Conciliazione famiglia e lavoro. Buone pratiche di welfare aziendale

The work-family reconciliation is a fundamental theme in the political debate; the EU is infact facing a huge dilemma in terms of social policy: It requires to increase employment rates to ensure both economic growth and sustainability of welfare systems, while also promoting social inclusion in a context characterized by high complexification, especially in intergenerational perspective. In this frame is fundamental the contribution of the companies which, according to a vision of Corporate Citizenship, are strategic actors in the process of lifetimes’ arrangement. The paper will present the results of a national survey carried out on behalf of the National Observatory on the Family-Department for Family Policies, aimed at identifying some company good practices of work-family reconciliation. Italian companies involved in the work-family reconciliation have been mapped with a quantitative methodology; then were identified some promising practices and case studies have been made. For each case study were carried out in-depth interviews with the company management (HR, CSR, Diversity managers...), and focus groups with employees of different occupational profile, age and sex who were able to take advantage of the reconciling measures. In the interviews with employees we have tried to understand whether the reconciliation measures provided by company were actually useful for them to reconcile the different commitments of life. Then attention was also focused on the family situation, trying to clarify the distribution of tasks within the family, the support provided by the partner, the parental and friendship network and the change potentially brought about in their lives since the birth of their children. The survey so allowed to highlight the complexity of work-family reconciliation in turbulent times and also the bond with the process of structuring of personal identity: reconcile family and work does not implies for people to hold together and harmonize different times (the time of the family and the time of work) but especially to give a judgment regarding themselves as a person in their lives. The conciliative strategies concretely adopted so derived, from an ideal point of view, by the order attributed to the personal ultimate concerns.