Work well, live well, grow together
Research confirms that these transitions also have a significant impact on work. According to the OECD, policies that support work-life balance and access to care and prevention services directly influence labor market participation, employment continuity, and long-term productivity (Work-Life Balance Indicators, 2022). Harvard Business Review (2019) further highlights how failing to recognize stress, burnout, and the needs that emerge during the most delicate phases of life leads to increased absenteeism, turnover, and performance loss.
For organizations, the risk is to continue considering all of this as something external, separate from the sphere of work. The challenge, instead, is to recognize that long-term stability and performance depend on the ability to hold work and life together — not by denying or overlapping them, but by integrating them consciously.
How Diasorin Supports Life Journeys
It is from this awareness that Diasorin’s approach to organizational wellbeing was born. Not as a collection of initiatives, but as a coherent architecture of policies and tools designed to support people throughout different stages of life, without fragmenting needs or reducing them to rigid categories.
A key milestone in this journey is represented by the recent renewal of the second-level company agreement in Italy, which reflects a globally consistent People approach, with similar initiatives developed across other geographies according to a logic of continuity and alignment of models.
This approach is also reflected in the way Diasorin addresses gender diversity, recognizing it as a cultural root issue and intervening upstream on the causes that, over time, generate inequalities. Challenging stereotypes and bias, valuing merit, and building environments where everyone can express their full potential regardless of gender are integral parts of the same vision of substantive equity. It is a perspective that extends beyond the organizational perimeter and into the role the company chooses to play in society.
Through the Diasorin Foundation, the Group supports educational and career orientation pathways in STEM disciplines, helping to expand opportunities for younger generations and fostering, from the very beginning, a more equitable ecosystem.
What makes this agreement distinctive is not any single measure, but the principle that holds them together: adaptability instead of standardization, strengthened protections beyond regulatory requirements, substantive equity instead of formal equality. This principle takes concrete shape in an integrated portfolio of services and tools designed to provide space and support for the needs that emerge when life changes and surprises us. It is this substantive equity that guides Diasorin’s decisions over time.
When the Weight Is Invisible: Mental Health
Mental health is now one of the most relevant — and least visible — dimensions of work. In Europe, nearly 27% of workers report experiencing stress, anxiety, or depression related to their work activity (Eurofound, European Working Conditions Survey, 2021). Globally, according to Gallup, 44% of workers report high levels of stress during the workday (State of the Global Workplace Report, 2023). The impact is not only individual, but organizational as well. The World Health Organization estimates that anxiety and depression generate approximately one trillion dollars in lost productivity globally every year (Mental Health at Work, 2022).
For Diasorin, taking care of this dimension means recognizing that psychological wellbeing is not an individual responsibility, but an organizational lever. Across the countries in which it operates, the Group has developed structured mental health support programs, offering dedicated sessions, counseling services, and confidential assistance programs, often extended to family members as well.
Taking Care Before It Is Needed: Health and Prevention
People’s wellbeing is not limited to the psychological dimension, but also includes access to healthcare services and preventive care pathways. According to the OECD, prevention policies and timely access to care can significantly reduce healthcare costs and improve long-term workforce participation (Health at a Glance, 2023). In Italy, prevention remains a major challenge: around 40% of the adult population does not regularly participate in recommended screening programs, with potential impacts on early diagnosis (Istituto Superiore di Sanità, Rapporto Screening, 2022).
Within this context, Diasorin developed Feel Good, the wellbeing ecosystem designed to make care part of everyday working life. Access to a platform of wellbeing professionals offering personalized sessions ranging from nutrition and physical exercise to psychological wellbeing — especially during pivotal moments such as parenthood and caregiving responsibilities — together with the partnership with Humanitas, which facilitates access to private healthcare services for employees and their families, complements an already established welfare system — AON Flexible Benefits, healthcare and pension funds — creating an integrated rather than episodic approach.
When Life Changes: Parenthood and Life Stages
Life stages deeply affect professional trajectories. According to the OECD, work-life balance policies are among the factors that most influence labor market participation and retention within organizations, particularly during parenthood (Work-Life Balance Indicators, 2022). In Italy, the issue is especially relevant: the employment rate among women with young children is more than 15 percentage points lower than that of women without children (ISTAT, Annual Report, 2023).
Diasorin’s second-level agreement explicitly addresses these critical transitions. Protections apply not only to childbirth, but also to adoption and foster care, with a clear extension to same-sex couples. Paternity and caregiving leave are strengthened to promote shared responsibility and continuity, while returning to work after maternity or parental leave is supported with specific attention. In addition, paid leave for medically assisted reproduction (MAR) has been introduced in an area where national collective bargaining agreements generally provide only unpaid leave.
Learning by Valuing Individual Differences
Organizational wellbeing also depends on the ability to recognize and value different learning styles. According to the OECD, more than 20% of adults in industrialized countries experience significant difficulties with basic skills (PIAAC, Survey of Adult Skills, 2023). In Italy, it is estimated that approximately 3–5% of the population has specific learning disorders (Ministry of Education and Merit, Key Data on Students with SLD, 2022).
Within this context, Diasorin’s agreement explicitly strengthens protections related to cognitive diversity, addressing both employees who directly experience these conditions and working parents with children affected by specific learning disorders. Leave, flexible working arrangements, and personalized solutions in recruitment, training, and development processes are defined upon request and on a case-by-case basis to ensure equal opportunities for access and performance.
Making Growth Possible
Taken together, these measures reflect a clear cultural vision. As I have already emphasized in the pages of DiverCity, working in the healthcare world means working with people in their entirety: body, thoughts, emotions, and relationships are not separate dimensions, but deeply interconnected. There is no separation or boundary between what we experience physically and the way our thoughts, emotions, and relationships move. Everything is connected — we are an ecosystem.
For Diasorin, taking care of people does not mean lowering expectations or slowing ambition. It means creating the conditions for people to thrive, because that is where their ability to grow, contribute, and excel is unlocked. Working well and living well are not competing goals. They grow together. And when this happens, organizations grow as well.