The transfer of the employee is lawful when there is incompatibility with the company environment (Camera di Commercio Italo-Francese – Vittorio De Luca, Silvia Zulato)

With Order No. 4198 of 25 February 2026, the Italian Supreme Court (Court of Cassation) – Labour Section – reaffirmed that a situation of environmental incompatibility may justify the transfer of an employee when such a situation negatively affects the regular performance of the company’s activities.

The case originated from the transfer of an employee working within the framework of a contract service arrangement. She was moved from the premises of the contracting company to the offices of the cooperative that employed her. The measure was adopted after the contracting company expressed its unwillingness to continue working with the employee and went so far as to withdraw the badge required for access to its premises.

The Court of Appeal of Florence had annulled the transfer, holding that the definitive change of workplace constituted an unlawful transfer in the absence of proven organisational needs.

The Supreme Court censured that decision. First, the Court clarified that not every change in the place of work automatically constitutes a transfer in the technical legal sense. In order for a measure to qualify as a transfer, the employee must be moved from one production unit to another, that is, between company sites possessing their own organisational and functional autonomy. Conversely, when the change concerns only the specific place where the work is performed within the same company structure, or between organisational divisions that do not constitute autonomous production units, the relocation does not amount to a genuine transfer.

From another perspective, the Supreme Court reiterated that among the organisational reasons capable of justifying a transfer there may also be a situation of environmental incompatibility. This occurs when the employee’s behaviour, although not necessarily amounting to a disciplinary offence, gives rise to organisational dysfunction or negatively affects the normal performance of work activities.

In such circumstances, the transfer does not have a punitive nature but rather constitutes an organisational measure falling within the employer’s managerial discretion. The court’s review must therefore be limited to verifying the actual existence of the organisational needs invoked, without extending to an assessment of the appropriateness or convenience of the employer’s business decision.

In the present case, the Supreme Court held that the loss of confidence expressed by the contracting company toward the employee, and the resulting impossibility of continuing the activity at the client’s premises, could also give rise to a situation of incompatibility capable of justifying the transfer ordered by the employer.

The ruling therefore confirms that a transfer may represent a legitimate instrument of organisational management when it is aimed at resolving situations of environmental incompatibility that may jeopardise the proper functioning of the company’s activities.