After the results that emerged with the first edition, AIDP – the Italian Association for Personnel Management – renewed its collaboration with the Welfare Company (Qui! Group) for the Second Edition of the Research on Corporate Welfare in Italy.
The research, coordinated by prof. Luca Pesenti, economic sociologist and professor of Comparative Welfare Systems in the Faculty of Political and Social Sciences (Catholic University of the Sacred Heart), detects the trends, expectations and applications of corporate welfare in Italian companies. The new edition also makes it possible to interpret the changes that have occurred compared to 2016, outlining development prospects, some initial assessments and identifying useful guidelines.
“The interest and value of this research promoted by the Human Resources Managers” – comments Isabella Covili Faggioli, National President of AIDP – “lies in the possibility of measuring the return of a standard which should give new impetus and new stimuli to corporate welfare. In fact, if it is true that welfare was not born with the stability law and personnel managements have made it a permeating element of their management strategy for decades, the law today offers new ideas and invites greater proactivity and creativity”. Not just an opportunity for saving, therefore, but an important tool for engaging, listening and responding concretely to the needs of people and their families, hence the crucial importance of preliminary investigations. It is precisely the most innovative and proactive companies that make the most use of it. Two phenomena that research correlates - innovation and welfare -, together with a strong propensity and growth of smart working.
Another important aspect for personnel managers, which research confirms, is that corporate welfare can represent a challenge for our industrial relations, an opportunity to open a new season of collaboration between the social partners, to make well-being go together of workers and company productivity. The welfare mix is in fact the answer to the needs of collaborators and, at the same time, the expression of the company's value and cultural system. In this sense, Gustavo Bracco, AIDP Scientific Committee Coordinator and Chief Human Resources Officer PIRELLI & Co, invites a "broader perspective, which touches on the issue of business ethics and the managerial role, responsibility towards people, in the their whole life, and towards the territory. Welfare as an investment in the future of the company that starts from attention to one's collaborators which is, for HR managers, an organizational challenge and a stimulus for continuous cultural change. Only in this way - and not looking at welfare as a tax-free portion of pay! – the counterpart will be an improvement in people's well-being, performance and productivity”.
