To face the pandemic, the Italian small and medium enterprises they sped on corporate welfare. In health protection, 43,8% offered swabs and tests serological tests to employees (often also to families), while 25,7% subscribed to new ones health insurance and 21,3% invested in medical advisory services, in person or remotely. This is what emerges from the fifth edition of the Welfare Index Pmi Report, promoted by Generali Italia with the collaboration of various business associations (including Confindustria, Confcommercio, Confartigianato and Confagricoltura).
According to the survey - which involved over 6 companies of various sectors and sizes - 38,2% of SMEs helped workers with temporary increases in pay and bonuses. On the other hand, the share of companies that supported employees by contributing to the school education of their children was smaller (4,8%).
In terms of work-life balance, many companies have guaranteed this greater hourly flexibility (38,5%) and new business of distance education (39%). On the contrary, direct aid for dependent children and elderly people is still not widespread (7,2%).
The Report also shows that some of the companies have also undertaken to help the community in which it operates with donations (16,4%) and various types of aid to the national health system and research (9,2%).
Most of these initiatives are still ongoing and 42,7% of the companies interviewed consider them permanent.
Furthermore, the survey continues, 54,8% of the companies that have invested in welfare have registered positive returns on productivity: also for this reason, about two out of three companies aim to strengthen the social commitment towards workers (67,5%) and towards the local community and the production chain (63,1%).
“In this new context still characterized by Covid-19 – he comments Marco Sesana, CEO of Generali Italia – through the Welfare Index PMI we have observed how companies have acted as a social subject, as well as an economic and market one, due to their diffusion in the territory and their proximity to workers and families, giving life to a new community welfare. Companies have shown that corporate welfare today can and must leave the company. Looking not only at employees and families, but including and creating value for suppliers, the local area and the community. The largest number of initiatives undertaken support the priorities of the PNRR on the country's major assets with an impact: health, women, young people, families and communities. This today confirms that welfare, in addition to being strategic for business growth, it will be lever for the country's sustainable recovery".
The Minister of Labor also attended the presentation of the report, Andrea Orlando: “Health care measures and measures for competitiveness and recovery are substantially one and the same – he said – Welfare is not something that comes after competitiveness and development, but it is one of the elements of competitiveness. A less torn society, where there are more effective paths of inclusion, is a society that is more competitive in the long run. But we must not hide that corporate welfare develops where there are more companies and this further emphasizes the North-South divide".
