(Finance) – In a period in which the impact of inflation on the portfolio becomes increasingly heavy, it is alarming to know that only 19.8% of employed people are familiar with welfare tools. The data emerges from the sixth Censis-Eudaimon report: over 8 out of 10 workers do not know the details of these devices. But in which field would Italians want more support through welfare? For 79.2% the tools should facilitate the reconciliation between family and work, while even for 68.1% they should concern psychological support. But that’s not all: for 43% of young people, welfare can contribute to a better reorganization of the balance between private life and office. Alberto Perfumo, founder and CEO of Eudaimonduring the data presentation event in Milan at Palazzo Turati explained the two dimensions of welfare and the importance of innovative and digital tools to promote the culture of welfare within companies.
“Corporate welfare is a composite set of income and consumption integration devices and welfare solutions proper: social security, health, school, personal care, culture. It is made up of two dimensions, which have had different roles and importance over time. The evolution of the sector, thanks to the latest regulatory interventions, has highlighted the economic component, for which it has often become a sum, facilitated from a tax and social security point of view, placed alongside the salary. It is not so much a question of establishing whether there is one way of acting that is more correct than the other, if anything it is appropriate to clarify the distinction, made up of objectives, choices and operating methods, between the two models, so that they can be understood as two things as different as they are complementary and potentially coexisting. Both are needed: the first is the hygienic safeguard of purchasing power: provides resources to workers without overloading businesses and supports consumption. The second component of welfare, that of the solution-service, is the one that makes the company’s presence felt, it is the one that motivates and attracts. It no longer seems like the time to make an effort to interpret people’s multiple needs, but it is necessary to know how to manage every subtle diversity with a welfare that includes everyone: not being able to satisfy every need, the company can offer everyone access channels and opportunities. Hence, the opportunity for the company to take on a new role, one based on offering tools capable of enable people and put them in a position to interpret their own needs on their own, whatever they may be. Let’s talk about a inclusive and enabling welfare”.
What are the (three) pillars of corporate welfare?
Corporate welfare represents an integrative dimension of the Italian welfare system and, as such, aims to improve the well-being of male and female workers along the main axes of welfare itself: social security, health and well-being, childcare and other family assistance, education and training, culture. In doing so – explains Perfumo – corporate welfare supports what we generally call the pillars of the country’s welfare system: public, private and family welfare.
Why are only less than 20% of employees aware of corporate welfare tools?
Despite the significant development in recent years, corporate welfare cannot yet be considered a standard in the world of work. Of the over 20 million workers, only 8.7 are employees of large and medium-sized companies (ISTAT 2021), i.e. those that offer welfare measures to their people.
Furthermore – underlines the CEO of Eudaimon – knowledge is scarce even among the direct beneficiaries of corporate welfare services. This happens mostly due to the lack of communication on the part of companies, linked to the instrumental approach to the welfare plans themselves: many companies have chosen the (so-called) corporate welfare as an income support tool and as such have managed it, as a sort of additional monthly payment. And as they are used to dealing with salaries, they have not taken the effort to explain the benefits of corporate welfare to their people.
What kind of corporate welfare do we have in Italy?
We have to distinguish between companies of different sizes – explains Perfumo -. The big companies they have consolidated welfare systems, with health care services and supplementary pensions that come from the National Collective Labor Agreements and company agreements. To these, they have long since added services for the family and for the work-life balance. Only in the last period, driven by the opportunities offered by tax legislation, have they integrated their systems with the so-called flexible benefits, extensive catalogs of goods and services that the worker purchases with his welfare credit assigned to him by the company. This last dimension, very focused on the economic aspects, almost always leads workers to benefit from reimbursements of expenses and various purchase vouchers, or to use flexible benefits as money, since the other aspects, more properly welfare, are already covered by services existing in the company.
In medium companies, however, the phenomenon of corporate welfare is recent and is often the result of the regulatory changes of 2016 and subsequent years. Created as an option to integrate people’s income with flexible benefits, it is used by workers mainly from an economic point of view, i.e. in the same way that workers in larger companies use it. It’s a pity – says Perfumo – that they don’t have the other tires typical of the big company.
In small businesses and micro-dimensions there is in fact no structured welfare. The result – explains the top manager – is a patchwork with very different degrees of economic benefit and protection among workers of companies of different sizes.
Those employed in large companies have both income integration tools, flexible benefits, and social protection tools, corporate welfare.
Those of medium-sized companies are often guaranteed from an economic point of view but remain uncovered on the more properly welfare aspects and, therefore, are weaker than their colleagues in large companies.
Last and most disadvantaged are the workers of small and medium-sized companies: there is no benefit for them.
Why is corporate welfare important?
Corporate welfare today can perform two important tasksemphasizes the founder of Eudaimon.
The first is to improve relationships between companies and their people, increasing involvement and contrasting the disaffection for work that our 6th Censis-Eudaimon Report has identified as one of the great criticalities of companies and their HR departments. An inclusive corporate welfare, therefore aimed at all male and female workers, and enabling, i.e. able to listen to the individual request and enable the user to find the solution, directing him to the best services available inside or outside the company.
The second is the integration of our country’s welfare model, subjected to the tension between resources that cannot increase and ever-increasing demands for services. In order for citizens not to have to deal with unsatisfied needs, even urgent ones, it is necessary to involve other subjects on the welfare supply side. And in this second welfare there is a great opportunity and an important role for businesses.
I leave in the background, without forgetting it – concludes Perfumo – the supplementary role played today by corporate welfare in the wage supporta role from which the agendas of all recent governments have benefited.
(Photo: Studio Republic on Unsplash)