On the side of the people

Talk • Talk • Talk • Talk • Talk • Talk •

April 2024 • Marina Jonna

What role does training play in the relationship between a company and its employees in bolstering engagement and the value of productivity? We asked behavioral trainer, Paolo Manocchi.

Everyone talks about business training. It is generally used to describe ongoing, strategic processes that aim to develop collaborators’ skills, knowledge, and abilities. But this is not what we want to talk about today. We want to investigate another kind of training, one linked to behavior, and how it works to change the relationship between a company and its employees. To find out more, we met up with Paolo Manocchi, a behavioral trainer and life and business coach. “I think of behavioral training as meaning providing the tools to be in balance within a system that is out of balance. The first big problem right now is interpersonal relationships; people can’t manage their emotions. When the world becomes particularly complex, like it has today, people are living in an imbalance that threatens to create conflicts.

This type of training offers practical and operational tools that can improve people’s lives whatever work they do. Then it is up to the individual if they make use of it or not.” He continues, “This kind of training and coaching needs to be done with companies and business people who have a system of values at their foundation. Because it is fueled by value-based processes. Its goal is essentially to provide people with spurs to thought that can become spurs to behavior.” What about coaching? “This is an evolution of training and is generally done one-to-one. The coach develops self-generating processes of performance and works based on goals, helping people to find a model of behavior for their values that leads them to achieve results in a specific realm. Companies usually ask for it for people, not necessarily top executives”. A company chooses to provide these courses to give their collaborators a chance to come into accord with themselves and others.

This is an approach that looks beyond the product and embraces a full human dimension, which is reflected in Arrital’s approach. People are seen as the company’s living heart and it values relationships. Significantly, “We Arrital” is one of the mottos guiding the company’s code of ethics, summing up the company philosophy grounded in the guiding principles of experience, character, talent, and skill. “Human resources are our value. We create value because of our human resources.” This principle is the foundation of many of the company’s projects and meetings which strive to fuel and expand this creative ecosystem. For example, in the meeting in January 2024, Arrital brought in agents for a training event, which, as it describes, “We talked about ‘character’ in all its senses. We start from the characteristics and values that have always distinguished us. We are re-envisioning our ‘keywords,’ the behavior and content with which we express our new mission.”

The meeting took place at the Tipoteca in Cornuda (near Treviso), an example of true excellence as a leading museum for the art of printing and typography, born of the Antiga family’s patronage. At this museum, “characters” are at home. Participants in this experience were guided by Manocchi and by Arrital’s art director Franco Driusso and Paolo Bleve, editor of the IFDM digital/print platform. As part of this project, based on the value of people, Arrital was also a partner of the first edition of the initiative, “Neonis – Unlock Your Future.” The event focused on professional orientation in which 450 students from the upper high school grades participated from the technical and professional high schools of Pordenone and the area, joined by 40 leading companies and manufacturers in the Friuli region. It was an important opportunity for young students and companies to dialogue and give young people and targeted view of work dynamics.