During the weekend of 4th and 5th October 2016, many virtuous ideas have emerged. Particularly, it happened during the debate on the topic of Organizational Well-being, which we animated with Martina Ricetto, Environmental Manager ABS Acciai Speciali, a delegation of ARPA Lombardia, Anna Laura Ravera, Quality Manager and CSR Manager of APS Italy, and David Trivi, Human Resources Director of AGOS.
The focus on Organizational Well-being was evidenced by interventions and highlighted the important aspect of health and safety in the workplace, but it is also a symptom of a deeper reflection which implies a structural change of the concept of work in the company: Organizational Well-being is most of all connected with CSR projects and practices that reflect on improving the quality of life of people in companies: it cannot be limited to the aspects of the work, but it should involve all the aspects of the person as a social being, as a citizen of a community.
For this reason, organizations create social responsibility projects in order to integrate the worker-citizen with his own territory, but also with the world. Keeping the employee informed about what happens on his territory and in the world is a priority for contributing to the civic evolution of the future. In the companies, millions of people “live”: a true community that can and must be recognized starting exactly from the employment context.
The initiative that I presented at the Show reflects this corporate social evolution: in fact, in the factory, we have set up an area where important moments are celebrated, where people can experience shared emotions and mature their own proper awareness about life, about the world, about themselves. It is born from this sensitivity the festival of movies show and theater performances of social commitment to discuss current issues together with their interpreters: the director Thomas Torelli, who presented his feature film Another World and, in December, he will present Food Revolution to educate people on the subject of food waste. The actor and director Marco Cortesi has performed in the factory its Civil Theatre with the play The Choice, and, in October, he will stage Rwanda. Symbolic episodes of how the social commitment and the value of action can change the events: exceptional rarity reaffirmed by the industrial context where it took shape.
The company is not only a business and work setting, but instead a place of “construction”, where you live experiences that form people, adding awareness to their existence. An organization can and thus becomes the site of an “evolutionary meeting”. It is in this spirit we want, and, I might write, we need to provide our contribution to social innovation: to be promoters of a more conscious society, addressing, in an active and purposeful way, the attention of the business community to the emerging social issues.
This project is born from the desire to be civically committed and oriented to a cultural renewal that our country needs. The main theme of this debate was essentially Organizational Well-being as “taking care” of workers, but this positive contribution to the lives of people in the workforce must not only happen with materials remuneration, but also with other, different, extraordinary possibilities.