Seat's Smart Work concept, agreed with union representatives, aims to establish a more agile and sustainable corporate culture and drive the company's digital transformation. Employees participating in the programme can complete their work tasks from any location two days a week and organize themselves within a time window from 6 a.m. to 8 p.m.

"Continuous improvement, professional growth and the well-being of our employees are a priority for Seat. With Smart Work, we want to establish a new working model that allows our employees to achieve a better work-life balance," said Xavier Ros, Seat Board Member for Human Resources and Organization. "After the experience of the past few months, it has become clear that working from home is here to stay. We at Seat also want to move further in this direction. With this initiative, we are underlining our goal of being an innovative and agile employer that can retain internal talent and is attractive to new specialists."

Position and training are crucial

The new way of working also includes an agreement on digital unavailability. This enshrines the employee's right not to have to respond to any business communication outside of working hours. Smart Work can be applied for by all employees whose position allows them to work remotely and who have completed training on preventing risks in the workplace. Of the 5554 Seat employees eligible for the model, more than 1000 have already signed up in the first week of the launch. Almost 2500 employees have actively participated in the development of the key points of this new, flexible system by taking part in surveys.

In addition, such a working model also stands for more sustainability, as it contributes to the reduction of_{CO2 emissions}. After all, an average of 7.2 kg of_CO2 can be saved per day for each employee working from home.

Covid-19, the test run for Smart Work

During the lockdown ordered due to Covid-19, Seat put its digital infrastructure to the test: Through a comprehensive and rapid transformation, more than 5,000 employees switched to remote working during this period. During these months, the organization was continuously improved, for example in terms of agility and the duration and efficiency of meetings, in order to increase the productivity of teams working remotely.

The number of daily users accessing the VPN network also increased sevenfold during this time, while the number of meetings held via Office 365 (Skype and Teams) increased fivefold. More portable computers were purchased, bandwidth increased and the capacity of VPN connections doubled and strengthened. All the changes brought about by the lockdown therefore served as a field test. It turned out that productivity and smart working are compatible.