Corporate heritage for employee engagement

Corporate heritage for employee engagement is the topic of the CERC Dialogue between Alessandro Lovari, Università di Cagliari, and Enrico Bocedi, Campari.

A dual perspective, academic and professional, to deal with an increasingly relevant topic for internal communication.

The opinion of Alessandro Lovari, Associate Professor of Sociology of Cultural and Communicative Processes, University of Cagliari

Corporate heritage can be defined as a strategic dimension of corporate identity that connects past, present and future through values, symbols, narratives and communicative practices activated by the organization. It is not simply a celebratory highlighting, but a process of strategic management of organizational legacy and memory, to strengthen culture, identity and relationships from both external and internal perspectives. In this second perspective, corporate heritage becomes a lever for employee engagement by fostering a sense of belonging and shared meanings, recognizing the role of employees as custodians and co-builders of the identity heritage of the organization.

Corporate heritage relates to internal communication because it provides contents, contexts and tools to activate sense-making processes, identification and participation between employees and the organization. Internal communication operationalizes the historical heritage through an internal heritage mix that includes ceremonies and anniversaries, corporate archives and museums, workplace design, corporate publishing, communication campaigns and training activities. In this framework, employees are not just recipients of messages, but are central actors in the activation of the symbolic heritage of the company, involved in the production, sharing and reinterpretation of the organizational memory. Corporate heritage thus supports key objectives of internal communication: engagement, alignment with values, change management and the construction of a coherent collective identity, often then also communicated externally through megaphoning processes.

However, the corporate heritage management also entails risks. It is the result of a historical, relational and political process, and therefore a primary risk is the instrumental selection of the past by management, which can produce partial, exclusionary or self-celebratory narratives that may be ineffective due to a lack of authenticity. In this sense, official heritage may come into conflict with alternative memories, individual experiences or direct experiences of employees. A second critical aspect concerns the nostalgic or rhetorical use of history, which can weaken credibility and reduce engagement: a kind of heritage washing. Finally, a non-integrated management of corporate heritage risks turning it into a set of isolated initiatives, without strategic impact.

The opinion of Enrico Bocedi, Group Head of Public Affairs, Communications and Sustainability, Campari

Corporate heritage has always been relevant for many Italian organizations and companies, which often have ancient origins and whose history spans decades and, in many cases, centuries.

Looking in particular at the Italian context, therefore it can be said that attention to the past and roots is part of the entrepreneurial and organizational tradition of the country. In my view, what has recently changed is a different interpretive key of the past: while it was once seen mainly as a way to preserve origins, today corporate heritage is increasingly viewed as a narrative platform capable of conveying to its audience a set of brand contents and values in a contemporary way. The result is that the past is not only preserved and transmitted, but reinterpreted in a current key, offering new narrative possibilities to the organization, which can thus also address new audiences. 

Corporate heritage is relevant because it allows organizations not to live in an eternal present, but to be positively anchored to a history that represents their origins, their identity and the value system from which they started. This awareness makes it possible to bring greater value and credibility to the story that an organization wants to tell today, especially considering the strong search for authenticity growing across all audiences, including employees.

I believe that one aspect that is not risky, but to be kept in mind when seeking to enhance heritage, is to absolutely avoid a backward-looking approach: origins should not be a nostalgic gilded cage in which to take refuge, but a source of resources from which to draw elements that can still be brought up to date and transformed into contemporary and relevant content for the audience of today. Otherwise, the risk is of perpetuating a dusty narrative. Moreover, viewing history from a contemporary perspective can also offer the opportunity to examine certain sensitive moments, of which the historical perspective and chronological distance now allow an objective and, if necessary, even courageous analysis.