Corporate Welfare: Nicro’s Social Sustainability

In a time when the “great resignation” and “quiet quitting” are making headlines, employee well-being must be a priority for companies aiming to create a healthy and rewarding work environment to retain highly qualified and productive staff.

With this perspective, Nicro Spa, a company with nearly fifty years of experience in the development and construction of steel alloy artifacts with a high Nickel content, has placed particular emphasis on corporate welfare as an integral part of its sustainability-oriented entrepreneurial culture, not only environmentally and economically.

Smart working, flexible hours, laundry service: welfare initiatives

Nicro’s welfare initiatives cover all needs, ranging from the “classic” flexible working hours for entry and exit to smart working for office employees, thus facilitating the balance between professional and personal life. There are also more specific activities related to the sector, such as the laundry service for production.

Since 2019, in fact, the new uniforms for production operators, certified and guaranteed through collaboration with a well-known company in the textile rental sector, are treated by a specialized laundry. In this way, Nicro’s attention to employee safety is not limited solely to the work environment but also extends to the domestic environment, which no longer risks being contaminated by potentially hazardous dust.

In short, welfare services increasingly bring Nicro closer to the well-being of the entire community, through that of its employees.

Family Support Initiatives

To support employees’ families, in addition to the laundry service, Nicro Spa has introduced various initiatives, from extending bereavement leave to 5 days, to the Baby Bonus. The Baby Bonus is a welfare contribution of €500 starting from July 1st 2024, for each employee with preschool children, paid annually for each child up to the fifth year of age.

Moreover, the company offers facilitated access to breast ultrasound scans at the senology center of Caravaggio, with which Nicro has a long collaboration following the donation of an ultrasound machine. Facilitated access concerns all female employees, as well as employees’ families (mothers, wives, and daughters). In addition to these, all medical visits are paid thanks to a special leave.

In collaboration with the pharmacy of Vailate, a medication delivery service has also been introduced. With prescription or over-the-counter drugs, parapharmaceuticals, supplements, cosmetics, and medical devices, the consultation is by phone, and orders can be placed via app, phone, email, or WhatsApp, with savings and the possibility to accumulate points for further discounts.

Edenred Welfare Platform

Through the partnership with Edenred, Nicro Spa also provides employees with a comprehensive platform offering a wide range of services. With loaded credit, employees can book (or request reimbursement) for medical visits, school books, school canteen, summer camps for their children, but also trips, sports, and amusement parks for adults.

Funds related to the baby bonus, the €200 welfare provided by the National Collective Labor Agreement, and possibly the end-of-year production bonus not paid in the paycheck are also loaded onto the platform. Since 2022, a new rewarding system has been introduced, based on KPIs. The bonus is paid upon reaching certain gross operating margin (GOM) milestones, therefore upon revenue increases or cost reduction of personal performance parameters.

Delivery of fruits and vegetables in the office

As part of its welfare initiatives, Nicro Spa has introduced a new service in collaboration with the Bergamo-based start-up Mister Natura. This new corporate welfare tool is designed to further improve the daily well-being of employees by offering them the convenience of receiving fresh fruits and vegetables directly at the workplace.

Thanks to an exclusive agreement, employees can now take advantage of an online platform to order fresh products, which are then delivered every Friday directly to the company, ready to be taken home at the end of the workday. This initiative not only simplifies employees’ daily logistics but also promotes a healthier lifestyle by encouraging the consumption of fresh and natural foods.

Training Courses

Training and updating courses are diversified to cover the needs of all areas: quality, sales, purchasing, administration, human resources, management, production, logistics. Among the most important are certainly those on lean management, skills mapping, and the blackship course, starting for the entire sales department.

The courses aim to assess skills and delve into the strengths and weaknesses of operators, with a focus on the sales office, as in the case of the Blackship course “Strategic Sales: Initiating & Winning New Business,” designed to refine sales tactics by opening new opportunities and maximizing the closure rate of those opportunities, differentiating from the competition. The lean management course is instead part of Nicro’s continuous improvement process, which over the years has evolved to represent a market partner always keeping pace with the times.

With the aim of improving the performance of the various departments, the course analyzes the physical flows of materials, products, and information of the company, the current production and warehouse layouts, and the management of times and processes, to eliminate waste and increase general efficiency, also thanks to the involvement of staff in proposed improvement activities. From the analysis of current (AS-IS) and ideal (TO-BE) flows to discussing the applicability of improvements to the current layout, staff are involved in every phase and trained through the mentoring and coaching of experts in lean management and kaizen philosophy to build a theoretical standard of continuous improvement.

Corporate welfare: a long-term investment

Corporate welfare for Nicro is not only a moral duty but also an investment in the organization’s productivity. These practices not only improve the company climate but also contribute to attracting and retaining talent, ensuring the long-term success of the company in its highly competitive sector.

Discover all of Nicro’s sustainability initiatives and its projects for society. And for your needs in the development and construction of steel alloy artifacts with a high Nickel content, turn to our technicians and professionals.