Italy: ceramics group Lenet trials four-day week without reducing pay

Italy’s Lenet Group, known for the Thun brand and the La Porcellana Bianca kitchenware, is trialling what it calls the “smart week”, a way of organising work that is basically non-existent in Italy. This new way of working, guided by individual agreements, is based around meeting objectives and ensuring flexibility for both workers and the company. It applies to 350 workers who have volunteered for the scheme, out of 1,000 employed by the group. All employees whose roles are compatible with this type of model, excluding shop and warehouse workers, are eligible for the smart week arrangements. Each day of the week focuses on a specific type of activity, to avoid wasting energy by switching from one task to another. Monday and Thursday are devoted to new projects and interdisciplinary meetings, while Tuesday is the day for weekly performance reviews and Wednesday that for teamwork. Finally, no meetings will be held on Fridays, which employees will be able to take off or use to complete individual tasks or for training purposes. Human resources manager Lucia Adamo told Italian business daily Il Sole 24 Ore: “Fridays can be considered as another Saturday, but only if you have achieved your objectives.” Several years ago now, the Lenet Group stopped checking staff workplace arrival and departure times. The company has also introduced smart working, which Adamo says is “not, in our view, a question of the workplace but of working time”. Teams self-organise, coordinating their activity and schedules on the basis of production requirements and objectives. The smart week experiment started in June 2022 and will last until May 2023.