Agile working as a key for diversity: the Siemens office project

Following directives from corporate headquarters in 2011, the Real Estate Division of Siemens Italia faced the challenge of implementing significant changes in work organisation, which arose from the need to consolidate all the Milan-based offices into a single location; a Green Building, characterised by a reduction of the available floor space, compared to the sum of the local offices. However, this reorganisation was perceived as stimulus to think of this change, not only in relation to space and facilities, but also of work procedures and of employee work-life balance systems. The case therefore wants to illustrate how an organisational change project, which arises from the corporate requirements to optimise resources, can evolve into a diversity management project which is able to satisfy both the company needs (savings) and additionally employee needs and requirements (conciliating work and personal life, spatial-temporal flexibility). Through interviews and focus groups involving the Siemens Italia employees, the aim of the authors is to describe the fundamental pre-requisites to manage and enhance the diversity of the working population by means of the implementation of agile working policies (or flexible working), according to their different needs