De Nora: a company where you can be the main character and make a difference

De Nora’s essence and success are tightly connected to the talent and engagement of its people, who have the chance to show their abilities every day.   

Everyone inside the company shares a passion for their work. De Nora believes in diffused leadership and in empowering its people: every member of the team is encouraged to be involved, independent, and responsible for their activities, to actively engaged in the company initiatives, and to share their outcome as if it were a personal success.  

Everybody has the opportunity to make a difference with their work, and to be the main character in their personal development as well as in the achievements and history of the company. 

Let’s discover how this happens through the words of Graziano Marcuccio, Chief Officer People Organization Social Communication and Happiness at De Nora. 

1. Graziano, what’s the biggest upside of working for De Nora rather than other companies? 

In one word, I would say authenticity. Our company has a very strong business culture and we are well aware of the values that we share and that make us unique.  

But awareness is not enough: we are actively committed to making the application of our values real in every aspect of the company’s life. 

To do so, we deeply take care of leadership and how it’s developed.   

In many companies, the only ones taking courses and trainings on leadership are middle managers, but here, this approach wouldn't work. To be coherent and live the values we believe in, the example has to come from above. At De Nora, the first one to attend classes and to ask questions is our CEO. This is the only way possible for all the good intentions to become tangible and genuine.  

2. How do agility and flexibility become reality?

First and foremost, agility is not something you obtain once and for all, but a goal to constantly work on, a cultural change that requires effort.  

Our company is based on action, here skills matter but attitude, that’s to say the way skills are applied, matters more. 

Everyone makes mistakes, it’s part of the growth process, but we never focus on the mistake itself, we focus on solutions. We solve problems without wasting any time on blaming people or looking for who’s “guilty”. This principle is in our DNA and it represents our idea of agility.  

For us, working in a flexible and agile way also means working to accelerate the passage from the design phase to delivery, reducing decision time and promoting interactions in order to always start from a common ground.  This is not an easy goal and we still have a long way to go, but we’re very committed. We’ve launched an internal training campaign aimed at improving this skill.  

3. How do these themes make a difference for De Nora’s people?

I start by saying that our goal is creating self-realization spaces for everybody: every person needs to be able to define their path and to follow their dream. For this reason, our motto is “Drive Your Journey": at De Nora, we ask for initiative and a vision aimed at defining one’s professional course.   

In many companies, people expect the boss to be in charge of proposing new opportunities and planning new development actions. In our company, this perspective is completely turned upside-down. Everyone is called to share their personal goals and ambitions and, in return, we are determined to give support with a realistic and functional development path.  

We do not simply apply this approach to development, but we try to empower people in every aspect of their work life. Just think about our remote working policy: many companies apply to the “smart” work strict rules, but this doesn’t suit us.  We provide guidelines, but we leave room for real flexibility, giving people the possibility to choose how to schedule their work and their private life, as we believe in self-determination. We call it the work-life blend: we want that time spent at work is productive and at the same time rewarding, without affecting personal wellbeing.  

Another distinctive element is collaboration: our strength stands in the ability to work together and this is how we push every member of the team to cultivate their talent and, with it, enhance the common outcome.  

Up until six months ago, this value wasn’t clearly included in our performance assessment criteria, but now we’ve introduced it. The evaluation is no longer only top-down, but also peer-to-peer and, for managers, also bottom-up. Managers are evaluated by their team!  

I’m happy to say that at De Nora today the achievement and evaluation of targets depend on the ability of colleagues to cooperate and to support one another. 

4. Is there a recent project that reflects the importance of giving space to inclusivity of different points of view in team work?

Of course! We have recently launched a training program about inclusive leadership, “InCLUDe”. This project is dedicated to all the directors and managers of the group and it aims at teaching leaders how to create for their team spaces for independence and initiative, showing the impact inclusivity has on productivity and on people’s wellbeing.  

At De Nora we pursue sustainability, and it cannot be achieved without inclusive leaders who are able to turn the workplace into a self-realization space. 

5. To foster people’s engagement, it's necessary for them to feel like they are a part of something. How can you maintain the sense of belonging in a company that has branches in 4 different continents and with more than two thousand people working there? 

Once more, I think that coherence and credibility are the keys. When a company comes to compromise about its values it means they’re not rooted in its core, and it can lose everything that was built with time. A company, first of all, should care about being credible. It doesn’t mean being perfect, but being ready and capable to detect mistakes and change plans to find solutions. This spirit shows whether the company is able to listen to feedback and to take a turn for the better. In other words, making mistakes is possible, every company makes mistakes, but people can feel if that mistake was made in “good faith”. 

The sense of belonging at De Nora is conveyed by our effort to ensure that the company’s values are always shared and respected, no matter the role or the hierarchy.  

6. What would you tell someone that is looking for a work environment where showing one’s worth is possible? 

I would probably give three suggestions: 

1. Remember to dream, if you don’t have a dream you will only follow someone else’s ambition
2. Don’t be scared of change. Staying in your comfort zone can be convenient, but you won’t be able to grow professionally.
3. Don’t be afraid of making mistakes: Those afraid to fail will never be able to reach the 8f their potential.  

At De Nora, we believe that the real added value is in our people. Here if you want to put yourself out there, you’ll find room to show how much you’re worth.