Our Strategic Initiatives
The strategic initiatives of Covenant Partners: Human Capital Committee and Wiki-Hrd
“The new challenges of innovation and their impact on human capital”
The American Chamber of Commerce in Italy’s Human Capital Committee was founded in 2012 under the Chairmanship of Leonardo Zaccheo, from its constitution until today. Leonardo has been a board member of the Chamber since 2001 as well as Chair and CEO of Covenant Partners.
The objective of the Human Capital Committee is to contribute to the public debate on how Italy can improve its labor competitiveness and how the country and its companies can prepare themselves to respond to the new challenges in the labor market, deriving from technological innovation with the consequent impact on human capital in businesses. To that end, many Advocacy initiatives, events and position papers have been launched in the business community.
The Human Capital Committee interfaces at the highest level with representatives of the Ministry of Economic Development, the Ministry of Labor and the Ministry of Education as well as with heads of businesses.
Over the years, the Committee has continued to regenerate itself through the nomination of top executives from both major Italian and American mulitnationals, including CEOs, Country and Regional HR Directors as well as qualified personnel in different sectors. This has allowed the Committee to identify and act on the most relevant and important issues for both the participating businesses and the Nation itself.
As of today, the Committee is working on three strategic issues:
- Different ways of interpreting the role of Human Resources in relation to the technological changes which are undergoing
- Redefinition of the role of human capital in the management models of businesses in the face of digital transformation, which implies the need to focus people’s attention to become aware of the new digital context.
- Joint talks with the Ministry of Economic Development and the Ministry of Labor to introduce a new contract for workers with high levels of digital and technological skills.
Over the past years, the Committee has dealt with the following major issues:
- The role of the Chair of the Board of listed companies and the evolution of this role in Italy and abroad
- Transfer of technological competences from large multinationals to small and medium-sized Italian firms
- The impact of digital strategy on human resources
- The development of women in top positions in companies
- The creation of the AmCham Gender Diversity Council with the participation of more than 15 female CEO s as well as the participation of the American Embassy at the presentation of our findings
- Issues of inter-generationality and ageing, proposed by the Government
- The issue of meritocracy versus performance management
- Proposals to reform the Fornero Law, put forward by the Ministry of Labor itself
- Contributions on the Smart Working Law
“HR Directors need to face ever complex issues: a constructive dialogue with peers to open up new scenarios”
This initiative was launched jointly by Covenant Partners and Baker McKenzie and aims to involve a selective group of Country and Regional HR Directors belonging to major Italian and foreign multinationals.
Today in Italy and abroad there are numerous associations of HR professionals. However, what seems to be lacking in particular for HR Directors, is the possibility of meeting with other colleagues at the same level and responsibility within large organizations.
The objective of Wiki-HRD is thus to create a private and confidential space which allows for frequent discussion and sharing of critical and priority situations that need to be addressed in a specific moment.
The name of the initiative, Wiki-HRD, is itself designed to highlight the opportunity for each group member to find a concrete and applicable response to the most current and urgent issues facing the company, through access to practical experience and best practices shared by colleagues.
This initiative wishes to contribute to maintaining and strengthening HR Directors’ network so that they can continue to bring value-added in the management of human capital in their respective companies, succeeding in combining medium to long term strategies with responses to concrete and operative problems. This approach allows them really to partner with other executives in developing their business and competitive advantage through making the most of the human capital they manage.