Labour relations

The Group's relations with Trade Unions are based on the principles of fairness and respect of roles, in compliance with regulations, in order to set up new agreements to increase growth, competitiveness and sustainable employment.

The exchange of opinions and the search for shared solutions together with Trade Unions - aimed at safeguarding the personnel involved under the occupational, professional and economic-regulatory profile - have constantly guided our Group’s operational and corporate reorganisation processes.

The welfare system

The Group has been characterised since its inception by a complex welfare system that was developed also through discussion with Trade Unions; the agreements at Group level - which find their synthesis in the Second Level Collective Agreement, renewed on 8 December 2021 - are integrated with those regulated by national collective bargaining, offering all employees a complex system of guarantees - supplementary pension funds and supplementary health care - flexible solutions aimed at work-life balance - through permits, leave, flexible working hours, part-time options, etc. - as well as subsidies and economic contributions, such as benefits for families with disabled children, out of the workplace accident policies, loans, mortgages, meal vouchers and scholarships.

During the years, the “Welfare, Safety and Sustainable Development Committee”, composed by company and trade union representatives, has promoted a series of measures and interventions that have subsequently found their concrete realization in specific trade union agreements, such as the agreement for the introduction of the Flexible Work, the agreement on the conciliation of life-work balance, with instrument such as the "Time Bank" and the agreement on inclusion.

The 2021 agreements

During the COVID-19 health emergency, during the two-year period 2020-2021, the dialogue with the trade unions was able to continue thanks to the adoption of the remote method and 64 agreements were signed, through which continuity was given to the integrated welfare system present in the Group and it proceeded with the renewal of the Second-Level Collective Bargaining Agreement, to define the treatment of all the people of the Group, including people from UBI Banca.

The agreements reached make it possible to further enhance and expand the welfare tools for the benefit of the Intesa Sanpaolo employees and their families, to improve the effectiveness of the company’s organisation and to define sustainable and differentiated labour policies even in different working life phases, such as to create cohesion and solidarity among the different generations present in the Intesa Sanpaolo Group.

The topics dealt with concern professional development process, work/life balance, inclusion, training, complementary pension schemes and supplementary health care. The Time Bank, Flexible Work and the various initiatives for the development of policies and tools to address problems relating to the area of disabilities and to promote the culture of fostering inclusion are just some examples that define and characterise the overall direction that the second-level collective bargaining agreement has been going in for some time. To this end, the activities of the Welfare, Safety and Sustainable Development Committee were also crucial.

Welfare, Training and Development

To learn more about welfare, talent enhancement initiatives and the culture of continuous feedback in the Group.

Flexible work

Since March 2015 the Flexible Work has been available for numerous colleagues, as a way of working that, integrated with the agreements already envisaged by the corporate welfare, combines company's needs with personal and family's needs.

The tool proved to be crucial during the COVID-19 emergency, allowing many colleagues to work safely on the one hand, and ensuring the continuity of the services offered on the other.

In order to make it possible to extend Flexible Working also to structures not previously included or with strong operational or technological constraints, Intesa Sanpaolo has accelerated the supply processes of IT equipment and the identification of innovative solutions.

Employees can carry out their work in flexible way:

from home
from a company location other than the assigned one ("company hubs")
from our customer's premises.

People are the core of this project: flexible work has promoted a profound cultural change, strengthening the relationship of trust and mutual responsibility between the manager and the collaborator, between the company and the worker.

Colleagues join flexible working on a voluntary basis; the inclusion criterion is applied within the structures participating in the project, that is, all the employees of the structures identified in possession of certain basic requirements are enabled. A particularly important and innovative aspect of the project is represented by the fact that colleagues can work from home for up to 8 days a month, even split up, and that flexible work from the hub and from the client has no specific time limits.

In the emergency context due to COVID-19, in line with the indications provided by the Government and the competent authorities, in order to reduce physical presence even in the branches, for greater health protection, Flexible Work from home was authorized without time limits required by company legislation.

Within the scope of the International Subsidiary Banks Division, the Banks, by leveraging on the experience of the COVID-19 emergency and with the contribution of internal surveys, launched new projects and flexible working models, in line with the provisions laid down by local laws. More specifically, in 2021, VÚB Banka, CIB Bank, Intesa Sanpaolo Bank Albania and Intesa Sanpaolo Bank Slovenia implemented new flexible working projects and models, while they are in the planning phase in PBZ and BIB. The common threads of these initiatives are the identification of a target number of days to work from home, the redesign of the layout of company office spaces on the basis of the new needs and the extension of flexible working to more people, which at the end of 2021 made it possible to extend the target population to a total of approximately 12,000 employees.

Work-life balance

The Second Level Collective Agreement of the Intesa Sanpaolo Group contains a series of measures aimed at facilitating work-life balance, including the Banca del tempo (Time Bank), that is an annual pool of paid leave hours in favour of employees who need more leave hours than those they are already entitled to, in order to deal with personal and / or family serious and ascertained situations.

The Time Bank is a reserve of time made available by the company and Group’s people so they can provide greater support for employees in difficulty, even for brief periods, and give them more time. It is also an initiative that appeals to our generosity and spirit of solidarity because, in addition to the hours made available by the company, with an initial reserve of 65,000 hours, every person has the possibility of donating some of their leave or holidays to the bank, which the company will then match, up to a maximum of another 100,000 hours in total.

Maternity and paternity support is also provided through an excellent company crèche service in Florence, Milan, Moncalieri, Naples and Turin which looks after 355 children, as well as a network of partner crèches across Italy.

The Second Level bargaining then confirmed the tools for balance professional and family life by introducing some innovations in the light of the experiences gained:

as part of the possibility of taking advantage of days of suspension from work, the opportunity is offered to increase - beyond the ordinary 20 - the number of working days for which the Company provides a substitute salary equal to 35 % of salary
within the overall system of parenting support, which integrates and improves the set of leaves and permits guaranteed at the national legislative and contractual level, specific interventions have been envisaged aimed at encouraging the involvement of fathers in family care, increasing to 6 working days paid leave for child birth (in addition to legal leave) and together with the integration of the economic treatment for parental leave in case of use by the dependent father and the extension of 10 working days of parental leave beyond the legal limit.

The set of rules dedicated to parenting provides:

paid leave to settle children in the nursery or kindergarten and additional unpaid days aimed at assisting minor children in favor of separated or divorced parents, sothe exclusive guardians of children, as well as in the cases of widowhood and single-parent families
permits for the assistance of children with specific learning disorders (SLD)

The measures to protect parenting are also applied to adoption and fostering.

In addition, during 2021 new provisions, confirmed by the second level bargaining, were introduced for all Group personnel regarding:

meal voucher for part-time staff who do not perform the meridian interval, starting from 1 July 2021
introduction of new permits for accompanying children and / or spouse / civilly married / de facto cohabitant to the emergency room
significant increase in the amount of the providence that the Company recognizes for collaborators with family members with disabilities
a "youth package" aimed at those who, at the time of hiring in Intesa Sanpaolo in the professional areas, are under the age of 30, which provides for the recognition of an additional employer contribution to the supplementary pension in the first 5 years from '' hiring, and during the first 10 years of hiring a bonus for the purchase of the first home and one for the birth of children".

Employee share ownership plan, investment plans, variable results bonus and social bonus

In 2022, in conjunction with the launch of the 2022-2025 Business Plan and in continuity with the previous edition of LECOIP (Leveraged Employee Co-Investment Plan), the company signed an agreement with the Trade Unions aimed at defining the new LECOIP 3.0 long-term incentive plan, aimed at giving all personnel the fundamental contribution to achieving the economic, financial and sustainability objectives of the Plan.
These agreements established the recognition of an advance of both the Variable Result Bonus 2022 and the Additional Variable Bonus reserved for employees of the Insurance Division which can be voluntarily converted by employees into Intesa Sanpaolo shares to be allocated to LECOIP 3.0, allowing them to participate in the growth in value expected with the implementation of the Business Plan

Since 2015, the Group and the trade unions have shared the introduction of a Variable Result Bonus (VRB) which has integrated the component relating to the productivity of the staff as a whole into a single bonus with incentive systems aimed at enhancing excellent performance, providing for increasing recognition for the achievement of the expected objectives.

The VRB can also be used in the manner proper to the so-called Social Account, or in the form of reimbursements of expenses for the education of children or for assistance services to elderly / non self-sufficient family members, for the purchase of public transport passes, the purchase of services under agreement, finally as payment in their own supplementary pension fund.

Training and awareness initiatives

The company cooperates with the Trade Unions to define corporate training plans aimed not only at obtaining professional skills and complying with legal regulations, but also at enhancing the value of human resources.

The training activities’ targets include providing guidance and promoting individuals, as a growth factor of the company community.

These corporate training plans are frequently the subject of evaluation by the Welfare, security and Sustainable Development Committee, followed by specific arrangements with the trade unions aimed at seizing the financing opportunities offered by the Fondo Banche e Assicurazioni.

Further measures on conciliation, inclusion and sustainable development

The renewal of the second level collective agreement, which took place on December 8, 2021, allowed for the confirmation and implementation of some tools in the field of conciliation, inclusion and sustainable development.

In particular, the inclusion agreement identifies subjects (Welfare, Safety and Sustainable Development Committee and Interfunctional Working Group, Disability Management) and ways to promote a culture of attention to inclusion also through the inclusion of people with disabilities in the world of work, as well as supporting initiatives in favor of colleagues during particular moments of private or working life. In this context, with the contribution of the Trade Unions in the Welfare, Safety and Sustainable Development Committee, methods have been identified, the experimentation of which, which began in November 2019, is now fully consolidated with support and facilitation actions upon returning from long absences .
In order to contribute to the financing of projects aimed at increasing the employability of people with disabilities, the same agreement confirmed the initiative called "Arrotonda Solidale", which provides for the voluntary payment by employees of the rounding euro cents salary, followed by the further payment by the Company of the supplement of 1 euro.

As part of active employment policies, in order to encourage new permanent hires - with particular attention to the branch network, Southern Italy and the disadvantaged areas of the country - and the contextual generational turnover, the Company is continuing the experimentation of the "mixed contract", an innovative way of carrying out the work activity that provides for the simultaneous presence of two contracts for the same person (one subordinate, part-time and one independent from a financial consultant). The first "mixed contracts" were activated in 2017, following the signing of the Protocol for sustainable development, and at the end of 2021 there are over 720 people in service with this type of contract.

Last updated 27 May 2022 at 10:17:46

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