Inclusion, winning choice. The companies say it

Inclusion starts from the ability to listen and from a choiceCompetitive Inclusivity – Chapter Two outlines the roadmap to achieve real and virtuous inclusion in the company.

Diversity is a fact, inclusion a choice. A choice that is convenient for companies: it increases profitability and internationalization and is central to developing a successful product and anchoring the company to the territory. It represents the main concept of the Competitive Inclusivity event, which was held at the Italian Stock Exchange on 5 June, organized by Eccellenze d'Impresa and MIT Slooan Management Review Italia."The ability to include diversity in strategic thinking is a competitive advantage: inclusive companies earn 23 percent more" explains Edi president Luigi Consiglio. Meanwhile, in Italy the female employment rate is 51 percent, so much so that our country is in seventy-ninth place out of 146 countries for gender equality. Returning to the initial assumption therefore, who must make this choice? «Everyone must take it: the government, businesses, families and individuals. We are not in a situation in which we can pretend nothing has happened", comments Paola Profeta, vice-rector and professor of financial sciences at Bocconi University, who explains how the promotion of an inclusive culture in a company must start from the top: "Inclusive leadership is a reference model which then trickles down and which has an impactful value in retaining talent".

Female talents who often do not have the same opportunities as their male colleagues, also because, explains Floriana Notarangelo, chief diversity and inclusion of Barilla, «the burden of domestic care still weighs on women's shoulders. We need to focus on smart working and parental leave, regardless of marital status or gender. If we improve equality at home, this also applies to work."

Francesca Vecchioni, president of the Diversity Foundation, explains how achieving equality is a job that requires the removal of profound cultural barriers: «It is people who, with internalized biases, create market dynamics that tend to build mechanisms that are not very inclusive, working against a mechanism that is now clear: diversity produces well-being». But how can this mechanism be broken? «There are at least two levels, one that goes outward and concerns how companies speak to customers and stakeholders, and an internal one, which concerns how they speak to their employees». In short, to break the glass ceilings, you have to start from the entrance doors: «The first step is to make the company accessible to everyone. The second is to speak in the appropriate way to the market", concludes Vecchioni.

Certainly, the Quid project conceived by the entrepreneur Anna Fiscale is an example to understand what happens when diversity is not a point of arrival, but a starting point. A social enterprise in which 160 people aged 18 to 65 from 20 different nationalities work. 80 percent are women and 70 percent come from fragile backgrounds. «Diversity is a resource for us», says Fiscale.