Some research from Australia helps clarify the relations between working life and personal life

Balance between working life and personal life. Measure and proportion, productive time and human time, man and machine. It is a definite fact that good corporate culture also entails a sense of organisational proportion. This applies to all sectors. Even the most “simple”. In fact, it is precisely from the photograph of relations between work time and personal time in some of the former that general indications may arise. Reading “Technology, Long Work Hours, and Stress Worsen Work-life Balance in the Construction Industry” by Simon Holden and Riza Yosia Sunindijo (from the Faculty of Built Environment in Sydney, Australia) could be a good way better to understand a topic that is only apparently easy.

The purpose of this research is to assess the level of balance between work life and private life and determine the factors that affect the balance between professional life and work in the Australian construction industry. Geographically far away, precisely this scope of activity constitutes a good starting point to begin to understand.

The research was carried out using questionnaires to collect data from 89 employees of a medium-sized construction firm in Sydney. The results of the survey are discussed, starting with a theoretical diagram that clearly identifies the “factors” which influence the work-life balance: technology, business culture itself, time, level of remuneration, health, welfare.

The results show how poor management of “limits” is responsible for a relatively low work-life balance. And how it is precisely from the combination of technology, business culture, wage compensation, health and implementation of initiatives for work-life balance that an effective balance between working life and private life may emerge. On the one hand, the two researchers explain, technology, long work hours and stress may have negative impacts on the balance between work and private life; on the other, work-life balance initiatives supported by an appropriate business culture can promote a better balance between work and private life in the construction sector. The survey is accompanied by a series of diagrams and investigation tables on every aspect of business management which affects the work-life balance.

The analysis work undertaken by Holden and Sunindijo is valuable owing to the effort made to clarify the matter and to the simplicity of presenting a theme that is very important in the context of the growth of modern business culture.

Technology, Long Work Hours, and Stress Worsen Work-life Balance in the Construction Industry

Simon Holden1, Riza Yosia Sunindijo

International Journal of Integrated Engineering, Special Issue 2018: Civil & Environmental Engineering, Vol. 10 No. 2 (2018) p. 13-18

Published from 1948 to 1972, generally bimonthly, and on regular sale at newsstands, Pirelli magazine was launched with the declared aim of combining technical-scientific and liberal culture. The magazine published articles that ranged from art to architecture, through to sociology and economics, urban planning and literature. The journal was the brainchild of Arturo Tofanelli, who was chief editor until 1957 with Giuseppe Luraghi and Leonardo Sinisgalli. Its aim was to make the company’s technical and business culture part of the culture of society at large. After Tofanelli, the editor-in-chief was Arrigo Castellani, the “Propaganda Director” of Pirelli and, in the final years, Gianfranco Isalberti. For over two decades the magazine was the forum for some of Italy’s most advanced cultural debates, with contributions by such great writers as Giulio Carlo Argan, Enzo Biagi, Dino Buzzati, Italo Calvino, Camilla Cederna, Gillo Dorfles, Umberto Eco, Arrigo Levi, Bruno Munari, Salvatore Quasimodo, Alberto Ronchey, Giuseppe Ungaretti, Elio Vittorini and many other great names of Italian culture, with articles and reports illustrated by artists of the calibre of Renato Guttuso, Alessandro Mendini, Fulvio Bianconi, Mino Maccari, and Ernesto Treccani. Compared with other company house organs published in those years, Pirelli magazine was a case apart right from the first issues. This was especially apparent in its interest not only in poetry and literature but also in the figurative arts, and it soon became a benchmark for later company publications. The role of painters and illustrators in Pirelli magazine became increasingly important in the second half of the 1950s and in the first half of 1960s, but waned in the second half of the 1960s. This was when photography gained the upper hand, with celebrated photographers such as Ugo Mulas, Arno Hammacher, Federico Patellani and Fulvio Roiter, among others. The magazine’s focus on illustrations was partly a natural expression of the cultural climate in Italy, and particularly in Milan, from the 1930s to the immediate post-war period, when there was a close bond between artists and writers, industry and literature, art and advertising.

Under the pen-name Franco Fellini, also Giovanni Pirelli signed six articles in Pirelli: Rivista d’informazione e di tecnica between 1954 and 1959. The articles published in the February and April issues of 1959 were about a trip to Egypt that Pirelli went on with his friend Renato Guttuso. The idea was to document the construction of the Aswan Dam for a report to be published in the magazine. The first article, “Where the Nile is the only road”, tells the story of Giovanni Pirelli’s journey through Sudan and Egypt in December 1958. The second article, “The message of Seneb the Dwarf”, is about how Pirelli’s journey along the Nile continued, together with his wife Marinella and Renato Guttuso and his wife Mimise, at the beginning of 1959. The articles were illustrated by 16 drawings made on location by Guttuso, some of which are now preserved in the Pirelli Foundation.

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Despite everything, there exists an Italy which is working, investing, and keeping an intelligent eye and open outlook on a world which is changing. In these times of dramatic political and institutional crises, while certain people try to bring into question Europe and the euro, altogether different signals are emerging from the realm of the economy: industry is innovating and growing, as it looks to square up to international competition. The news is this: we have launched the eight Competence Centers designed, with the help of public funds (73 million euros), to support and to finance Industry 4.0, that is to say the most cutting-edge Italian manufacturing, with particular strengths in automation, robots, big data, 3D printing, the Internet of Things, and digital innovation coupled with the Italian tradition of “making beautiful things which the world loves”. Completely the opposite, in fact, of a provincial attitude – the best of Italian businesses, used to dealing with market challenges, rather than shutting themselves away within a damaging and short-sighted protectionist cocoon.

The eight Competence Centers, as defined by the ministry for Economic Development, are designed to bring together universities, research centres and businesses in the work they carry out. At the top of the list are the Polytechnic Universities of Turin (which will deal with the digital applications of manufacturing, with particular focus on the automotive, aerospace and energy sectors) and of Milan (in a drive to create a truly digital factory). Then there are the Alma Mater of Bologna (which will deal with big data), the Sant’Anna Further Education College of Pisa (for robotics, in collaboration with the Italian Technological Institute of Genoa), the CNR and the universities of Padua, Rome and Naples (in collaboration with Bari). For businesses, amongst the many, there are FCA and Leonardo, General Electric Avio and IBM, Siemens, ENI, Brembo, IMA, Comau, STM and others too.

The key principle for their work together: innovation. Their objective: to strengthen the competitive ability of Italian manufacturing. There is also an important political message being sent out here, which whoever ends up in charge of the country’s government needs to take very seriously into account: there exists an industrial policy, imposed by preceding governments, via funding and tax incentives, which has set corporate investments in motion again and which we need to continue to support, to avoid a slowdown in growth and therefore in the creation of qualified jobs. The Cottarelli executive, in its day-to-day management of administrative matters, will carry forward the initiatives which have already been launched. In contrast, within the “Contract” between the League party and the 5-Star Movement, there is sadly hardly any mention at all of any industrial policy. The next election campaign, in all rationality, should focus on how to consolidate the fragile Italian recovery, specifically by stimulating industry, research and innovation, instead of charging around with talk of sovereign states with closed borders, interventionist support for easy pensions and citizenship incomes which disincentivise work.

The investments in Industry 4.0 represent an important impetus for recovery. They are critical for attracting international capital into our country and thus strengthening the virtuous circle of growth. This is confirmed by the recent FDI Confidence Index, the annual classification by A.T. Kearney relating to the attractiveness of different countries: in 2017 Italy was in the “top ten”, behind the USA, Canada, Germany, the United Kingdom, China, Japan, France, Australia and Switzerland. A jump of three points, and a sign of dynamism and quality. 30 billion euros was the amount of foreign capital invested in Italy in 2016. This positive trend is still under way, but could slow down or even cease altogether as a result of political uncertainties or governmental choices for protectionist clamp-downs or rifts with the EU.

International investors – explain those in charge at A.T. Kearney – are appreciative of the funding for Industry 4.0 and the continuing ability of Italian businesses to increase their share of exports in the global markets, as shown by the increasing presence in Italy of start-ups and innovative companies. “Robots and creativity – Italy more attractive to foreign capital”, is the efficient summing-up by the “Il Sole24Ore” newspaper (3rd May). The Competence Centers will now be one more source of stimulus. For a competitive economy. And an open one.