Ruth Oberrauch Interview

Tells us about your story. How did you get to cover the role you have today in the company?
I studied Economics and Management at the University of Verona. After graduating, I worked for a year in London in the Pentland Brand, a family business that operates in the sports, footwear and clothing sector, where I had the opportunity to get to know closely different departments: legal, CSR, marketing, product management. After this experience, I returned to Italy and started working in Salewa’s marketing department, a few years ago. Slowly I started to bring sustainability issues to the company’s attention, topics I had known in terms of strategy within the Pentland Brand. At the beginning it has been tough but then, creating working groups and involving people, I started to set up the CSR activity we do today in Oberalp. Then I had my second child and since I had never stopped for the first one, this time I took two years off, during which I got a master’s degree in Innsbruck in Management, Psychology and Leadership. That’s how I started working in HR: at that time Oberalp was looking for an HR Manager for Italy and they asked me if I wanted to accept this new challenge, considering that I already knew well the various roles and company dynamics. Nowadays I have two positions: Head of Sustainability and HR Business Partner.

Human Resources: what does taking care of people mean to you?
We often say that we are a team of mountain and sports enthusiasts, dreamers and adventure lovers: that’s what we all have in common. Oberalp’s environment is like a family, we all have a friendly relationship, we go out together in the evening. It seems to me that, especially for the people who come from outside Bolzano, is very easy to make friends within this context, because we share the love for the outdoor and I believe this reflects in taking care of people: leaving space for their passions even in the workplace. But it also means considering people in all their aspects: strengths, personal needs, motivation and private context.

You’ve just come back from a corporate trip to Corsica. It’s difficult these days for a company to give such a gift to its employees.
My grandfather launched this initiative. Every five years we go on a trip together: five years ago we were in Albania and before that in Morocco. It has been a nice experience, we stayed in a secluded campsite in northern Corsica. It is a unique opportunity to get to know each other better and create a context that will help you later, in your working life. For these team buildings we always look for places that are a bit isolated, where you can really do team building: there are those who climb, those who do bouldering, those who take the opportunity for hiking or just resting on the beach, but then we all get together at lunch and dinner. The manager sleeps close to the graduate in a tent next to each other for five days. It is also thanks to these activities that people decide to work for Oberalp, for feeling part of a team, a family.

In your headquarters you have he biggest climbing wall in Italy.
The Salewa Cube, which is free for employees, is our climbing gym. It also has a very large bouldering wall both outdoor and indoor. It is built inside our futuristic glass headquarters and its peculiarity is having a huge door that can be completely opened when the weather is nice, making the difference between inside and outside imperceptible in order for the climbers to feel as if they were really outdoor. We also have a small in-house fitness studio, which employees also use during lunch breaks to train.

What is your relationship with the mountains?
I grew up in the mountains, such a natural element to me that it is difficult to think of not having them. When I was 3 I started skiing. At 8 my father took me to the Catinaccio, at 9 I started snowboarding and a few years later I put the skins on the first few times. As children we were always in the mountains on weekends, and that hasn’t changed. I go to the mountains in summer and winter, with friends, with my husband but also with my family. Although we often prefer hiking to climbing because of the children, we have recently completed the first via ferrata with our two kids. With my husband I mainly do ski touring. I also have a group of ski mountaineering girls friends and every year we do a girls-hiking tour of a few days, the last one was on the Amalfi Coast and it was wonderful.

Professionally, what is your most important success in Oberalp?
Thinking back over the years in the company, I think that when I started bringing the theme of sustainability to the table, about seven years ago, it was not a deeply felt thing. Seeing that we have succeeded in implementing policies and that sustainability is an integral part of business processes, of people’s thoughts and a topic that everyone feels, is certainly a great satisfaction.

What does sustainability mean to you and Oberalp?
Our company has always been very attentive to people, but we have grown a lot and in no time so at the beginning there was no strategy or long-term goal behind these projects: this is the  last important step we have succeeded in. We always put people first, not just employees, but also people who work in factories that are not owned by us but where our products are made. For five years now we have been a member of FWF, the most severe association among those whose objective is to improve working conditions in factories. We have reached the “FWF leader status”, a recognition for our commitment in this area. We feel the responsibility to give something back to the community, but that’s not enough. The second pillar on which our sustainability work is based is, alongside the “people” theme, the “product” topic. We make products to experience nature and the mountains and therefore it is normal to take care of them and be aware of them. We try to reduce as much as possible the impact we have on the environment – with our products and production processes – by choosing more sustainable materials, investing in research and development to find new solutions, implementing a strict chemical policy and working with providers.

…we share the love for the outdoor and I believe this reflects in taking care of people: leaving space for their passions even in the workplace. But it also means considering people in all their aspects: strengths, personal needs, motivation and private context.

Siete molto attenti anche alla parità di genere, sia esternamente sia internamente a Oberalp. Penso ad esempio al vostro asilo aziendale.
Questo è un tema molto importante perché permette a tante mamme di continuare la loro carriera: per noi conciliare la famiglia con il lavoro è fondamentale e mi riferisco non solo alle mamme ma anche ai papà. Sono convinta che il sistema può cambiare solo se anche i papà si prendono le loro responsabilità nel compromesso lavoro – famiglia, è una questione sulla quale stiamo lavorando. Comunque, personalmente, mi auguro di vedere un domani più donne all’interno del senior management di Oberalp.

Avete anche creato dei prodotti specifici per le donne.
Quello che stiamo cercando di evitare in azienda è il concetto di shrink & pink, come lo chiamo io, cioè fare la collezione da donna semplicemente rendendo i prodotti da uomo un po’ più piccoli e un po’ più rosa. È un argomento che mi sta personalmente a cuore. In Salewa abbiamo instaurato anche una women taskforce, un team di donne che provengono da vari ambiti, prodotto, marketing, vendita, ma anche persone esterne che si incontrano per discutere i diversi bisogni e per pensare a prodotti specifici per le donne. È bello vedere l’energia e l’entusiasmo che c’è in tutti questi progetti.

Quali sono i tuoi prossimi obbiettivi all’interno di Oberalp?
Sono diversi. La distribuzione sta cambiando talmente rapidamente che sicuramente questa è una sfida da vincere, sia per quanto riguarda i canali distributivi sia per le esigenze e le richieste da parte dei consumatori. Bisogna capire le tendenze in maniera veloce, perché a volte, quando sei grande, la difficoltà è proprio quella di riuscire ad adattarsi con rapidità.