Creating An Inclusive Culture –What We’re Working On!

2023 has been a game-changer for OIC Group, as from January 2023, it really has been ‘out with the old’ and ‘in with the new’the way in which OIC welcomed the new year.

OIC Group and its staff said goodbye to the old grandiose office building which had been its headquarters work base for many years and moved into a new, modern, sustainable, future-ready open-space office just a short distance away from the old building.

OIC Group is almost 50 years old and is one of the first pioneering PCOs in Italy to venture into the meeting industry. With almost half a century of history and its wonderful journey to date, the company needed a change, a boost, and a breath of fresh air.

The office relocation represented and symbolized a new path, a new strategy, and a new way of being future-ready for the next fifty years, in the best possible way. A new beginning perfectly paved the way for the ultra-modern openoffice space, and a sustainable company-wide approach, which formally kicked off in April 2023 with corporate decarbonization and becoming a certified neutral company through reduced emissions.

The office relocation represented and symbolized a new path, a new strategy, and a new way of being future-ready for the next fifty years, in the best possible way

A myriad of other important projects and plans are embedded in the company’s Leadership and HR team’s strategy, for the short and long term, to become realistically and concretely more aware and proactive in terms of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (Equity, Diversity and Inclusion). Working on this basis, HR has, with the support of the leadership teams, put in place several processes and actions to address the needs of company staff.

The first step to get the ball rolling has been to ask questions of the staff, by having 1-1 meetings as well as wider group meetings, to primarily understand their needs, viewpoints, and concerns.

EDI is not limited to mere processes and actions designed by HR; it needs to be breathed in as part of the company culture. The teams, the people as individuals, need to feel welcomed, valued, and supported. People of different races, beliefs, ages, genders, religions, and sexual orientations must feel comfortable and at ease in the work environment. EDI

is important to company culture as it can bolster creativity, and lead to greater individual, team, and company-wide performance.

In line with the new chapter of the company, the HR Director’s aforementioned first step was about asking questions in order to understand the needs of the staff and the gaps that have surfaced. This information and data were and continued to be collected through scheduled individual and group meetings as well as anonymous surveys. The overarching idea has been to grasp the present feeling - the office vibe.

Naturally, this is a work in progress - an ongoing process, which has begun and needs to continue to be relevant and useful for OIC Group. It isn’t and cannot be conceived as a box-ticking exercise.

this is a work in progress... It isn’t and cannot be conceived as a box-ticking

The framework of priorities that HR is focusing on is as follows:

• Creating an inclusive culture, by not simply including gender differences or sexual orientation as the focus point, but an inclusiveness that values the individual in their UNIQUENESS, favouring in this sense, a leadership that looks at each and everyone in their own individuality.

• Using analytics to implement change with awareness. The HR department monitors the indicators via the ISO9001 system – also to favour EDI.

• OIC Group is aiming to create different talent pipelines by offering a variety of personalized and specific professional career development paths for its staff, based on an individual's hopes, expectations, and ambitions.

• Effort is being made to rethink the salary gap; in fact, in OIC Group salaries are based on professional clusters, that look into the role, responsibilities, activities and technical competence of everyone, so to guarantee equity through their salary.

• To retain staff, care and attention are paramount as well as active listening, this is taking place through the 1:1 meetings organized by HR, also to tune into aspirations, needs and what is expected in terms of work-life balance.

• It’s essential to fully integrate equal opportunities in the HR fabric of the company, and this is being implemented at many levels. This is of importance to staff as they can express themselves and be the personality or individual that makes them unique in the workplace and in the world. This is the key to being happy in one’s workplace.

For the above to succeed, HR and the company leadership have led the way, taking bold strides forward. The focus has been on a modular and flexible approach, which supports a more personalized development strategy– that can better support the unique needs of the company.

These are all truly grand steps in the right direction - steps that are and will need to be continuously worked on and finetuned by HR and the wider leadership team to ensure that the approach and overall framework grasp and fully embrace the needs and voices of all within the company.

It’s been an action-packed and phenomenal start to a new year and a fresh chapter of the OIC Group.

Here's to the next fifty years!

Ginevra Debellis

OIC GROUP