Il lavoro ideale

4.340 people from Friuli Venezia Giulia and Veneto (in northeast Italy) were interviewed to verify what is the ideal job, its characteristics and what people are willing to give up so they can do it. It emerges that the respondents are quite satisfied with their work (average 7,7 out of 10), however “only” 41,0% find a very high correspondence between the job done and the ideal one. But what is the ideal job? Men and women, young and old, people with different qualifications and different working conditions, have provided answers that are sometimes very different, but basically converging on the following profile: the ideal job must be dependent (35,9%) rather than autonomous (28,1%) and with a permanent contract (79,7%); full-time (44,9%) and in the private sector (26,5%) rather than in the public (23,4%); with flexible hours (47,6%) and preferably in the morning (59,3%); in a short week (52,5%) and where facilities are provided for workers with family problems (54,3%). The requirements that make a job “ideal”, have seen a strong convergence of opinions, within a certain variability. At the declared level, the most important requirement of the ideal job is, for everyone, to do a rewarding job, to work in an environment where there are values such as respect, honesty and transparency and there are good human relationships; thenafter people think about management competence and salary. Factor analysis was applied to bring out the emotional dimension and the first factor extracted is identified as a comfort factor, followed by the factor of dynamism and the functional/managerial factor. To conclude, the ideal job should not involve sacrifices but for it people are willing to invest to learn, and in any case it must be … preferably near home!