Health care tops the list
Nine out of ten Italians would like health services from their employers
Key points
Nine Italians out of ten would like to work for companies that, in addition to the pay aspect, demonstrate that they also want to look after the wellbeing of their employees, providing goods and services aimed at protecting their health. This is what emerges from the latest survey carried out by Nomisma for the UniSalute Health Observatory. There were two aims of the survey: to map out needs and at the same time to record the actual situation.
Data
87% of Italian employees, who so far have not had the opportunity to take advantage of health benefits, would like to see them introduced by their company. The survey was carried out in October 2025 on a sample of 1,200 Italians aged between 18 and 70, stratified by age, gender and geographical area, with oversampling in the provinces of Milan, Turin, Padua, Bologna and Naples.
What prompts and explains this kind of demand is above all one fact: only 42% of Italian companies offer these services to all employees, while a further 22% provide them only for certain classifications. Even 36% of companies so far do not provide corporate welfare plans.
Medical assistance and fringe benefits
A need made even more urgent by the current social context. The survey explains, in fact, that having healthcare services included in one's employment contract proves to be an increasingly attractive opportunity, in a context in which the majority of Italians suffer from the excessively long waiting times of the National Health Service (76%), but also from the increase in the cost of medical care in recent years in the private sector (67%). Squeezed therefore between the fragility of the public sector and the exorbitance of the private sector, workers are looking to the umbrella of corporate welfare with increasing interest. Also in the light of experiences already in the field.
Among those who do not have any benefits, the ones that generate the most interest are those concerning health care, such as reduced costs for contracted health services and reimbursement of medical expenses: 64% of the respondents would like to be able to use them. In second place are fringe benefits (29%), which range from shopping vouchers to a company car, followed by supplementary pensions (27%).
