The virus does not stop the spread of welfare in companies.
Indeed, according to the Pmi Welfare Index Report promoted by Generali, the pandemic is leading to a "qualitative leap" in the relationship between companies, workers and the community.
For the first time, in fact, the companies active in at least four welfare fields are over half, 52.3% (they were 45.9% in 2019).
And the cases of excellence have tripled compared to 2017, with 78 welfare champion companies, which were awarded in Rome in the presence of the Prime Minister, Giuseppe Conte.
"The largest number of welfare initiatives undertaken concern the country's priorities: health, safety, assistance, training, work-life balance", underlines Marco Sesana, the country manager & CEO of Generali Italia and Global Business Lines.
"Today this confirms that welfare, in addition to being strategic for the growth of businesses, will be a lever for the sustainable recovery of the country", adds Sesana who sees the birth of "a new subsidiarity welfare" with businesses as a point of reference immediate for the community.
After all, since the outbreak of the Coronavirus emergency, 80% of SMEs have given health-related materials and information to workers while 12% have activated support channels and remote medical consultation.
More than one in four companies then implemented initiatives open to the external community and in support of the national health system.
Other initiatives to deal with the economic and social crisis linked to the pandemic concern the integration of the income of employees on layoffs, fairy tales and remote entertainment for the children of workers, support for their training, babysitting services, and assistance for seniors.
"What surprised me was the ability of our SMEs to react to Covid", said Conte during the ceremony, underlining that "even training activities continued in an emergency context".
This ability to react and relaunch the welfare of many companies has also translated into a competitive advantage.
An analysis carried out with Cerved on the balance sheets of 3,000 SMEs shows that in the last two years the most active companies in welfare have recorded above-average increases in productivity (+ 6% against an average of + 2.1%) and in employment ( + 11.5% against + 7.5%).
And also for the future, the experience of the crisis seems to have changed the business management culture: 91.6% of SMEs declared that they had acquired greater awareness of the centrality of workers' health and safety and over 70% he stated that corporate welfare will be more important in the future.
Finally, 65% stated that the company will contribute more to the sustainability of the territory in which it operates.
In collaboration with:
Generali Italia