Impronta Etica

Maria Luisa Parmigiani

Focus on a Partner - September 2008

In this interview, Maria Luisa Parmigiani, Secretary General of Impronta Etica (Italy), discusses the latest developments of the CSR Laboratory on Recruitment and Ethical Management of Foreign Workers and looks forward to the upcoming meeting of CSR Europe's national partner network in September in Bologna.

Impronta Etica has published a manifesto on CSR. What are its objectives and expectations?

The Impronta Etica Manifesto is the result of two years of thinking around CSR and sustainability, and it was presented in 2002. During those years our founding members defined their approach to CSR - at a time when the concept of CSR was not very clear among companies and organisations in Italy.

The main objectives are to disseminate a good culture of CSR in Italy and to make Italian companies work together towards sustainable development, along with stakeholders and public administration bodies.

Today, the concept of CSR is quite clear, but Impronta Etica is still working to further endorse it and to build together a responsible competitive environment.

In this context, in January 2009 we are planning to organize a conference at the national level aimed to enforce the collective and collaborative approach set in our Manifesto, thereby spurring local stakeholders to work together for a responsibly competitive territory. In this year Impronta is working with national stakeholders to embed this new approach in daily life.

Impronta Etica facilitates a CSR Laboratory on Recruitment and Ethical Management of Foreign Workers. What is the background of this project?

The project is committed to establish a framework for facilitating the labour and social integration of migrants into host countries through ethical recruitment and management processes.

The Laboratory intends to partly address a very present and relevant issue for European economic development and social cohesion: labour markets in the so-called "old" European countries are facing a significant shortage of some professional skills but, at the same time, workers' mobility is hampered by cultural, linguistic and bureaucratic obstacles.

CSR Laboratory on the Recruitment and Ethical Management of Foreign Workers at the European MarketPlace on CSR, November 2008

CSR Laboratory at the European MarketPlace on CSR 2007

In this context, what our CSR Laboratory has been trying to do is to find a shared, multi-stakeholder approach for facilitating the matching between companies' organisational needs and workers' right to mobility and integration.

The starting point of this project is the best practice developed by Obiettivo Lavoro (Lab leader), the largest Italian group dealing in the recruitment and management of human resources. Indeed, Obiettivo Lavoro has been the first group to develop a model of recruitment and management of foreign workforce that assures the respect and full integration of migrant workers, thanks to a carefully designed process going from workers' selection in their country of origin, to professional and linguistic training, and to support for effective social and labour integration.

Starting from the model developed by Obiettivo Lavoro, the Laboratory meetings have been an opportunity to involve many different stakeholders and companies. They have jointly examined the issue of workers' geographical mobility, its critical aspects for both companies and stakeholders, but also the significant opportunities and benefits deriving from an orderly, ethical, and sustainable management of a foreign workforce.

What has the Laboratory achieved so far - and what are the next steps?

The Laboratory has involved 35 experts representing 6 companies that are facing the issue of foreign workers' recruitment and integration and 10 organisations dealing with migration issues (including trade unions, NGOs, public bodies, international organisations).

Bringing together so many different participants has allowed us to develop a deep analysis of the multifaceted issue of workers' mobility and integration, and to finally define a possible people-centred approach to the management of labour migration.

In concrete terms, the main deliverable of the Laboratory will be Guidelines that take a multi-stakeholder approach to workers' migration and include:

Mapping of the opportunities deriving from foreign workforce immigration
Description of a step-by-step possible process for facilitating the integration of migrant workers into the workplace and receiving countries
Analysis of the ethical, social, and economic benefits that such approach may create for workers, sending and receiving countries, and companies.

It is important to clarify that these Guidelines are not intended (nor able) to cover the complex issue labour migration in a complete and exhaustive way, but they will represent a clear and concrete tool for companies and stakeholders wishing to start thinking on how to adopt a sustainable and ethical approach to workers' recruitment and integration.

Based on your experience from this Laboratory, what do you think are benefits for companies in recruiting and ethically managing foreign workers?

Today, European companies need more and more skilled workers from abroad in order to overcome the current shortage of some professional skills and meet their organisational needs. This necessity, along with the wish of many workers to migrate toward wealthier countries, leads very often to irregular and uncontrolled migration flows and, consequently, to irregular and unsafe working conditions.

This situation brings about negative impacts for people and companies, as well as for sending and receiving countries. On the contrary, significant benefits may arise when migrant workers are enabled to enter host countries through legal migration processes and are facilitated in achieving effective integration in both the workplace and the society.

From an economic point of view, workers' migration is clearly a potential solution for companies' workforce shortage. Without these workers' contribution, many tasks and processes may no longer be performed. In addition, if the management of skilled workers is carried out by supporting them in the integration process and by valorising their skills, it will also contribute to companies' competitiveness in several ways, such as:

avoiding their necessity to relocate abroad
preserving traditional job and crafts that would be otherwise dying out (e.g. carpenters, nurses, etc.)
increasing workers' fidelisation and motivation
enhancing job quality and productivity
reducing the time spent by workers and employers on bureaucratic procedures
enabling European companies' to compete on the economic global arena.

The benefits of an ethical management of labour migration are also social, as promoting orderly and humane migration processes means also:

fighting against irregular and unsafe jobs within high-risk sectors (e.g. construction)
valorising individual workers, by carefully understanding their motivations and expectations, assessing their skills and competencies in order to assign them proper job positions
facilitating migrant's social integration both in the workplace and in the society, thereby avoiding possible problems of social marginalisation
promoting the creation of a culture of diversity and multi-ethnicity within European companies and societies
facilitating migration processes by alleviating many difficulties linked to the management of bureaucratic issues (e.g. by supporting family reunions)
transferring ethical values to other organisations involved in workers' recruitment process.

The next meeting of CSR Europe's national partner network will take place in September 2008 in Bologna, Italy. What are your thoughts on the significance of these meetings for members of the network?

Impronta Etica has always been trying to be a real network, a "place" where its members can meet and exchange good CSR practices, learn from each other and experiment new ways for integrating CSR principles in their day-to-day business activities.

In addition, Impronta Etica wants to play a role of "gateway to Europe" for its associates, by allowing them to stay updated on recent European trends in CSR, and to compare their CSR practices and ideas with companies and organisations at the European level.

This role has become more and more important both for the association itself and for its members. It has in fact become possible thanks to our increasingly active participation in CSR Europe's network and activities.

For this reason, the opportunity to host the next NPO meeting here in Bologna represents for Impronta Etica an important acknowledgment of our "being in touch with Europe" and of our active role within the network. The meeting may also represent an opportunity to enforce our partners' awareness about our activities and open new possibilities for collaboration.

More information

Read more about Impronta Etica at http://www.improntaetica.org/.

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