On this blog we have spoken at length about problems concerning the management of employees. As a seasonal business the number of whose employees soars from 10 to 50 in the span of a few months, only to come back to 10 at the start of the fall, we are sensitive to every aspect of the problem: the growing disaffection with manual jobs in society at large, the growing foreign component in the workforce and the ongoing demographic crisis our country faces.
In such a context, we have reflected and decided to have recourse to an initiative which, though it cannot change anything in the macro-trends of the western world or of our country, can help us, in our view, to strengthen the bond between us and our best employees.
Since we cannot be sure whether our readers have ever heard about company welfare, we can use this little space to discuss its nature and benefits, as well as to publicly present our initiative.
Welfare means essentially well being, when referred to a community. The Italian work law invests in companies the possibility to lay down a welfare plan for their employees, increasing their salary with two mutual and complementary fiscal benefits.
- The cut of the pay given to the worker as welfare is not subject to taxation for the issuing company. Therefore, for instance, an increase of 100€/month for the employees does not imply any additional cost for the company, as it would be the case with a pay raise settled with cash.
- The additional pay, when issued as part of a welfare plan, does not increase the worker’s income on which taxes are computed at the moment of filing one’s income statement. At year end, therefore, the IRPEF (tax on a physical person’s income as per the Italian law) does not increase and, consequently, the taxes paid by him or her will not be higher as compared to the year before, despite the additional benefit.
The sole mandatory request from the Italian law is that all the money allocated to the company’s welfare plan must not be issued in cash to the worker. It has to be given through different benefits the worker can choose from. In other words, there is not money wiring to a bank account. Instead, the worker can choose the destination of the money on an online platform. And the potential destinations range from Amazon, groceries and petrol coupons to even insurance payments. In other words, things we all use and need and we would allocate cash to anyway.
Unlike what some people may think, we are not turning a lump cut of our people’s former salaries into welfare to juice fiscal benefits out of the deal. Instead, we are adding these benefits on top of our workers’s previous salaries.
The only condition we have made ourselves mandatory in order to benefit from the plan, in line with the law’s provisions, is that the seasonal employee must have been working with us for at least two summer seasons and must end his/her contract, so as to give this gift to the most loyal among our workers.
We are launching this experiment on March 2024, exactly as we are writing these lines, hoping that this initiative will be as appreciated by our most trusted collaborators as their contribution to our business has long been appreciated by us.
If you are there for Dentoni, Dentoni is there for you!
Mirko Serino and Francesco Panarese
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