Mondadori Group

The Mondadori Group brands will take part in the forthcoming Milano Licensing Day, the networking event that brings together the main operators in the Italian licensing and brand extension market, which will take place on 10 September at the Hotel Nhow in Via Tortona 35.

Among the opportunities offered by the brands of the Mondadori Group, Italy’s leading publisher of magazines and digital content, is an innovative offer of content and services the circulate around the passions and interests of readers, engaging communities with web sites, on social networks, magazines and events.

The licensing programme includes brands in the kids sector, cooking titles and, from this year, also the wellness sector with MyPersonalTrainer, the web site for wellness and physical fitness. As well, of course, as CasaFacile, a point of reference for lovers of interiors and daily living, and Focus, Italy’s most widely-read monthly, and the publishing brand for popular science and entertainment.

The Milano Licensing Day will also see the confirmation of the Focus Junior “system”: a brand dedicated to children between the ages of 8 and 13 which has renewed its collaboration for 2020 with Ferrero, following the success of the 2018 Easter egg initiative with Kinder Gran Sorpresa.

Among the most successful operations of 2019 was the Focus Pico initiative, the Group’s brand aimed at children aged between 3 and 6, that brought to infant schools “The’ABC of the Sabbiarelli”, an educational project developed using sand painting techniques. The Sabbiarelli kit and the Focus Pico magazine reached some 350 classes across the country, and also included a fun competition that unleashed the kids’ imaginations.

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.