We report the meeting “A chat with ITL Alumni” with Ercole Cipollone, who was a trainee in the ITL Consulting Department in summer 2013, where he worked on accounting, internal control, and auditing. Brunilda Qushku, ITL Marketing trainee in 2020 moderated the meeting which was also attended by Sheila Moriconi, Head of ITL Consulting, Finance manager of ITL Group, as well as Ercole’s tutor during the traineeship; Irene Pepe, Marketing and Communications Manager of ITL Group and Alessandro Farina, Owner and Managing director of ITL Group.
Q. Can you introduce yourself and tell us about your experience in Budapest?
I’m from Abruzzo. I arrived in Hungary in 2013 thanks to a cooperation project financed by the European community, thanks to which I had the opportunity to live an experience with ITL Group. Actually, my brother did the same project in the Canary Islands, I took the ball and used the same platform. There were several opportunities: Malta, Belgium, Hungary. After figuring out a plan, I submitted my application to Sheila Moriconi (head of ITL Consulting) and Alessandro Farina (Owner of ITL Group). Thanks to Sheila, I was able to start this project in Hungary. I started in June 2013
Q. At the time of your internship, what did you study? What do you do now?
I had finished my studies a few years ago qualifying as an accountant. I was working as a contractor in Italy, so I didn’t have a stable job. I was almost frustrated by the situation and wanted to look for something more exciting. ITL seemed very attractive because of the huge range of topics they cover. The area is more or less the same as what I had always been involved in: accounting, internal control, auditing. It fitted in quite well with my background. With Sheila, we worked mainly on monthly reports concerning invoice checks and the identification of margins for the different divisions of ITL Group. Otherwise, apart from the work itself, it was a good opportunity to see a different environment. I was used to small accounting firms or consulting companies. With ITL, on the other hand, we’re talking about a structure that should be 50-60 people. I also had the opportunity to get in touch with different cultures and people from different backgrounds.
Q. Did your studies help you once you got into the job market?
I studied Economics at one of the best business schools in Italy. I would certainly say that a good part of what I studied was also translated into practice during my experiences. It also depends on when you leave university. In my case, I left before the 2008 economic crisis. I was confronted with a fairly rigid labor market and I think this is also happening to the younger generation (see Covid). Let’s say that periods of crisis are also periods of opportunity. You just have to know how to reinvent yourself in the right way and take into account opportunities that you didn’t consider before.
Q. What do you think are your strengths?
Definitely adaptability. In my professional career, I have seen more than 20 realities. Starting over, adapting to a new environment is not difficult for me. This stems from the fact that I started in a situation of instability, which allowed me to develop this skill.
Q. What advice would you give to students who are just now entering the job market?
It is not easy to answer. In general, the main suggestion is not to be attracted mainly by money. Often, a lot of opportunities don’t give you anything in return in terms of money but in terms of life experience, they can give you more. I would say, look around and if you don’t necessarily have to earn a living, I would suggest looking for different experiences in order to grow on a human level and use your young age to grow your experience as much as you can. There is always time to work 60 hours a week and make money.
Q. Question to participants: In this period, we are forced to work from home. Do you think that remote working is the future?
Ercole: In my case, remote working is already settling at 50-60% and rising to 70-80%. The main risk is that corporate life and private life are no longer separated. This can lead to higher productivity but also to exposure to the risk of a nervous breakdown.
Irene: I would like to use Ercole’s term: Adaptability. In times of uncertainty, it is even more necessary. Being able to work in places other than your own office. With different tools instead of the post-it on the blackboard, you have to use software that does the same thing. Having online meetings using different software depending on the company or client you are talking to. So, all these little extra challenges add up to what a person’s daily job is, and you do not have to take for granted that someone who is extremely well trained and experienced in his job is ready to embrace these changes right away. I think it will be a growing factor for various reasons: as Ercole pointed out, working from home was already a reality for many jobs in many companies in different countries around the world, so it is nothing new and will increase because we are used to it. Those who have found it better to work from home will perhaps ask for it more, companies will be less afraid, they will not be afraid that if they do not see their collaborator at his desk, he is not working, but they will be able to activate other methods of performance evaluation and team-building and team-work but online. From one side, this period forces us to stay at home even those who were not prepared did not have a suitable home, from the most fortunate situations to the less fortunate ones. It’s not granted that a person is ready to switch from 40 hours a week in the office to their living room. On the other hand, this situation can teach us a lot and that if we face it with a spirit of adaptability and look for the opportunity that can offer us, it will pass more pleasantly and profitably.
Sheila: I’d like to pick up on something Irene was saying. IT access will be extremely important. If a company wants to move the work from the office to another place, it requires a series of investments in terms of software, accessibility to servers, and other tools to allow people who are not physically in the office to be able to access any kind of information or data and also maintain contact with the other people in the group. Another fundamental aspect will be to try to maintain the human relationship. The office is never going to disappear, we are not going to 100% erase a physical place where you can meet and find each other, but a lot of the work can be moved online and can have a future if it is organized properly in terms of investment. It is not that simple, it is not such a natural mechanism.
Irene: The skills of the person who suddenly finds himself working from home must be included in the list of factors that the company must take on and pay attention to in addition to the investment in software, internet access, other costs that in some countries are already deducted to support the expenses of the home worker, and lastly the taxes.
Alessandro: At the moment, I still have a rather confusing picture. I have seen all the disadvantages of starting a home office in terms of the investments that we had to make as soon as there was the first lockdown. I’m not disappointed, as always digital and systems revolutions are very interesting challenges. They are accelerators. Actually, apart from some sectors that have been massacred by this, many others have opened new activities, types of business, and services. Our first move was to upgrade servers, buy laptops, double monitors, etc. We had to organize the IT needs of the company. We handle sensitive data of our customers so more than ever the increase in IT costs was important. Personally, in terms of skills, I’m an IT retrograde, so a whole range of IT skills are not particularly developed in me. As a result, I was used to being quiet in the office with all my co-workers, but suddenly I found myself having to organize many things from home. I still tend to work mainly from the office due to my organizational discipline and also for documents signature. In the future, digital signatures will be introduced, but at the moment I have to sign hundreds of payroll documents, contracts, and other documents every day. I can see that not all people, in the long term, can handle the stress caused by the home office: they suffer from these transformations that have probably been too fast. Perhaps the concept of a mixed office/home-office system should be considered. The imposition of the home office was something that not everyone liked or accepted so well. After a while, it weighs down. In addition, working times have changed: exchanging e-mails during the weekend, which once would have been unthinkable, it has become normal. The reactivity and the speed have increased. The difficulty is in finding the right personal balance in the long term so that this system really works and doesn’t become a boomerang. In the office, the employer used to give orders, like at school. With the home office, the employer transfers responsibility to the employee for managing his time. Suddenly the employee finds himself being the owner and the manager of his time. He has a new responsibility. Consequently, there’s a change in the needs for the functions of HR. In these moments we are discovering internal organizational deficiencies. The distance suddenly brought out the lack of pieces in everything that was normal before because we were there and it worked de facto. This is where an improvement starts: we are introducing more and more organizations because every company, despite the distancing of people – time will tell whether it is positive or negative – is losing some of its subjectivity. Everything has to work according to a pattern that is the same for everyone, defined, definable, organized, and organizable. I don’t know if the next person we hire will be in Budapest or perhaps living 200 kilometers away. Technically it doesn’t change anything, but this person will not have met any of his 50 colleagues. What impact will he have on the company, what level of affection will he develop towards it? That of a freelancer, because he will be the master of his time and will simply have the responsibility of managing well the work he is given. This will certainly have completely different mechanics from today, where employees have been with us for a lifetime. There will be the good part and the not-so-good one, or simply different.I will have to study other systems to make them part of the project. It will be more project-based than company-based.
Q. How can we be more efficient by working remotely?
Ercole: It’s certainly important to have a schedule of what you want to do, a clear simulation in your mind of what needs to be done. Dedicate time to breaks, to lunch. Don’t be always attached to the laptop, carve out time for private life, otherwise the two things get mixed up and never get separated. Organization of time and tasks are two key points.
Irene: I absolutely agree. Both on the prioritization of tasks and above all on setting boundaries between private and workspace. I would give one suggestion: to dedicate a corner to work in the hope that when you move around you will feel outside of work. This helps you not to live 24 hours a day as if you were in the office, but you can also experience a feeling of home.
Sheila: Undoubtedly, I also believe that the important thing is to make a daily plan, to define exactly what to do and, as Ercole said, also introduce breaks. This is something I am trying to introduce also for my children. They attend classes in front of the PC from morning to evening and they have no ability to control or organize their time. They are also capable of not getting up from the desk for 4 or 5 hours in a row, which I don’t recommend for work either, especially for the efficiency of it.
Alessandro: I didn’t even take breaks before because I had someone who kindly used to bring me a drink (laughs) seeing that I didn’t drink anything during the day or forgot my lunch. Unfortunately, I wasn’t very used to having breaks. Actually, with the home office, I started to take them, because I do one part of the work from home and the other from the office.
Certainly, this period has made me experience the family more. My wife is in the same situation and works from home, I see my son a lot more. Weekend work depends on the number of e-mails accumulated during the week. it often happens. But since accumulation for me means clutter, and clutter annoys me mentally, I need to put things in order and until I don’t live well until I clean up everything I have to do. As soon as I can sort things out I am a happy man. I agree with what Hercules and Shila said, you also need to give yourself time and breaks for interests other than just work.
Sheila: I have to add, if I may, that if we want to look to the future, hoping for one without covid, perhaps online work will hold some pleasant surprises for us because it will also be seen as less stressful. Having the whole family close by has its advantages and pleasures, but also disadvantages. If we imagine a future, a normal life in which children go to school and there is the possibility of both going to the office and working from home, then perhaps organization is easier in some aspects.
Irene: On a positive note, before working in an agency and as a freelancer, I was a bit of a digital nomad, exploiting the fact that they can work with a computer and a wifi connection from wherever they want as an opportunity to travel. You can work and move around because the location of your office becomes an independent variable, you just need wifi. It was already a growing trend with various interesting aspects about the fact that it was often people of a certain class or culture. It’s still a bit unbalanced, but it has already led countries to deal with the problem of where to pay taxes, where to get insurance. If you live for a month in Spain, then in Bali and in the UK, where do you have your rights and obligations? This is the positive aspect: working remotely allows you to be more flexible: you can both look after your children and your loved ones and try different experiences living in different countries. It becomes easier, after organization and work possibilities, but mixes the two. This aspect allowed me to visit beautiful places despite having to work 8 hours at the computer.
Recent posts
