No Turning Back: Remote Workers during the Pandemic and the Decision to Leave in-Person Workplaces in Italy. an Exploratory Research

The article discusses the evolution of the opinions and perceptions of remote work by knowledge workers in Italy, between the first lockdown imposed by the Covid-19 pandemic in March 2020 and the post-pandemic phase. The qualitative study is composed of a first set of 35 interviews with Italian knowledge workers who experienced an imposed transition to remote working due to the pandemic, conducted in spring 2020 – and a second set of 24 follow-up interviews with a portion of the initial sample, carried out in 2023. The article illustrates the emergence of new needs by workers linked to greater autonomy and flexibility in managing work-life balance, expressed through the request for greater remote work, that led a third of the interviewees to leave the workplace in search for more remotisation. Using Hirschman’s (1972) interpretative categories of exit and voice we show that, although in most cases companies have maintained a certain amount of remote work following the acute phase of the pandemic crisis, many workers find remote work no longer renounceable, to the point of abandoning their job in order to maintain a certain amount of flexibility.