News on remote working legislation in Italy

As of 1st April 2024, the provisions regulating remote working (so called “smart working”), which have been in force for private companies during all the pandemic period in Italy, are no longer in place.

Indeed, in order to incentivize the use of smart working during such period, the Italian Legislator provided that:

• smart working could be implemented through a simplified administrative procedure, which only required a massive telematic communication of the names of the employees working remotely to the Ministry of Labour, without the need of executing individual agreements; and
• certain categories of employees – specifically, employees with children under 14 or “fragile” employees – had the right (and not the option) to work from remote.

The above legislation (so called “simplified smart working”) has been renewed several times during recent years until 1st April 2024. Now that the emergency period is definitively over, the ordinary regime of smart working, set out by Legislative Decree no. 81/2017, will restart to apply.

The main changes relate to the following:

• to lawfully work from remote, employers and employees will need to execute individual agreements;
• employees i) with a child under 12; or ii) with a disabled child; or iii) suffering from a serious disability; or iv) assisting a family member with disability (so called “caregivers”) have a priority right in the acceptance of their requests of smart working.

Next steps

As of 1st April 2024, companies who want their employees to work from remote must, for each employee:

• execute an individual agreement (if not already in place), regulating the smart working in terms of, for example, duration, number of days working from remote, working tools, working hours, etc.. The agreements must be stored in the workplace;
• transmit the communication of commencement of the smart working activity to the Ministry of Labour (through the relevant telematic platform), within 5 days from the relevant starting date. Lack of this communication is sanctioned with a fine ranging from Eur 100 to Eur 500 for each employee;
• in any case, draft the health&safety smart working notice provided by the National Italian Insurance Institute for Accidents at Work (so called  “INAIL”).

Authored by Giada Cagnes and Alessandra Chironi.