Stefano Miccoli is HR Advisor at Maesina International Search and a Member of the Directive Council of Confapi Milano. Stefano supported PANTA RAY with the promotion of a new digital training platform for business continuity managers, which is part of a project funded by the EU Programme Erasmus Plus. He has now kindly agreed to answer a few questions on the importance of business continuity and resilience initiatives for small and medium enterprises (SME). This is part of an ongoing effort to raise awareness on this topic.
What is the importance of having a community available for small and medium-sized enterprises in the Italian context and how can it be strengthened? What types of companies are represented within it?
The importance of having a community lies in the fact that SMEs have common needs. Consequently, there is a need for representation vis-à-vis a whole series of stakeholders, such as Italian ministries or international organisations. In addition to this, there is also a need to protect the interests of smaller organizations in relation to other financial and institutional actors in society, in order to give a strong and consistent image of what Italian SMEs do, bearing in mind that they represent over 90% of the Italian economy.
In particular, CONFAPI Milano, which is the association of Italian SMEs operating in the province of Milan, offers a range of services to these organizations, from legal support to internationalisation or human resources management. In addition, through the membership, SMEs have the possibility of accessing a series of community-wide deals with organisations and companies that offer further services.
On a different note, one additional advantage within the association is the exchange of ideas, a continuous confrontation between member organizations, which helps better understand the operating context, its challenges and the solutions that entrepreneurs can apply. In this perspective, CONFAPI Milano is very involved in the growth of business culture. There are many topics on the market today that are reasonably new to everyone, but even more so for SMEs. We are talking about topics such as resilience and business continuity or the value of being able to attract talent. If you are a multinational organization, you tend to be able to attract talents more easily than an SME, which instead has to discover them first and then convince them to join its mission. Another important topic that is a bit of a concern right now is artificial intelligence, both from an intellectual point of view and from a business decision-making point of view. All these things are topics that we develop to develop a business culture for small and medium-sized companies.
Within your services, health and safety are two very important points. How can these practices be disseminated to SMEs, which may not have resources specifically dedicated to these issues?
Firstly, in SMEs it is human resources that make the difference, not size or financial resources. You make the difference with the quality, talented people you have in the company, which includes your whole team. Thus, it is natural to consider the safeguarding of personnel through health and safety policies as a fundamental part of the business. Therefore, once the value attributed to human resources is determined, it is almost automatic to dedicate as much as necessary to health and safety. In some cases, this is done in a very codified, structured way, while in other cases the organization takes a more flexible approach, since in companies with 10-15 employees you cannot have a department entirely and solely dedicated to these issues.
Has the attitude towards crisis and emergency management changed in recent years with the pandemic? How do you approach the drafting of an emergency plan for an SME?
So, certainly the pandemic has contributed to make a step forward in raising awareness on the importance of managing crises and emergencies. However, this has not only happened because of the pandemic, since sources of crises and emergencies have now dramatically multiplied. So, in addition to disease outbreaks, natural disasters and conflicts have undoubtedly increased corporate instability. So, you must manage not only day-to-day corporate problems or issues in the market where you compete, but also an increasing complexity of disruptive events that concern causes such as conflicts or natural hazards.
Is there a slightly different perception than usual by SMEs after the pandemic?
The agility of Italian SMEs is one of their greatest strengths. Multinational organizations with many resources are by their very nature much more structured. By necessity they must set annual, three-year, sometimes five-year plans, which can be disrupted by new events that change the operating context. On the other hand, SMEs are perhaps more accustomed to rapid change, often sailing through rough seas, so to speak, and regularly addressing uncertainty. Now, instability has increased, but somewhat ironically SMEs are perhaps better equipped to change course quickly, to be flexible. It is clear that unforeseen events still tend to complicate everyone’s course of operation, but perhaps SMEs are more agile in perceiving change and moving accordingly.
How important is the training of resources in spreading resilience concepts? How can communication in this area be targeted to make it relevant in the SME landscape?
Starting from the concept of resilience, I would say that it should be internalised by an SME as an integral part of its corporate values. This can happen thanks to the growing awareness of entrepreneurs as well as employees, who can spread the word on the importance of resilience through training programmes and industry-wide initiatives. The event that recently took place in Milan with PANTA RAY on the value of resilience is a good example of raising awareness among the members. This is particularly important since at the moment it is almost exclusively companies that fall under legislation on resilience and business continuity that invest in training on the subject. SMEs often do not have such requirements and their priorities tend to be about turnover growth, production costs or the relationship with banks. However, resilience and business continuity are increasingly important issues because there is more and more instability in the operating environment. In this regard, CONFAPI Milano hopes that more and more SMEs will invest in training on the subject, so that resilience and business continuity will be increasingly crucial for business growth.
Within your activities you also talk about calls for tenders to finance various aspects of business. Are there also calls or grants that can support SMEs to better manage issues such as health, safety or business continuity?
In the complex, varied and complicated world of calls and grants for SMEs the word resilience in itself is rather abstract. It exists as a perception, but it is somewhat second nature. The subject is difficult to introduce because there is still a low level of awareness on the topic. For example, if we talk about IT security, many companies are only trying to protect themselves through insurance, without any further business continuity measures. In this regard, there are suitable calls for tenders to finance software and hardware for topics such as cybersecurity and yet they are underutilised, despite the significant financial support still available as part of legislative efforts on Industry 4.0. So if we talk in a strict sense about resilience, there are no calls for tenders on the subject at the moment and there is still need for better awareness. However, I would say that there is a growing need for this type of grants and our hope is that there will be really specific calls for tenders on the subject in the future.
Do you have any final comments?
I think the work that PANTA RAY is doing within the CONTINUITY project and beyond is fundamental for SMEs. My wish is that we continue to give space to this issue from many sides, building culture. The rapidly changing business environment has become the norm and it is important for organizations to adapt accordingly. In order for more and more companies to adhere to this business model, there must be an increasing number of initiatives on this topic.
Author: Gianluca Riglietti
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