The Role of Healthcare Occupational Welfare in “Special Italian SMEs”

The last thirty years have represented a period of deep change in the Western welfare system. In Italy, the crises of public systems and the success of neoliberal doctrines have led to a growing priority placed on occupational welfare (OW). The study of the literature has developed a research hypothesis in the field of healthcare OW: The issue of Italian occupational healthcare is now under the attention of many companies with implications even outside the academic field. In this vein, the paper tested the following hypothesis: employees of the SMEs under examination conceive the OW healthcare model as a method of access to care that is supplementary and not an alternative to the state healthcare system.

The hypothesis will be tested in this paper which is based upon 90 semi-structured interviews with employees in 30 “special” Italian SMEs under study. The firms are defined as special because they are selected through two databases (“Best Place to Work” and “Welfare PMI index”) which include companies that offer a high level and choice of corporate welfare services and have attention to the human capital. The employee point of view represents essential details of the research since a lot of the literature on OW in Italy focuses its attention on the governing bodies of companies, the role of unions, and institutional actors.

The paper showed several aspects of interest and change in the OW healthcare system. First of all, from the interviews, it emerged that there is a positive perception of health funds and, at the same time, there is a perceived problem, widely described in the literature, of waiting lists and poor investments in public health. Finally, this study could be useful for some managerial and policy implications of SMEs. It may be beneficial to develop a positive path to increasing OW.