Tradition and corporate culture with an eye to the future. The Balconi case

Afterwards, CEO Alberto Alfieri brilliantly led the subsequent highlights including the presentation of Balconi's rebranding by a well-known Milanese agency and the presentation, via a short docufilm, of Pattini, another well-known Italian confectionery company based in Parma and recently acquired by the group.

In a long and rich speech, Alfieri presented the strategic plan, going into the merits of the market scenario, the salient challenges and the levers and resources deployed to tackle them successfully.

Finally, through an interview, Caterina Tancini, HR Director Valeo Foods Italy and Giacomo Battaglia, CFO Valeo Foods Italy, highlighted the contribution that the functions they represent will make to the realisation of the strategic plan.

Organisation, talent, recognition and culture.

These are the four key words related to people and the importance of their contribution and support in the implementation of the plan.

Attention to key positions in the company organisation, robust, clear and shared processes and group synergies within Valeo Foods. The growth in size of an organisation with a strong entrepreneurial imprint goes through the consolidation of a strongly managerial mindset.

People who make a difference: this is, after all, the real meaning of talent. There is a lot of talk about it today, often with a strongly unbalanced reference to the question of realising potential. In reality, talent, which is ageless, is to be understood more pragmatically as the aptitude to make a difference, to achieve what others fail to do, or to do it faster or better, or even in a different way than others. Certainly this attitude can be brought into the organisation from outside or it can be cultivated by Valeo Foods Italia managers directly in the people they are responsible for.

The valorisation of Balconi's tradition in a future and innovative key is not only about the product but has to do with the people who helped create and nurture that tradition. And it is precisely the values of that tradition that can nourish continuity with the future; this is the role of corporate culture and the stories of those people are the most fascinating and attractive vehicle of culture itself. Stories are passed down and generate and nurture a sense of belonging. Today, even in the social profiles of the Balconi company and Valeo Foods Italia, the focus is on the people who are the protagonists of those stories. On the one hand, the people who tell the story of the company, increasing its credibility and attractiveness to the outside world; on the other, the company that tells its story through the people who are the architects of its evolution.

In this sense, Balconi is therefore facing those challenges that many other companies are facing in this historical era characterised by the long wave of a rethinking of work and its organisation resulting from the pandemic emergency. Facing these challenges means, in fact, contributing concretely to the redefinition of a work organisation that consciously puts people, with their needs and talents, back at the centre of organisations.

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