L’AQUILA. Four days at the seaside in Puglia for over a thousand people in a four-star resort at no cost. Because the company pays. A story that seems to have come out of the best years of the Italian economic boom, or at most from the initiative of the top management of an American giant, world leader in its field. And instead it turns out that it is all the work of a group of Italian and Abruzzo entrepreneurs who put investment in human capital and the well-being of their employees before business sense, obtaining in exchange a sense of belonging, loyalty to the company mission, and virtuous repercussions in terms of productivity on the part of the workers themselves.
The initiative is by Vitha Group, a company specialized in door-to-door sales of various products, and in particular by its founder, as well as CEO, Marco Reato (in the photo above), an Abruzzo native of L’Aquila origins who in recent decades has built up a real empire capable of reaching the most remote corners of the world, from Germany to the United States, from Colombia to Burkina Faso, making a business, still in strong growth, a mere collateral effect compared to the centrality of the person, the first principle of every enterprise. At least according to the entrepreneurial vision of its founder himself, trained in America and then capable of importing and re-proposing the same production styles also in the old continent.
THE INITIATIVE
“A way to say thank you to the most important value we have, which is human material,” explains Reato, who thus summarizes the meaning of the initiative “The expedition of the thousand”, four days of sea, sun and relaxation for over a thousand collaborators, not only Italians, which this year stopped in Ostuni from June 16 to 19.
“We have been repeating this type of initiative in the main Italian seaside resorts for 34 years. In past years, our collaborators have gone on holiday to Sicily, Calabria, Tuscany, just to name a few examples. We believe that everyone has the right to unplug without thinking about work. From day one, I understood how important it is to put the individual at the centre of the project and I think it is right that at least once a year we are all together, even if this represents a significant expense for the company. And the best thing is to see how in Vitha Group, also thanks to initiatives like this, we do not suffer from hierarchies or top-down relationships”. At the end of the holiday, the participants also each received a gift and two Ostuni t-shirts.
THE FAMILY TRADITION
A predisposition to the entertainment needs of others that Marco Reato has evidently inherited from his father Not hereinventor of Cinema under the stars in L’Aquila in the post-war years, a festival that soon became a regular event for all those who remained in the capital in August, enjoying the best films of the time in Piazza del Teatro. A tradition that lasted for a long time until it was interrupted due to the proliferation of movie theaters, but for some years it was revived by Marco Reato himself, who found the right support in the Municipality of L’Aquila and which therefore this year will be staged in San Bernardino with twelve free screenings from 8 to 13 and from 16 to 21 August for the seventh edition of the festival named after its initiator.
