[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]When I joined Esselunga, Italy was in the thick of the so-called \u201cYears of Lead,\u201d a time when hardly a day went by without demonstrations, \u201cproletarian expropriations,\u201d protests\u2014and especially robberies, including those by the notorious Vallanzasca gang in Milan.<\/p>\n
It was an era of relentless, hard-fought strikes, which my father Bernardo met with steadfast resolve. By pushing back so decisively\u2014and mounting major communication campaigns against the deeply ingrained idea in Italy that one has a \u201cright\u201d to work without the corresponding duty and commitment\u2014he steered the company through a storm of union unrest. That achievement deserves full recognition, especially considering the climate in which he was operating.<\/p>\n
In my book\u00a0Le ossa dei Caprotti<\/em>\u00a0(Feltrinelli, 2003), I briefly describe this final phase:<\/p>\n \u201cIn Tuscany I also witnessed the last confrontation between Esselunga and the unions, during which about a thousand employees left the company. In 1986 a CGIL union representative was convicted after falling into a trap set by the carabinieri, who staged an attempted extortion: \u2018Give me 12 million lire or I\u2019ll call a strike,\u2019 read the note delivered to the company. When I arrived in Florence at the end of 1989, tensions remained sky-high. One day I found myself in the middle of a strike outside the Via di Novoli supermarket, where Coop and Superal employees, our competitors, tried to provoke me into a brawl. Signs read \u201cESSELUNGA SS\u201d and the police did nothing. On another occasion in Viale Giannotti, workers abandoned their open tills when they saw \u2018Giuseppe Caprotti,\u2019 the boss\u2019s son, walk in. I\u2019d lived through something similar years before in Milan, where union militants tried to blackmail the company and even blocked and assaulted me outside the Limito offices. I had scaled the gates despite a dense picket line of red flags and even being targeted by Radio Radicale\u2019s programs. It felt like a movie: one employee had jumped the protective fence around the internal parking lot rather than enter normally, triggering a major uproar. That day, Bernardo rewarded everyone who managed to reach their workplace, me included. At that time, managers and executives would fill in for strikers on Saturdays.\u201d (Caprotti, Le ossa dei Caprotti<\/em>, p. 149)<\/p>\n Though Bernardo saved the company, his relationship with most employees remained strained, and tensions with the unions persisted into the early \u201990s. Consider the store managers, who had previously received only top-down orders, had no say in selecting their store\u2019s merchandise, and didn\u2019t even know their own sales figures. Starting in the early 1990s, everything changed:<\/p>\n \u201cFrom 1992 onward, we began gathering all the managers in Milan\u2014a move that astonished them\u2014to brief them on the revolution under way. We explained the logic behind our \u2018non-food\u2019 offerings and the new shelving strategies. They were encouraged to make requests and offer suggestions directly to me. A group of managers was even invited to our planogram meetings, making it easier to discuss what wasn\u2019t working in various product categories. For the first time, they gained direct access to weekly sales data for their supermarkets, data that had been closely held by inspectors. Managers thus became true protagonists in running their stores, participating in decisions and seeing the results of their efforts firsthand.\u201d (Caprotti, Le ossa dei Caprotti<\/em>, p. 148)<\/p>\n This \u201cnew course\u201d extended to all store and warehouse staff, who began attending training sessions and update days. One cashier, upon learning she was invited to a course, burst into tears\u2014hardly believing anyone cared about her role, which had long been invisible within the company.<\/p>\n In the same spirit of collective effort, and with input from both store and headquarters staff, we created the little booklet\u00a0Valori e Principi<\/em>\u00a0(\u201cValues and Principles\u201d), collaboratively assembled by every employee from 2002 onward to summarize the guiding values everyone must know:<\/p>\n \u201cAt the start of the 2000s, we involved all personnel, at headquarters and in stores, to help define the company\u2019s core values and principles. The first draft appeared in 2002 and was refined in 2003. Human resources were declared \u2018the pillar\u2019 of our success, and teamwork was stated to be \u2018the foundation for achieving results.\u2019 For example, \u2018Esselunga encourages its employees to work in teams where everyone expresses their potential toward shared objectives. Relationships among people are clear and based on mutual respect.\u2019 The document even anticipated principles of equity and sustainability that companies of all sizes must now follow\u2014or face severe penalties from investors, lenders, and customers. It pledged that Esselunga would develop organic and environmentally sustainable products (including packaging), build stores integrated with their communities and low in environmental impact, reject child, involuntary, and forced labor, reduce emissions, support social projects, and help preserve Italy\u2019s artistic heritage.<\/p>\n These guiding values later appeared in Esselunga\u2019s first Social Report in 2003. They aren\u2019t abstract ideals but lines of conduct. In 2002 we hired 3,500 people\u201495 percent on permanent contracts. We adopted top-of-sector pay scales and implemented support policies for the most vulnerable, running 50\u201360 internships a year for people with disabilities, with the aim of hiring them. Also in 2002, we dedicated 200,000 hours to training\u20141.7 percent of total personnel costs\u2014engaging 6,000 employees. We then introduced performance bonuses for all operational departments, whereas previously only supermarket managers had been rewarded under a rigid hierarchy. The results spoke for themselves. In 2003, CIRM\u2014the Nicola Piepoli Market Research Institute\u2014carried out an internal survey of 1,711 staff (over 10 percent of the workforce) showing that from 2001 to 2003 the share of employees who said they were \u2018satisfied\u2019 or \u2018very satisfied\u2019 with Esselunga as an employer rose from 49 percent to 72.1 percent.\u201d (Caprotti, Le ossa dei Caprotti<\/em>, pp. 199\u2013200)<\/p>\n In short, if my father saved the company in the \u201980s, I sought to modernize its methods\u2014moving it toward practices akin to those of the American chain Publix, where employees own shares in the company they serve. I did so by reducing turnover, which in turn increased employee loyalty. And more than twenty years after I left, the public and private messages I still receive tell me the path I chose was the right one.[\/vc_column_text][vc_media_grid gap=”15″ grid_id=”vc_gid:1747684697473-264bfd67-e67a-3″ include=”68155,68151,68153,68152,68154″][vc_column_text]Bibliography:<\/strong><\/p>\n G. CAPROTTI, Le ossa dei Caprotti. Una storia italiana, Milano, 2024\/3. \u201cHuman resources are \u2018the pillar\u2019 on which our success is built, and it is affirmed that teamwork \u2018is the foundation for achieving results.\u2019 For this reason, for example, \u2018Esselunga encourages its employees to work in teams where each individual can express their full potential within the framework of shared objectives.\u2019 Source: Esselunga Social Report 2003.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":68156,"template":"","tags":[],"class_list":["post-68149","protagonista","type-protagonista","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fondazioneguidovenosta.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/protagonista\/68149","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fondazioneguidovenosta.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/protagonista"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fondazioneguidovenosta.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/protagonista"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.fondazioneguidovenosta.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/protagonista\/68149\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":68157,"href":"https:\/\/www.fondazioneguidovenosta.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/protagonista\/68149\/revisions\/68157"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fondazioneguidovenosta.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/68156"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fondazioneguidovenosta.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68149"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fondazioneguidovenosta.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68149"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nWhen I stepped in, I aimed to defuse that tension by applying what I\u2019d learned in the United States\u2014shifting \u201cfrom I to we\u201d: moving decision-making from a few hands to broad collaboration among colleagues and across departments, wherever possible.<\/p>\n
\nID., “Le ossa dei Caprotti”. I Caprotti e gli \u201cAnni di piombo\u201d<\/a> (1960 \u2013 1980): Renato Vallanzasca
\nID., Storia: Valori e principi delle Risorse Umane di Esselunga<\/a>, 22\/02\/2022
\nUSA: perch\u00e8 Publix \u00e8 un fenomeno unico al mondo<\/a>[\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column][\/vc_row]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"