The Mondadori Group is the workplace that most appeals to students studying for and young professionals with degrees in the humanities. The finding emerges from the Most Attractive Employers survey conducted by Universum in a number of countries including Italy.

Every year Universum runs two different surveys to find out which companies figure in the dreams of young Italians: one among university students and one among career professionals who have begun working in the last 5 years. In 2021 the surveys involved more than 46,000 students from 48 universities and over 15,000 young professionals working in 35 different fields.

Each respondent was asked to say which companies currently active in Italy they would like to work for, giving the reasons for their choice. The result reflects the career aspirations of young Italians and their opinions about employers.

The Mondadori Group ranks as the employer that students and junior employees with an education in the humanities would most like to work for. It is the company considered most attractive in the category “Humanities studies” (Humanities, Liberal arts and Education) in both surveys, ahead of other important Italian and also international organisations active in publishing and communication.

Mondadori’s appeal stems from a number of factors, in primis the creativity of publishing together with the drive for innovation and the prestige of publishing houses and their brands. Universum’s findings also acknowledge the Mondadori Group’s commitment to caring for its people, the company’s most valuable asset, their stories, know-how and passion for their work. 

Thanks to the projects of the Human Resources department and the new Diversity & Inclusion function, Mondadori continues to invest in its talents, putting young people at the heart of its processes and activities. The aim is to enhance their strategic role and create an inclusive professional environment that embraces innovation. And so continue to be one of the Most Attractive Employers.

The Mondadori Group has set up a Diversity & Inclusion function, assigned to Francesca Rigolio as Chief Diversity Officer. Rigolio is tasked with valorising gender, age and skill diversity and promoting inclusivity in the workplace, to ensure that every individual has the opportunity to express their opinions and talents and make a significant and personal contribution to the challenges facing Mondadori.

Increasingly regarded as important sustainability levers, diversity and inclusion are carefully assessed by everyone: consumers, institutions, the financial community, key stakeholders. In other words, by the community of which the company is an integral part. This is the starting point from which the Mondadori Group will become a workplace characterised by a drive for innovation, open discussion and widespread responsibility, where each individual can bring their unique characteristics. It has been shown that companies that offer everyone real opportunities for professional and economic growth also have a greater propensity for innovation, a more positive working environment and better performance.

The new function will work systematically to collect the data needed to analyse and manage phenomena such as the gender pay gap and the co-existence of different generations in the workplace and promote growth paths open to everyone, fostering the development of interfunctional projects that embrace business challenges and the diversity culture. Using her knowledge of the company and her experience with the Human Resources department, Francesca Rigolio will focus on people development with special attention to gender, age and skill diversity.

11 May 2021

Smart working consists of carrying out work in a flexible manner in terms of time and place where it is carried out and presupposes a new organisational-managerial philosophy based on greater autonomy for workers, who can choose when and where to work, in the face of greater responsibility for results and priorities.

In Italy, there are about 460,000 smart workers, with a tendency to grow.
Of a sample of 183 Italian companies with more than 250 employees, 56% already have structured smart working programmes in place, 8% will introduce them within the next 12 months and 21% are interested in the subject.

With the company agreement signed last year, the Mondadori Group has committed itself to the development of a smart working project for all employees of the Grafici Editoriali contract, with the aim of promoting forms of work that combine private and professional life.

More than 30 colleagues from all areas of the company, after having received the necessary training to understand the implications and changes in mentality, but also operational and health and safety requirements, will experience agile work until December 2019: that is, they can work in a different location from the company from a minimum of 2 to a maximum of 4 days a month according to agreements made with their direct managers.

As demonstrated by the many similar experiences in Italian and foreign companies, the expected benefits are many and on both sides: higher productivity and better performance, increasing sense of responsibility and satisfaction, lower transport costs and CO2 emissions, better balance between private and working life, less stress.

The 2018 Assochange Prize has been awarded to the MONDADORI GROUP. Now in its seventh edition, the award was presented during the meting for the presentation of the 5^th Observatory of Change Management in Italy, held in Milan, at the Politecnico di Milano, partner of the project.

“It is  enormously satisfying for us to present the Assochange Prize to the Mondadori Group,” commented Salvatore Merando, president of the Association, “given that it is a company that in a highly competitive and continuously evolving scenario, has been able to launch significant and parallel programmes for change with an impact across the entire company and its staff. In this context, change management activities have taken on a fundamental and strategic importance, in particular given the central role of people in accelerating the achievement of the stated objectives, the strong and visible leadership of the management and the development of capabilities, competences and roles able to sustain the changes underway.”

“We are very proud to be awarded the 2018 Assochange Prize,” declared Daniele Sacco, the Mondadori Group’s head of human resources and organisation. “This award encourages us to continue our efforts with even more conviction to pursue the path of innovation that the Mondadori Group has adopted in recent years.”

“Our goal is the development of a widespread culture that is increasingly able to see change as an opportunity and in which our people have a central, active and conscious role. In fact, for us, change is first and foremost an investment in people and their motivation. And to be successful, this needs to unleash positive energy, enthusiasm and engagement at all levels,” concluded Sacco.

Arnoldo Mondadori Editore S.p.A., FISTEL CISL, SLC CGIL and UILCOM UIL have signed a new Corporate Agreement that the Mondadori Group will implement from 1 January 2019. The text of the Agreement has been approved by 98% meetings of the staff.

The Agreement constitutes an innovative model in the publishing sector and places people at the centre by recognising the value of human resources, the primary asset of any business, with a cultural approach that moves from a traditional model to one based on performance and accountability.

The parties agreed on the need to draw up a single contract for all of the employees covered by the national contract for publishing workers (CCNL grafici editoriali) in the different companies of the Mondadori Group, while simplifying and harmonising previously agreed conditions.

The Agreement also aims to modernise and experiment with a new approach to work, starting from an industrial relations model that facilitates bilateral discussion of central issues concerning the relationship between the company and its staff.

The approach extends also to processes of innovation and reorganisation, the trial of smart working, with the aim of improving the quality of the professional and personal life of employees, and training. The latter is seen as an indispensible tool for the achievement and maintenance of skills and professional development, as well as a strategic measure for the qualification and enhancement of staff. Opportunities for professional development will be encouraged also through internal mobility and job posting to support and sustain empowerment.

In the overall context of focusing on the needs of human resources, the parties agreed that staff accountability, also through the autonomous management of working hours, that foresees a single “clock in”, to facilitate an harmonious reconciliation between professional and personal needs that will result if greater satisfaction and an increase in the quality of work.

The Agreement signed will also introduce trials for specific tools to reconcile professional and personal life, such as smart working, and measures in support of families, with the aim of providing conditions that are more likely to make it easier to combine the demands of professional life with the needs of the family. Special attention has been given to the protection of maternity, with reduced hours for six months after returning to work and the bringing forward of the full salary for periods of reduced pay, as well as the attribution, for new fathers, of 10 days of paid leave.  Also in the case of serious illness, the Agreement foresees the withdrawal of the limited period job protection.

Despite the ongoing critical concerns that continue to affect the publishing sector, in particular from an economic perspective the Agreement also foresees the introduction for the three-year period, 2019-2021, of a single variable results-based annual bonus for all the Companies of the Group and an expression of this value in the form of a Corporate Welfare System that offers staff a series of services and initiatives aimed at facilitating the wellbeing of all employees and their families.

For the third year in a row the Mondadori Group has placed itself at the top of the list of companies preferred by Generation Z with training courses in the humanities, as shown by the Universum research presented in Milan on 1 October.

Carried out by interviewing undergraduates and recent graduates from 44 different Italian universities, for a total of around 41,ooo individuals, the 15th Italian survey of Universum was carried out between November 2017 and April 2018.

The research company, founded in Stockholm in 1988, analyses every year the career prospects and job aspirations of over 1.8 million young people worldwide.

Camilla Boneschi, Francesco Bozzi, Susanna Ciucci, Valerio Fidenzi, Giulia Masci Ametta, Linda Poncetta, Luca Scolari and Anna Spinelli: these are the young talents selected by the publishing houses of the Mondadori Group as part of the Millennial Editors project.

Launched in February, the project offered a unique opportunity to 8 recent graduates  under-30 in order to gain work experience in the publishing world, after being chosen on the basis of an outstanding curriculum and a deep passion for books and reading.

All of the aspiring editor were subjected to a rigorous recruitment process and selected from over 4,200 applications, received by the Mondadori Group during the month the project was launched with an announcement on the Monster Italia web site.

Following an initial selection phase based on qualifications and experience, 81 candidates were given the possibility to participate in an Edithon: a full day at the Palazzo Mondadori, in which the candidates met the leading figures from each of the Group’s publishing houses and could demonstrate their skills through individual and group tests.

8 Millennial Editors stood out among them and, starting from this month, will start a two-year apprenticeship at Mondadori, Einaudi, Rizzoli, BUR, Sperling & Kupfer, Mondadori Education and Rizzoli Education.

This will give them the chance to make their dream come true and to learn how to become an editor, by interacting and cooperating with all of the colleagues and other protagonists in the book production chain, starting from the authors.

The #MillennialEditors project has also offered an opportunity to discuss and share with young people on social media some of the fundamental aspects of what it means to be a professional editor: videos, photos, “stories” and special content that have recorded a total of over 280,000 views on the Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn profiles of the Mondadori Group.

The publishing houses of the Mondadori Group are launching the Millennial Editor project for talented under 30s who dream of becoming  book editors.
An innovative and unprecedented programme, aimed at graduates in the humanities and economics, through which the Mondadori Group offers millennials with a consuming passion for books and reading a unique opportunity to enter the publishing world.

Einaudi, Electa, Mondadori, Piemme, Rizzoli, Sperling & Kupfer, Mondadori Education and Rizzoli Education, through a selection process in various stages, will identify eight young talents who will be guaranteed a period of two years of work and training as an editor with an apprenticeship contract.

The candidates selected will pursue a path during which they will be required to measure themselves against the activities of the various publishing areas and participate in training sessions with highly experienced professionals of the Group’s various publishing houses.
An all-round opportunity to learn the profession of editor, not only the specific aspects of publishing, but also the institutional, technical and managerial sides, interacting and collaborating with all of the protagonists involved in the book chain, starting from authors and senior editors. Each participant will develop the key skills necessary to face the challenges of a continuously evolving market.

The Millennial Editor project is developed in collaboration with Monster Italia, a highly specialised company in personnel research, and the technical partner in the recruitment phase.
You can submit your application from today, to this link.
After an initial selection based on qualifications and experience, in the second half of March suitable candidates will take part in an Edithon, a one-day event at Palazzo Mondadori during which they will meet the leading figures involved in the  project and, after being divided into work groups, will have the opportunity to put themselves to the test.
By the end of April, the eight young talents selected will be allocated, according to their characteristics and inclinations, to one of the areas, i.e. non-fiction, miscellaneous, fiction or educational of the publishing houses involved: Einaudi, Electa, Mondadori, Piemme, Rizzoli, Sperling & Kupfer, Mondadori Education and Rizzoli Education.

The “Valore D” Manifesto for women at work, which has been signed by the Prime Minister, the Mister for economic Development, INPS (the Italian department of social security) and by the chief executives and chairmen of many leading Italian companies, is a 9-point programme that defines specific measures, in line with international standards for the reporting of sustainability, to enhance female talent in the workplace.

By signing the Manifesto companies commit themselves, among other things, to ensuring that , for example, in the selection process, to have groups of candidates from both sexes (Point 1) and to monitor the number of women at various levels within the company (Point 3), contributing to reducing the pay gap and encouraging the professional growth of women, also at the highest levels (Point 8). Special attention is also given to the management of maternity (Point 4) and support for parents (Points 5, 6 and 7).

On signing up to the Manifesto, our chief executive Ernesto Mauri underlined the fundamental contribution made by women to the Group’s success.

Mondadori’s support for the Manifesto is a further step in the company’s efforts to enhance the presence of women in the company, following its support for the Equal Opportunities Statement presented by Confindustria in 2012, and is in line with the principle set out on our Code of Ethics.

Valore D is the leading business association for the promotion of diversity, talent and female leadership for the growth of the companies and the country. Founded in 2009, it now brings together some 150 Italian companies.

The Mondadori Group is among the companies who have won the Randstad Employer Brand 2017, the award given by Randstad – the world’s second largest player in the human resources services sector player – of the basis of the most complete and representative global survey on employer branding.

The result of the survey show that the Mondadori Group is Italy’s third most sought after company, and the only company included form the media, news and culture sector.

“We are extremely proud to have received this award in a period when the Mondadori Group is growing, following an extraordinary year that marked a trunaround for the company,” commented Daniele Sacco, the Mondadori Group’s head of human resources and services. “The two big acquisitions of 2016, of Rcs Libri and Banzai Media, have enabled the Group to consolidate its leadership in the core businesses, books and magazines. And this has led to the integration of additional know-how and new professional profiles, which have joined the excellent resources that already exist inside Mondadori,” Sacco underlined. “But, in a market in continuous transformation like that of publishing, it is essential to be constantly open to change. Our aim is to pursue excellence not only in business terms, but also in the HR area and there is still much to do. Mondadori will need to be increasingly able to attract and develop talent in order to go on creating an environment that is stimulating, enhancing and inclusive.”

The Randstad Employer Brand study, commissioned by the TNS research institute, was conducted independently – i.e. no company can put their own name forward for inclusion –  on a sample of over 160,000 people in 26 countries with an extensive analysis of almost 5,500 companies. The study measured the perceived attractiveness of Italian companies for potential employees. In Italy over 5,000 people, aged between 18 and 65,  were interviewed, between November and December 2016 a sample that included people in employment, students and unemployed who were asked, “Where would you like to work?” and given a list of 150 companies with over 1000 employees, based in Italy and operating in 17 different sectors.