Pedro Marcet
CEO, Provital Group
Headquarters: Barcelona, Spain
Website: www.provitalgroup.com
Primary Business: Chemicals and natural ingredients for personal care industry
Revenues: €16.2 million
Employees: 80
Multinational, Global Employees Benefit Company
Provital Group is a small, Barcelona-based global organization that for over thirty years has specialized in the research, production, and sale of natural active ingredients for the cosmetic industry to service men and women of diverse nationalities, ethnicities, ages, requirements, religions, priorities and cultural profiles.
Our success is the result of a committed, diverse workforce. We have eighty direct employees of ten different nationalities in eight locations (Spain, Germany, France, Poland, Mexico, Brazil, and China), presence in USA and Canada through a partnership with Centerchem, Inc., and fifty distributors to service eighty-five countries worldwide.
Our policy is to have local management in each subsidiary in order to match the cultural and governance characteristics of the country and the highly diverse profiles of distributors, partners, and customers.
There is no salary gap between men and women employees because we reward performance and results regardless of gender or any other diversity feature.
We offer our employees specific programs designed to improve their personal and professional lives: annual education plans, life insurance, medical insurance, saving plans, subsidized catering service, flexible working hours, maternity and paternity leave, adapted working days to special family situations as well as to study programs, and company benefits. Our facilities have also adapted accessibility for disabled people.
We promote mobility of our staff to other countries to improve customer service for those of different cultures. We have scholarship programs through several universities, and every year we welcome six to eight students from different countries interested in chemical research, production, and marketing.
We strive to create multicultural understanding amongst our staff through specific initiatives: multiethnic catering, a multicultural calendar, and partnerships and donations to various NGOs. In 2012 our employees and the company voluntarily collaborated with Intermon Oxfam’s Water Bank in Ethiopia project.
Our company is a pioneer in signing and living up to Equality Standards set by the State of Spain, the European Diversity Charter, and we are one of the main sponsors of Diverse Artists, a project to promote social and professional inclusion of disabled persons through the arts. We also hold the Fair Trade Flo-Cert certificate for the cinnamon we use—it is harvested from a group of farmers in Sri Lanka with fair working and living conditions.
Education: Universitat Politécnica de Catalunya, Spain
First Job: Sales of surfactants and oleochemicals
What I’m Reading: Victus, by Albert Sanchez Piñol
My Philosophy: What is good for me is not necessary good for others, whether that is family, collaborators, clients, suppliers, or friends.
Best Advice: Look at a past situation, identify what should not be repeated, and then learn to develop new tools to address the opportunities and challenges of new scenarios.
Interests: Family, friends, reading, cooking, classical music, traveling, intercultural relations, and sports (mainly golf and soccer)
