Keeping up with a changing country

Italy is increasingly digital and multiethnic. It is a nation where the foreign population has exceeded 5 million and where smartphones are soon to replace all other phones. Poste Italiane intends to accompany the nation through these widespread changes. There are more than 13,000 active offices spanning the length of the peninsula, 143,000 employees and a staggering 33 million customers, a growing percentage of which represents the social fabric of the new Italian community hailing from every corner of the globe.

To overcome the challenges of inclusion, Poste Italiane has opened specialised desks offering a new service dedicated to ‘new Italians’. Staff members from other countries can speak the most common languages among the immigrant communities throughout the peninsula, from Tagalog to Chinese, in addition to major European languages such as English, French and Spanish. The success of the initiative, launched for the first time in Rome at the Via Marsala branch just behind Termini Station, has been so successful that it inspired Poste Italiane to open multilingual branches in many other cities. These cities include Turin, Palermo, Padua, Lecce, Genoa, Milan, Florence and Naples, to name a few. It didn’t take long for customers to respond. There are now 2.2 million clients of foreign origin who hold loans, BancoPosta or savings accounts, or Postepay cards.

Beyond the numbers however, the multi-ethnic Post Offices have now become a reference point for those who need support in dealing with red tape in a country whose citizens often do not speak foreign languages. The life stories collected for this publication represent only a small testimony of the process of integration, of which Poste Italiane has become an active agent. A process whose focus is a response to the needs of an increasingly extensive and productive ‘new Italy’.