A personal experience of the Sustainable Excellence program

Interview with Anna Catella, Quality Management Systems Manager, Catania, Italy

“For me, with 30 years’ experience within ST, in Catania, this kind of program isn’t new. It is the concrete evolution of our way of working that started with Quality, Environment and TQM – Total Quality Management.

The guidelines that drove our working life over 15 years have built common values, approaches and processes to deal with the fast moving environment in which we operate.

With a continuous improvement approach in our daily activity, the path to Excellence is a never ending trip, with a constant stream of new perspectives and new challenges.

Today we are aware that Quality is not just about supplying high quality products and services. It is about acting responsibly, and in line with our Principles, to guarantee the respect of our stakeholders and the environment.

The social and ethical focus is the real novelty of the Sustainable Excellence program. We are embarking on a very ambitious program to make a positive contribution to the world. To keep our company evolving, we have to change our mindset, expand our way of thinking, and adapt ourselves to the moving environment we are working in.

Corporate Responsibility Awareness is the first step in the right direction, involving each employee in the evolution process. To do that effectively, we had to show how it would impact our working life and how we could each contribute in our daily activities.

More concretely, deploying such an awareness program required strong efforts to reach every single person on the Catania site. So, how did we approach the challenge of training everyone? We used all the communication channels available, to explain, involve and convince people of the importance of the program and its expected results.

In 2006, after just two months, involving operators too, we reached 40% of the site’s population and we plan to reach 100% by June 2007.

We now need to give ‘continuity’ to this program. With the Corporate Responsibility Awareness campaign, we have raised expectations. By deploying the Principles for Sustainable Excellence, and making sure there is coherence between management behavior and these principles, we will raise motivation.”