Remote Working Effectiveness and Labour Turnover in Organizations: An Emerging Model from the Judicial System

Based on a broad qualitative empirical analysis carried out within the Italian Ministry of Justice’s Project “Next Generation UPP”, this study identifies labour turnover as one of the main issues in the public sector and, particularly, in the judiciary’s organization. The high turnover that affects both the administrative and judicial staff of the courts results in relevant negative outcomes in terms of loss of efficiency and effectiveness of the justice system. This study contributes to understanding the (possible) effect of well-organized remote working in decreasing turnover flows unrelated to pursuing better career and salary opportunities. A wide, in-depth qualitative data collection is leveraged to inductively develop: (a) the novel construct “remote work effectiveness”, with three operationalizable dimensions (work remotability; availability of remote working resources; and remote working capacities), and (b) an emerging model of how remote work effectiveness may mitigate personnel turnover and improve performance. We suggest that while this study’s results were inductively developed based on the judiciary organizational context, they are generalizable to other branches of the public administration and, possibly, to private organizations.