Although the situation in the workplace has improved in recent years, discrimination is still a widespread phenomenon in Italy and concerns spheres in which there is a congenital weakness, such as differences in gender, age, geographical or ethnic origin, abilities, sexual orientation, religious beliefs, and so on. Such discrimination restricts people in the enjoyment of their rights and the development of their skills, creates inequalities, weakens organizational culture, and has a detrimental effect on the economic growth of organizations.
Occupational discriminatory behavior is often the result of a lack of knowledge of rights and duties at different stages of an employment relationship. In Italy, 4 out of 10 workers suffer discrimination on the grounds of age and almost 3 out of 10 on the grounds of gender. These are some of the data that emerged from the survey published in April 2022 by Cegos, an international player in the Learning & Development sector, conducted on a sample of about 4,000 employees – of which 500 Italians – and more than 400 HR Directors and Managers – of which 60 Italians – entitled ‘Diversity & Inclusion in companies’. The survey involved 7 countries: France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, Portugal, Spain, and Brazil. According to the Cegos study, for HR managers the first absolute factor (25%) of discrimination at work is still related to age. This is followed by health conditions (19%), gender (18%), physical appearance, educational level, and social status (16%). It is interesting to note the different perceptions of employees: for the latter, physical appearance is the main reason for marginalization and discrimination, and age, political opinions, and gender follow in the ranking.
To explore this issue in more detail, we met Luigi Costa, Program Director of the International Master in Ethics, Diversity & Inclusion at the Rome Business School, who told us:
“In Italy, companies are increasingly realizing the urgency of defining policies to improve the working environment to incentivize inclusion and combat discrimination. In fact, in a recent survey by Inaz, in collaboration with Business International – Fiera di Milano, 50 percent of top management believe that investing consistently in anti-discrimination policies can also have a strong and positive impact on business. Despite this awareness, however, 63% of the sample has not yet built a plan of initiatives to develop diversity, equity, and inclusion policies. The problem is above all a cultural one: deciding to allocate budgets and implement actions to support inclusion must start from a reflection – in a certain sense also from a questioning of one’s organizational behavior – that allows one to become aware of these issues not only from a ‘cultural’ point of view but also from an economic one. Companies that invest significantly in such programs are positively recognized by their customers with a potential growth in their turnover. For the development of this awareness, leadership plays a key role: the training of company management can ensure greater awareness of these initiatives. There is still a long way to go, but there is a trend reversal, as shown by the Refinitiv study published in 2021.”
Refinitiv, an international company that provides data and infrastructure for global financial markets, has published the ‘Diversity & Inclusion Index’, a study analyzing the performance of companies oriented towards inclusion and anti-discrimination policies.
In this ranking drawn up by examining 11,000 companies globally – with Telecom Italia, Intesa Sanpaolo, Bnl, and Snam, among others – our country is placed in the top ten of the 100 virtuous companies that offer employees the most inclusive environments. The central theme is the well-being and development of the worker, which is also embodied in the creation of welfare policies capable of supporting the needs of workers at a time of particular crisis in the economic and social context, offering services for leisure, personal care, family, psychological wellbeing, etc.
In recent years, an increasing number of organizations have developed initiatives aimed at improving the overall quality of life of their employees and a better work-life balance. In a way, workers feel more fulfilled when they perceive that the organization is listening to their needs and demands. Welfare policies include all those goods and services that meet the needs of the worker and at the same time offer the opportunity for organizations to take advantage of tax and contribution relief. These initiatives can also prove to be important tools to increase the attractiveness of the organization for new candidates and thus acquire new talent. This approach is, of course, appreciated especially by younger people, who are more difficult to retain in an environment that does not fully satisfy them.
“The aim is to be able to offer a whole series of supports and solutions that can enable people to work better, in a more inclusive dimension, and at the same time manage their private dimension in a more rewarding way. From this point of view, smart working is no longer seen as a benefit, but rather as a necessity, and companies cannot disregard this. In my opinion, there is no single recipe that can be applied to all realities, because each company has its elements and specificities. The right solution is the direct consequence of a careful evaluation of one’s objectives. Regardless of what this assessment is, companies that want to take the path of greater inclusiveness must equip themselves with a series of indispensable elements. The first of these is to have managers with emotional motivational intelligence. This is not easy because the manager himself, in turn, is subject to a series of stresses from top management. Of course, however, another indispensable element that ties in with the theme of responsibility is to have a workforce that feels connected to management, because a sense of belonging allows objectives to be achieved effectively and efficiently.”
The typification of age as a ground for discrimination is a rather recent acquisition in domestic and EU law.
“In Italy there is an extremely interesting topic, emerging in recent years, which is the generational issue. By 2025, i.e. in two years, Generation Z, i.e. young people who were born between 97 and 2012, will be almost a third of the global workforce. These young people, compared to their parents, have completely different needs and expectations regarding the way they work, which presuppose, on the part of companies, advanced active policies towards greater openness to different skills, greater space-time flexibility, and above all towards listening to their demands. The Covid-19 pandemic has in a certain sense accelerated the creation of a new order, we could say of a new balance between private and professional life, but it has also generated stress phenomena within the workforce. Many companies are pursuing policies aimed at supporting the psychological support of their workers. Generation Z is very attentive to psycho-physical wellbeing, that is, that condition of balance between physical health and psychological wellbeing.”
The Italian production system is different from that of other major European nations. Here, the backbone of the country’s system, which is considered fundamental for relaunching the economy, is made up of small and medium-sized enterprises, the SMEs, i.e. those companies with between 10 and 249 employees, which make up a large part of the Italian entrepreneurial fabric.
“We can say that statistically there is a greater propensity to be sensitive to these issues in large companies, those that are more structured, where there are people in charge of managing programs and budgets. We cannot make a purely geographical distinction, because the dynamics of companies all have different interpretative matrices, but the imbalance between the North and the South in terms of company size is well known. It must be said that in Italy there are also happy islands, a bit of a leopard’s spot, which is represented by Start-Ups. These are innovative entrepreneurial realities that are characterized not only by their technological value but above all by their human and cognitive capital and an almost horizontal organization with little hierarchy. Here, teams are characterized by possessing skills aimed at inclusion, and problem solving and where flexibility, understood at 360°, plays a fundamental role.”
“From an academic point of view, I find it extremely interesting that the Rome Business School has introduced a Master’s program on diversity, inclusion, and equity. It is essential that issues of this kind are introduced in the training of students, especially if the training is aimed at those professional figures, I am thinking of managers, business leaders, HR professionals, and project managers, who can determine choices and changes in business models. Differences, in companies, must always be experienced as added value.”
