Work-life balance: a driver of wellbeing and competitiveness
Up to 12,000 euros to obtain the new work-life balance certification and a reduction in social security contributions of up to 50,000 euros a year for certified companies: incentives through which the government aims to support not only families, but also businesses that invest in people’s wellbeing and organisational quality.
Applications for the Unioncamere call for proposals, worth €7.5 million and funded by the Department for Family Policies and the Department for Equal Opportunities of the Prime Minister’s Office, have been open since 21 September. The initiative forms part of the 2025–2027 National Plan for the Family, which aims to support the expansion of care services within the framework of work-life balance and to promote family and professional well-being. The objective is to support 1,000 businesses in achieving certification.
The demographic challenge remains a key issue for the country, but tackling it also requires a cultural shift: creating work environments that encourage the sharing of care responsibilities and a genuine work-life balance, for the benefit of both individuals and productivity.
Furthermore, according to Eurostat figures for the second quarter of 2026, Italia ranks last in the European Union for female employment in the 20–64 age group, at 58.8 per cent. The same cannot be said for men: although the figure is low, it is not far off the EU average. Taken together, the data show that, in our country, domestic and care work still falls largely on women, who devote 4 hours and 44 minutes a day to it – more than double the time spent by men.
What emerges is a gap within the labour system, which does not help families to organise their private lives in a way that ensures care responsibilities are sustainable and shared between men and women. As further evidence of this, figures published last June by the National Labour Inspectorate show that in 2025, over 40,000 mothers left their jobs during their child’s first three years of life. Almost half of the reasons given relate to the difficulty of balancing work and care responsibilities, whilst a third can be attributed to the organisation of work itself. According to the same report, just over 19,000 fathers left their jobs in 2025, and only 10 per cent of the reasons given relate to care responsibilities. We need to move beyond the idea of simply adapting our lives to the demands of work and promote organisational models that foster a genuine balance between family and professional responsibilities.
The problem is organisational: many companies fail to adopt a systemic approach to managing parenthood and, as a result, struggle to attract, develop and retain staff. A tool is needed that can translate public policy objectives relating to work-life balance and gender equality into concrete measures for organisations, helping them to monitor processes and measure outcomes. This has given rise to the reference practice UNI/PdR 192:2026, developed under the coordination of UNI, the Italian Standardisation Body, as part of the technical working group promoted by the Department for Family Policies of the Presidency of the Council of Ministers. The standard defines a structured model for transforming work-life balance policies from sporadic initiatives into a fully-fledged management system that can be measured using well-defined indicators.
UNI/PdR 192:2026 measures organisations’ performance through 28 KPIs and tailors objectives to the size of the organisation. Upon completion of the process, a UNI-branded certification is issued; this is the same certification that the Unioncamere call for proposals helps to fund and which entitles companies that obtain it to a reduction in social security contributions. UNI/PdR 192:2026 also forms part of a broader framework of tools for organisational wellbeing, complementing UNI/PdR 125:2022 on gender equality. The two standards share important objectives, helping to promote organisations that are more inclusive, people-centred and capable of valuing women’s work and the sharing of care responsibilities. This complementarity is also reflected in the support measures for businesses: as part of Unioncamere’s national call for applications for UNI/PdR 192:2026 certification: companies already certified to UNI/PdR 125:2022 may apply for an additional one-off grant of 450 euros to cover the costs of monitoring or renewing their existing certification. This is an opportunity that recognises the progress already made by businesses and promotes an integrated approach to gender equality and work-life balance. Furthermore, to support companies on their journey towards certification, UNI has developed the platform SUITE 192, a web app that helps gather documentary evidence, measures compliance parameters and enables the planning of activities and improvement measures. Alongside this tool, UNI offers training courses UNITRAIN designed for HR managers, auditors, consultants and corporate welfare managers tasked with guiding the organisation through the certification process.
The ecosystem of technical tools developed by UNI therefore aims to bring organisations together around the understanding that work-life balance is not merely an ancillary benefit, but a strategic lever for sustainability, organisational development and competitiveness.
