepreneurs who are at the helm of their company and identify it with their person, is to have mistrust in imagining the separation between the ownership of the company and its management.

The current economic emergency highlights to an increasing extent the need to resort to targeted and specialized interventions that are able to meet not only a product innovation as to an innovation in the processes and management approaches now which are very different from the patterns used so far.
A great entrepreneur does not always succeed in being a great manager, as they are well distinct roles that arise from a different and increasingly specialized training.
The intuition and the great ideas of the entrepreneur do not coincide with the requirements of a market strategy or risk assessment that are the prerogatives of the company managers.

The peculiarity of companies with share capital is precisely that of being autonomous legal entities that allow the corporate object of the members who have formed them to be realized. Many companies, in fact, are administered by different subjects than the partners, to which they remain, however, duties and powers of control over the management.

Governance systems

Just to divide ownership from the control of companies, the systems of Governance are born. With regard to Smes, the principles of governance must be a source of support for the costs that an organised and structured structure entails for the principles of effectiveness and efficiency in the management of human capital and financial capital resources.

In this regard, the technology allows us to minimize costs by increasing the level of company security through the creation or implementation of an adequate internal control system, which must be based on first-level controls and the formalisation of their structure, segregation of responsibilities, traceability of data and information (with the introduction and use of blockchain), verification of the achievement of Kpis (Key Performance Indicator), and adequate financial and economic information at least quarterly.

The importance of innovative instruments

In the age of the pandemic crisis it is clear to everyone the importance of adopting innovative tools also of communicative level that allow a constant and periodic information by the board of directors to all members through the use of a report specific, of fundamental importance for the prevention and possible management of conflicts of interest between property and management.

The current economic emergency highlights to an increasing extent the need to resort to targeted and specialized interventions that are able to meet not only a product innovation as to an innovation in the processes and management approaches now which are very different from the patterns used so far.

For more information about the economic situation in Italy click here

ITALIAN ECONOMY MARCH 2021 - In a climate of global crisis due to the covid-19 pandemic, Italy is trying to get back on its feet through new reforms. A serious crisis of government has characterized Italian politics and influenced the economy of the italian territory, leaving room for reflection on what is the current situation. To deal with this issue we have an expert in the economic sector: Marco Ginanneschi.

Italian Economy March 2021 - Marco Ginanneschi speaks

Chartered Accountant, Statutory Auditor, and professor in the Degree Course in Business Management at Link Campus University.

Due to his considerable business experience, as an innovation manager in the economic world, we turn to him in this interview with the aim of analyzing the situation of the Italian economy, afflicted by the crisis due to the global pandemic, focusing on government changes and new reforms.

Currently, Italy is going through a period of persistent crisis to which they are trying to find a solution that still does not seem to arrive. From an economic point of view, do you think the basis for a proper economic restart is being laid?

To overcome the greatest economic crisis since the post-war period, it is necessary to lay the foundations for rebuilding a country on totally different criteria, on the one hand with a strong de-bureaucratization, which does not mean a loosening of rules or control activities, but rather a rapid and flexible evolution of procedures that can reduce decision-making time with targeted interventions to contingent needs, and on the other hand a strong impulse on the activities of renewal of strategic infrastructure that would allow an immediate revival of production that would benefit virtually all sectors.

It would be necessary to revise the Public Contracts Code and imagine decidedly different timescales for the various procedural stages of awarding a public contract and the relative timescales for completion. We have already had the example that the "Italian miracle" can happen, and I am not referring to the economic boom of the sixties, but rather to the Genoa Bridge that was designed, built and tested in less than two years after its collapse. For a good functioning of the administrative machinery it is not necessary to act in derogation of the rules with the appointment of the Extraordinary Commissioner on duty, as the ability to rewrite new rules that are in step with the speed of the economy to which we are accustomed today.

The weight of bureaucracy, according to a pre-covid study by Assolombarda, causes companies to lose at least four points of turnover, and reducing such a load would be even more beneficial than an equal percentage reduction in the current tax burden.

Lastly, it is enough to imagine, in spite of the emergency decrees, the wait of many months for the companies that have benefited from the reliefs or the long times to receive the redundancy fund for the workers that represent the category that deserves a greater social protection.

With the government crisis in January that led to the resignation of the now ex-Premier Conte and the installation of the new Draghi government, do you think there have been economic repercussions that have further aggravated the already precarious economic situation?

The Italian economy, which had already gone through a downturn from 2009 onwards, with annual GDP growth of a few fractions of a decimal point above zero, has suffered a shock due to the pandemic that has severely downsized entire production sectors, the effects of which will unfortunately only be visible in the coming months when the stop to layoffs ceases and the final accounts of jobs lost will be made.

I do not believe it is a political problem, but a problem of competence and the experience of recent years teaches us that honesty is an essential prerequisite to which must necessarily be combined a great capacity for strategic vision and knowledge of the effects that can cause each regulatory intervention.

In fact, we are accustomed to a bulimic production of regulations which often do not correspond to the desired effectiveness and this denotes ignorance (in the Latin sense of the term) of the complex dynamics of the Italian economy.

Obviously, the current government is composed, at least for the "strategic boxes" concerning the economy, by referenced professionals of international renown and the hope is that there are finally courageous and decisive interventions to address a situation not only emergency, but of real reconstruction.

There has been a lot of talk about the bonuses instituted in the past few months, which have often been criticized for not being sufficient to cover workers' lost earnings. Do you think this type of economic tool is an effective tool or do you think it needs to be implemented?

The bonuses of the past months were important to buffer an unforeseen situation, the timing and effects of which could not be known, at least in the initial phase.

With the passing of time it has become clear that structural interventions are needed, after a first aid to keep alive the hopes of a recovery, different solutions are expected. Sprinkled benefits are not sufficient and, above all, risk over time being dispersive and creating distorting effects in the free market.

The restart begins with the design of a new way of working, not only with smart working, but with a logic that makes it possible to make "new economies" on the space dedicated to work (at least in the category of services), on energy, on transport, which automatically generate new modes of consumption and free up further income capacity.

It is no coincidence that savings in 2020 increased in absolute terms, and this is an indicator that runs counter to the disastrous economic situation.

There could therefore be new premises for relaunching investment by the private sector, which at the moment is more timid due to the situation of uncertainty that has been created.

New investments will inevitably have to support digitization, Industry 4.0, industrial automation, robotics, blockchain, artificial intelligence and new communication networks.

What do you think about the Next Generation Eu?

Italy has a unique opportunity in history since the Marshall Plan.

2021 has a particular "star conjuncture" due to the start of the new 2021-2027 programming agenda and Next Generation Eu funds.

The next few months will be critical in strategically positioning available resources in spending chapters. Even the most convinced anti-Europeans are perhaps maturing the idea that, if there were no supranational support, it would be very difficult to get out of a crisis of global dimensions by their own efforts.

New investments will inevitably have to support digitization, Industry 4.0, industrial automation, robotics, blockchain, artificial intelligence and new communication networks.

We have at hand the opportunity for a second Renaissance, only if the ability to use the funds do not follow the examples of past years, where Italy is among the European countries with the lowest use; one thing above all: in the 2014-2020 programming, now nearing closure, about 48 billion available, were actually spent about half and this denotes how many opportunities over the years we have lost. Only on the Recovery Fund, the share due to Italy is 209 billion and to have the ability to spend it is necessary first of all to have an intervention plan for strategic investments and first rewrite the rules to reduce the level bureaucracy of procedures in which we are unfortunately inevitably trapped.

In relation to the Next Generation Eu, in your opinion, what could be the points on which Italy will focus with the first deadline of April 30, 2021?

The goals of the Next Generation EU are now beginning to take shape in increasingly precise outlines and the areas of intervention for Italy will be those of sustainable growth, with a new approach on digital, a new efficiency in productivity while respecting ecology, the development of smart cities, the encouragement of the circular economy with the adaptation of resource management systems, the reuse of raw materials, the industrial reconversion with technological criteria. The winning strategy will be to be able to combine new working models with attention to social issues and respect for the rules for new life scenarios that are on the horizon.

Do you think that Italy can manage to have a minimal recovery of the economy in the months to come?

In the short term, unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be any encouraging signs, at least until the arrival of the summer. The hope is that the effectiveness of the health care policies put in place will bear fruit by year's end, but in many cases the working model we had in the pre covid era will no longer be the same.

Some people think it's just a black-out and that at the end of the pandemic everything will go back to the way it was, but in reality, more than a year later, it will be necessary to draw conclusions and intercept new opportunities in a rapidly changing economic world that leaves no room for nostalgia for a past that will now become history and no longer up to date.For furthermore information click here.