Everyone will have heard of the “great resignation”, i.e. the tendency to voluntarily abandon jobs, even well-paid ones, opting for one where work is more on a human scale.
Resignations can have very different reasons: work methods more on a human scale, a greater balance between the private sphere and the working sphere, ethical motivations, environmental situations, etc. are at the basis of the decision to leave the job. It is the desire, increasingly widespread in the new generations, to “re-appropriate” one’s life by reshaping the relationship with work.
Unfortunately, not always with a radical change of life as an epilogue.
So, we can say that today’s cultural challenge is to rediscover the human dimension of work as an element of citizenship, participation, and inclusion, without forgetting the search for sustainability.
This vision starts from the assumption that work does not only serve as an element of income and, indeed, the new generations in particular are aware that not only what can be measured through a price has value.
Work must be experienced as a collective commitment to social cohesion and inclusion. It must be a path of relationship between people, of personal growth, an instrument of autonomy and emancipation, the continuation of creation for believers, and a collective effort where everyone can make choices that determine their own future and that of society.
The world of work must include young people who are the best wealth that a country possesses, if only because they have the necessary initiative to blaze new trails.
It must include women to enhance the work with their sensitivity and organizational aptitude. Must find effective solutions for the inclusion of those who have been forced out of work during a crisis, promote a healthy balance between people from various backgrounds and cultures, recognizing, without prejudice but promoting their valorisation, the differences between employees (age, gender, ethnicity, religion, disability, sexual orientation, education or nationality).
As a further matter, the great challenge, at the beginning of the era of man-machine interaction, is precisely the enhancement of the person, for an increasingly human work, based on knowledge and protection of the environment.
The world of work has always been the best promoter of development, well-being, equality, and emancipation for all, helping to create a development that has been able to combine wealth and solidarity, although it is not always easy to achieve these purposes everywhere.
In the future, the challenge of putting the person at the center will be even more demanding: young people, the elderly, women, agile work that does not mean “working remotely” and that’s it but, rather, combining remote work with office work, reorganizing work based on the concept of responsibility and not of time, having adequate tools to facilitate collaboration, redesigning physical spaces, imagining different ways of using services by citizens, etc.
And then (better now!) addressing the major issues of inclusion and sustainability, not only from an ethical point of view but simply because we are realizing that it is convenient for everyone.
In fact, I do not believe that ethical motivations alone can solve every problem in this sector, then also have a positive impact on the economy.
We must be firmly aware that an inclusive approach is not only good for those who, for the most varied reasons, experience a condition of diversity with respect to the context in which they find themselves, but it represents an advantage for all people, for companies, for society in general.
The same goes for sustainability, the ability of companies to commit their efforts not only to safeguarding the environment but also to operate taking into consideration other variables such as the social context in which the company operates and the people who work in the business (but I would like to talk more about sustainability).
