The Italian municipality of Novellara, together with the city of Reggio Emilia and the union of municipalities “Rubicone e Mare” have been awarded one of the grants opened by the Intercultural Cities programme for inter-cities projects.

Their project “Diversity Management approaches in the public-private partnership industry” aims to promote greater inclusion of employees from different backgrounds.

In many organisational contexts the diversity management practice is translated into simple declarations of intent, through standard communication and awareness initiatives, far from achieving an effective inclusion and enhancement of the identity and experiential background of the workers. Public organisations are also concerned by this issue, but with more limitations and restrictions as they are subject to precise rules, in particular with regards to recruitment and career development processes. At the same time, as political bodies they can promote the topic in the public debate and incentivise companies, they have contracts with, to adopt effective Diversity Management strategies.

The awarded project aims at transmitting extensive knowledge related to the Diversity Management in the workplaces, to the local public authorities and to provide them with a training module which will be disseminated among the private companies they work with for the provision of their public services.

In particular, specific project objectives are to:

• disseminate a renewed vision of Diversity Management, which will be able to effectively combine inclusion and valorisation efforts.
• strengthen the public-private partnership, making the Diversity Management a shared goal and approach to enhance the wellbeing of the society.
• integrate intercultural training activities for the employees within companies’ Diversity Management Plans, thus achieving positive impact on both the work environment and the social cohesion at the community level.

The project will include: 1) meetings with all project; 2) a pilot phase for the design and implementation of a model Diversity Management plan; 3) dissemination of the pilot phase results (a report will be produced in Italian and English).

It is further expected that the project will achieve:

• Greater sensitiveness and knowledge of the topic by participating cities;
• A clear understanding of the levers that a public-private partnership can activate in this field;
• A digital report for the replicability of the model by any other interested local authority.

Congratulations!