By Martín Padulla for staffingamericalatina

Last week, I had the pleasure of participating in the opening of PDA’s HRlive event for the year. It was an interesting and enriching gathering, moderated by Fer Niizawa. The topic that brought us together was The evolution of Smart Working 4.0.

The dynamics of the meeting prompted me to continue reflecting on this concept and the challenges our region faces in embracing it. I realized that whenever the 4.0 label is added to any concept, something similar happens. The Fourth Industrial Revolution presents an unprecedented challenge for Latin America. Digitalization and the “conversation” among different technologies have highlighted diversity. The era of diversity, encompassing various ways of acquiring skills and working, has brought us closer to more and better opportunities, but also profound challenges.

The Smart concept entered our lives through smartphones. When our mobile phones became smartphones, the Smart world became a reality. Portability, mobility, having a computer in the palm of our hands with data, enabling phone calls and video conferences—these changes profoundly impacted our lifestyles. The concept of the digital knowmad, for example, is inconceivable without the idea of the smartphone.

Living and working in this way would not be possible without the second occurrence of the Smart concept in public discourse. When we began hearing about smart cities, the scale expanded. It was no longer just about screens; technology aimed to be used to improve citizens’ quality of life and achieve sustainable development. In the face of such an ambitious project, those who study this social phenomenon argue that there are no smart cities without smart citizenship. Feedback is essential to ensure the concept is not empty or part of a populist greenwashing initiative. Without efficient governance, collaborative planning, and citizen participation, there may be good intentions, isolated initiatives, or awareness campaigns. Without people at the center, we might talk about technological changes in everyday urban life, but it does not truly constitute a smart city.

Due to the pandemic, providing fluidity and simultaneously accelerating all gears of the 4.0 revolution, the smart working concept forcefully entered the scene, driven by mandatory remote work.

It became clear from empirical evidence that the hypothesis some of us formulated years before the pandemic was valid: work is not a place to go but tasks to do, value to add.

Now, what do we really mean when we talk about smart working? There is a classical definition that points to the use of suitable technologies and strategies to enable people to work more flexibly and collaboratively. From this perspective, technological infrastructure, collaboration tools, project management platforms, secure remote access, security policies, training and development for efficient tool use, remote environment time management, performance monitoring, among others, are crucial.

In my view, the classical definition almost equates smart working to remote work. From my perspective, three ingredients must be part of the recipe if we truly want to cook up smart working: cultural transformation, a pool of talent in the broadest sense, and a humanistic view of technology.

Cultural transformation paves the way for smart working. Without this cultural transformation, there is remote work, telecommuting, hybrid work, flexibility, work-life balance, and perhaps other valuable concepts, but we are not dealing with a smart working management model.

As is the case with the concept of smart cities, the key lies in people. In the cultural transformation that leads to designing organizations centered around them. It is necessary to move away from the Human Resources paradigm and embrace the People paradigm. When this happens, it becomes possible to form high-performance teams from a talent pool that can connect with the organization in different ways and from different locations. Smart culture embraces diversity in the broadest sense, promotes it, draws nourishment from it, feeds back into it, and enhances it.

This is why it requires smart workers and smart leadership. Telecommuting does not attract smart workers; it is smart working, a concept of greater depth and complexity, that attracts them. It is not just spatial and temporal flexibility with technological support; it is having a deep understanding of the individual and the best conditions to develop them, taking advantage of the various ways of acquiring skills and the diverse forms of work made possible by the use of technology and 4.0 management in true 4.0 innovative organizations.

In my view, smart working is remote work, hybrid work, and also office-based work if the latter contributes to stimulating the maximum potential of a person in a specific role within the organization. Smart Working is how organizations consolidate their focus on people.

How to manage that transformation? A smart leader is not only one who can set clear, measurable, time-bound objectives. Smart leadership is one that is integral, listens, is resilient, provides constructive feedback and inspiring feedforward, cares for and strengthens relationships, adapts quickly to changes, develops a diverse talent pool made up of individuals who connect with the organization in different ways from different places, communicates assertively, promotes knowledge and a culture of continuous learning, recognizes efforts and contributions, resolves conflicts, efficiently manages time, reflects and invites others to do so, learns to unlearn to relearn together with their team, and, fundamentally, deeply understands each person in their team regardless of their physical location.

The third ingredient appears on its own. One cannot lead smart without a humanistic view of technology, without having control over exponential technological development. It is not artificial intelligence that is dangerous for the world of organizations and work. What is truly dangerous is human stupidity, shallowness, lack of reflection and strategic vision, not focusing on people, and adopting trends without constraints, assuming risks that can have extremely serious consequences.

If, in the future, organizations, as we know them today, continue to be the environment in which people develop their full potential, it will largely be because smart workers choose smart leaders who have managed to create organizations with a smart culture.

The great challenge for Latin America is to rise to the occasion. It is, finally and forever, to be smart.

Photo of bruce mars in Unsplash

About Martín Padulla:

Founder & CEO of Staffingamericalatina, Martín Padulla is a Sociologist (USAL) and holds an MBA (UCA). He conducts research on the labor markets of the region. He has authored two books, “Flexible Work in South America” and “Regulatory Environments for Private Employment Agencies in Latin America,” focusing on the new realities of work.

mpadulla@staffingamericalatina.com

About staffingamericalatina:

It is the only collaborative platform specialized in the labor markets of Latin America. Staffingamericalatina generates and disseminates content, research, and developments on topics such as Employability, Youth Employment, Training for Employment, Decent Work, Private Employment Agencies, Active Employment Policies, Smart Work, Public-Private Articulation of actions aimed at the generation of Decent Work, Green Jobs, and Corporate Social Responsibility.

It serves as a meeting point for organizations, think tanks, talent, service companies, academics, and independent professionals from Latin America and around the world.