Among the many reasons that make it necessary to strengthen and disseminate second-level company bargaining and corporate welfare, two seem to be of a priority nature:
* recover the productivity gap of our country compared to its main competitors, linking any wage increases to the trend of real productivity produced in the various workplaces;
* to limit the “tax wedge” effect on these increases through total tax relief on the one hand for the worker and on the other hand the decontribution, to the benefit of the company, expanding the basket of goods and services that do not contribute to forming the income from employment, as indicated by the various circulars of the Revenue Agency. This would favor both the diffusion and development of corporate welfare, supplementing traditional public welfare, and the real increase in income for individual workers.
The company bargaining, of which the Performance Bonus (PdR) is the maximum synthesis expression, concerns different and non-repetitive subjects and institutes with respect to the salary ones and those of the National Collective Labor Agreements (Ccnl). The disbursements of the company bargaining level are strictly correlated to the results achieved in the implementation of programmes, agreed between the parties, having as their objective increases in productivity, quality, profitability and other variables which express the economic trend and which are summarized by the tool of the Result Award. However, if applied inappropriately, this instrument takes on a purely "notarial" dimension, almost taking the form of an additional bureaucratic-administrative burden.
If used in a "correct" way, and therefore internalized in the corporate culture of both the entrepreneur and the workers, it becomes a powerful tool for corporate management and competitiveness. The difference lies in the ability to create a virtuous circle of motivational involvement which then generates a series of cascading effects that positively reverberate on company results. Of great importance, therefore, is bringing the company and work back to the center as fundamental values that pass from a season of antagonism to a season of collaboration and participation aimed at pursuing common objectives.
While the declared intentions are good, the numbers of second-level contracts filed do not appear equally, as required by the Interministerial Decree of 25 March 2106, relating to the tax reduction of productivity bonuses. As of February 14, 2019, 9.923 declarations of conformity refer to contracts still active, of these 8.934 refer to company contracts and 1.529 to local contracts.
On second-level contracts there are various Trade Union and academic Observatories who try to monitor the quantity and quality of these contracts. In our case, starting from the table above, we want to highlight some findings that raise quite a few questions about the real penetration of this contractual model in our productive economic system, not so much to question its validity, on which we fully agree, but to point out the great work to be done to ensure that it becomes the property of an ever-increasing number of companies and therefore favor the competitive growth of our economic system:
* first, emerges the strong territorial concentration of this contractual model. Four regions (Lombardy, Emilia Romagna, Veneto and Piedmont) represent 67% of the agreements filed, the central regions from 15 to 20 while a residual share goes to the South, moreover represented above all by agreements of national groups with production plants in these regions;
* secondly, second-level bargaining it appears to be a practice by medium and medium-large enterprises, (the small ones are few and still concentrated in the main regions already indicated above) and is practically non-existent in the Centre-South. This means that the percentages of coverage increase significantly with respect to workers. In fact, even if we don't have reliable data, some research indicates that the number of workers involved is around one million;
* in terms of territorial contracts, which can represent a valid solution of the promotional role played by the representative associations, both employers' and trade unions in the various regional contexts, using the percentage weight of the territorial contracts on the total contracts of the individual regions, the Province of Trento stands out with about 50% , (in absolute terms, Trento alone has twice as many territorial contracts as in the South), followed by Emilia Romagna with 37%. The other regions follow with much lower values.
This photograph of the diffusion of second-level bargaining is reproduced in the same terms as regards contracts which include the possibility for the worker to convert the Result Plan into Company Welfare Services, which are approximately 51,0% of the total.
Talking about Corporate welfare, it should be remembered that this category of tools is part of a broader overall transition process of the universalistic system of traditional welfare, towards a hybrid destination oriented towards a set of tools, characterized by the presence of a "second welfare" capable of supporting the traditional public offer, however necessary to guarantee the essential levels of assistance.
This new welfare offer does not intend to place itself in a substitute or competitive line with respect to the traditional model, which also shows evident signs of inability to respond to an important evolution of needs both in quantitative and qualitative terms, but intends to integrate and complete it through the development of articulated proposals involving private subjects and the third sector, gradually adding the pieces of a mosaic still largely to be defined.
We are therefore talking about an ongoing construction site that is still difficult to frame, which sees one of its pillars in the new approaches to private corporate welfare that have been experimented for some years in medium-large companies. From the more traditional and by now widespread measures in the field of supplementary healthcare and complementary pensions to the most innovative experiments on work-life balance; from the supply of goods and services at more convenient prices and tariffs, to sustainable mobility for employees; from the agreed management of long-term healthcare services, to the development of training courses in addition to the mandatory ones. Any action capable of improving the quality of life of employees and their families can fall under this meaning.
Although widespread in "leopard spots" e practiced in a strategic and continuous way by a niche of mainly large companies, Corporate Welfare is clearly expanding and is also nourished by high-level practices experienced in small and medium-sized enterprises, which often implement Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) approaches unconsciously, thus losing the opportunity to communicate systematically the results and to position itself strategically on the theme.
From the point of view of the estimates of the economic weight, the figure of the contribution attributable to corporate welfare (item made up, among other things, of expenditure for shopping packages, education, assistance to elderly family members, transport and recreational activities), purified from that of supplementary pensions and supplementary healthcare and reduced the value of the so-called meal vouchers (about 3 billion euros), amounted to about 2017 billion euros for 2,5. There are around 90 active operators in this sector, of which around 30 are owners of platforms dedicated to managing agreements. The sectors that record greater corporate welfare development are banking, chemical-pharmaceutical, services and industry and the average value of the welfare plan is equal to 900/1.000 euros (Source: Itinerari Previdenziali)
The reasons for introducing this element into the company can be various: the will prevails to improve the income available to employees in the absence of the possibility of offering a monetary salary increase. So we reason from the point of view of real total remuneration (total reward), in the awareness that welfare goods and services can generate well-being across the board for all employees. In fact, the counter-performance of goods and services enjoys tax breaks which allow for a clear increase in the value obtained by the employees, with the same costs for the entrepreneur, thus reducing the cost of labor by reducing the tax wedge and taking advantage of a greater motivation and sense of belonging of workers, which often translates into a reduction in absenteeism and turnover rates.
However, the reality of small and medium-sized enterprises, which represent almost all of the Italian productive fabric, encounters many difficulties in experimenting with corporate welfare projects. It is true that, except for some experiences of particularly "virtuous" SMEs and able to rise to best practice as regards the implementation of corporate welfare processes, the majority of small and medium-sized enterprises have a purely informal, unstructured and, sometimes, unaware approach.
And in fact, simplifying as much as possible, the structuring of a (good) corporate welfare project requires time and economic resources first of all. The first is the one to be dedicated to the development of the corporate welfare plan and which, concretely, translates into the work of a consultant or, preferably, a full-time or part-time employee who knows the company well, as well as the commitment that the entrepreneur himself must directly dedicate to it. This - together with a difficult and/or partial understanding of the potential of the tool and the difficulties of quantifying what is defined as a "return" in business terms, including the perception of the gain in productivity - often results in a strong first disincentive to implement corporate welfare practices.
Once the initial mistrust was overcome and the human resources necessary for the development of the project were allocated, which is often articulated and complex to manage given the need to identify the real needs of the personnel to be met, including the issue of financial resources in the strict sense to be dedicated to the provision of services of corporate welfare is a critical topic for many SMEs.
However, it should first be noted how not everything attributable to corporate welfare is characterized by high costs or in any case not easily sustainable even by the smallest production realities.
In fact, it must first of all be taken into consideration that there are no, a priori, "better" services than others among those that can be provided through corporate welfare, nor are there predefined and rigid models on "how" these should be provided. Considering that this system is based on the desire to find answers to the most diverse (still unsatisfied) needs relating mostly to the personal sphere of workers and taking into account that, within each sector and territory concerned, it will be necessary to identify the type of services disbursable able to respond to the aforementioned specific needs, corporate welfare is presented, in this sense, as a tool that can be adapted to the various corporate and territorial realities.
Furthermore, given that a truly valid company welfare project is only one capable of intercepting the real needs of workers in order to then effectively satisfy them, regardless of qualitative assessments referring to the individual services considered in themselves, it is necessary to consider that on the one hand there are corporate welfare with a reduced or in any case containable cost, as occurs in the case of agreements to be entered into with various centers and structures (for example gyms, sports centres, kindergartens), and on the other hand, solutions can be tried out which do not involve any additional costs for the company disbursement (such as, for example, the possibility of converting a bonus that already exists in the company into benefits with a social content).
Finally, it should be emphasized that corporate welfare does not consist exclusively in the provision of mere "benefits", but can be translated into solutions that pertain to issues such as the organization of the work environment, organizational wellness and work-life balance.
