Initiative

Company agreement to support work-life balance

Summary of the initiative

Luxottica is a leader in the optics (corrective and solar) industry with approximately 7,100 retail stores in North America, Asia- Pacific, China, South Africa, Latin America and Europe.

The agreement to support to work-life balance applies to all employees of the Group in Italy, about 8,000 people and it presents a set of measures to save "time" to individuals and their families and also to facilitate the redistribution of roles within the family. The agreement was negotiatied in 2010.

The measures in the agreement of Luxottica include paternity leave (up to five days of fully paid leave for the birth of the child), the permission, during a period of three years, for parents to save the equivalent of leave, overtime or holiday hours to freely use these during the period of the birth of the child. In addition, measures are being considered to increase the flexibility of working time to improve both personal time and the quality of work: a careful individual management of working time and overtime and a wider recognition of part-time work. On the other hand, workers under fixed-term contracts are offered more significant earnings opportunities.

Another measure requires the use of job-sharing, already present in a generic way in the national labour contract, but now regulated in three specific cases: job-sharing between the employee and the spouse, between the employee with a child that is in the process of concluding their studies or having finished his/her studies and between the employee unable to work and his or her spouse or child in a situation of unemployment. The management of this measure is complex because it requires a high degree of consensus and possible organisational adjustments. The involvement of unemployed workers must also comply with the provisions of law that affect the work performance of these persons in income limits. The experimentation with job-sharing can be facilitated in a supportive environment with strong collaborative relationships and trust. Luxottica is pursuing an important social mission by integrating, even partially, a person of the family of an employee who has lost his place in society or is inactive, and by temporarily reinserting this person into the system.