Vodafone Italia and the trade unions have reached an agreement that provides for an “expansion” contract for contact centers based on the regeneration of skills, new hires in highly innovative roles, a performance bonus and the possibility of accessing voluntary early retirement.
The expansion contract provides for upskilling and reskilling courses for the 1,870 people of the contact centers, who will face an intensive skills retraining plan for a total of 1 million hours of training. For the same salary, an hourly reduction of 25% of the working time is envisaged, which will be dedicated to strengthening the skills in managing the relationship with the customer and developing them for new roles essential to support corporate strategies. An innovative approach will be adopted which for each module includes: training – in particular on Data Analytics and Coding – field trials and evaluation tests. The training and retraining programs, certified by Luiss Business School, will last for 18 months starting from September 2021 and also provide for the issue of Open Badges which certify the skills acquired and the level of knowledge of the English language.
As part of the agreement signed, at least 100 new hires with open-ended contracts by March 2023 were also envisaged in the company areas that concern the technological, commercial and staff functions. In particular, the research will focus on professional profiles with a high innovation content to support the new business challenges in areas such as artificial intelligence, 5G, digital marketing and IoT. In seeking these professional skills, Vodafone is committed, as always, to the active search for women with STEM profiles, guaranteeing the presence of a female candidate on the shortlist, also for the recruitment of tech profiles.
A performance bonus was also established with a three-year validity and increasing value from year to year, linked to programs for improving the quality and competitiveness of the company.
The agreement also provides for the possibility of accessing early retirement, which allows workers who are entitled to an old-age or early pension within the five years following the termination of the employment relationship, to receive an amount corresponding to the pension that would be due. them according to the current rules.