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Beyond policies: building an inclusive culture in the workplace. The ABCs of diversity as a daily practice.

Veolia launched in 2024 "The ABCs of Diversity," a travelling training program that involved over 400 employees working across 120 operational sites throughout Italy, providing tools to raise awareness and combat stereotypes and discrimination, even in departments traditionally less reached by training. The project, developed with the contribution of lawyer Cathy La Torre and her team of experts, received the Veolia HR Awards 2025 in the Equal Opportunities category. The program will continue with new sessions, reaffirming the company’s commitment to building an increasingly inclusive workplace as a structured and ongoing practice

By Elisa Belotti

30 Oct 2025

A respectful workplace cannot be built through policies and procedures alone. It requires time, active listening, language, exposure to different narratives, and a constant effort to challenge normalized stereotypes. It is in this spirit that The ABCs of Diversity was created — a travelling training program that has reached Veolia Group’s sites across Italy, from Bergamo to Palermo, bringing inclusion culture to areas where training usually struggles to arrive: operational workplaces.

Developed with the methodological support of Wildside Human First Legali Associate, the project adopted a radically practical approach: providing a “toolbox” to understand and value different identities — gender identity and sexual orientation —, to distinguish between coming out and outing, to recognize discrimination, tell microaggressions from false compliments, identify unconscious bias, and adopt neutral, truly inclusive language. More than a theoretical exercise, it was a training in awareness built on real-life examples, practical cases, and everyday words that resonate with people’s lived work experiences.

The training journey involved hundreds of employees across seven stages, held in some of the main cities where the Group operates — including Bergamo, Genoa, Udine, Rome, Mestre, Palermo, and Milan — reaching as many people as possible, especially those who rarely have access to programs on equity and equal opportunities. The initiative also engaged the Group’s Executive Committee, ensuring that the cultural transformation reached every level of the organization.

The guiding intuition is simple: if cultural transformation does not reach all levels of an organization, it remains optional, marginal, and reversible. Veolia amplified the impact of the project through the creation of a short film featuring the faces and voices of the colleagues who took part in the journey — a collection of authentic testimonies that turn the message into tangible, everyday examples, enhancing both its impact and emotional resonance.

Recognition soon followed: The ABCs of Diversity won the Veolia HR Awards 2025 in the Equal Opportunities category, selected from over fifty international projects. This award confirms Veolia’s commitment to action — to preventing those conflicts, discriminations, and power imbalances that, if left unaddressed, become the very ground on which violence, including gender-based violence, can take root.

“In an increasingly complex and divisive social context, we have stayed true to our direction — continuing to invest in training on Equity and Equal Opportunities, convinced that inclusion and mutual respect are not only fundamental values, but true indicators of human evolution and organizational growth,” says Emanuela Teatini, HR & Organization Director, Veolia Italia.