Fiditalia is one of Italy’s leading consumer credit companies and part of Société Générale, with a long-standing and well-established presence in the national financial landscape. At the beginning of 2023, the company was facing a crucial strategic decision: whether to relocate its Italian headquarters, or not. To support this high-stakes corporate transition, Unispace—the international workplace strategy firm active in more than 13 countries—retained REMIDA to conduct a deep organizational internal audit. The mandate was to decode the intricate dynamics between people, space, and operational patterns.
FRAMING THE CHALLENGE.
The question was far broader than physical space itself. It was about whether the existing infrastructure remained aligned with the strategic reality of how the organization actually worked, moved, and collaborated every day. What was required was a sophisticated diagnostic that could connect lived experience, operational structure, and decision-making perspective, ensuring the final real estate decision would be grounded in verifiable qualitative data rather than instinct.
SETTING THE DIRECTION.
REMIDA approached the project as a high-intensity, custom-designed qualitative research framework. The kickoff with Unispace and the executive interview with Fiditalia’s CEO helped define objectives, core strategic questions, and the exact scope of the investigation. From there, the work took shape as a process designed to surface how people authentically utilized the corporate assets, not just how they said they experienced them.
DOING THE WORK.
The project unfolded in four rigorous phases, each engineered to generate the strategic intelligence necessary to drive the final decision.
The first consisted of an interactive workshop with eight key corporate participants, designed to surface needs, issues, and operational priorities directly from the organization’s core voices.
The second, and most significant, was a five-day on-site ethnographic observation across two buildings and five floors, carried out by two dedicated observers deploying a dedicated framework to document actual space usage, daily behaviours, and the organization’s implicit dynamics.
The third consolidated this extensive raw material into an advanced analytics framework to map key findings, delivering a final report and, above all, a comprehensive executive master deck designed to translate this data complexity into a bulletproof baseline for the final decision.
Executive Kickoff, Interviews & Workshop
Executive Kickoff, Interviews & Workshop
Kickoff with Unispace and an executive briefing with Fiditalia’s CEO to define goals, priorities, and the strategic scope of the research, followed by a workshop with eight key stakeholders to surface critical issues, needs, and opportunities linked to everyday workflow mechanics.
On-site Ethnographic Observation
On-site Ethnographic Observation
Five working days of in-person ethnographic field research across two buildings and five floors, conducted by two dedicated observers using a structured, rigorous methodology to record behaviours, usage patterns, and implicit cultural interactions within the spaces.
Final Report & Master Deck
Final Report & Master Deck
Integrated synthesis of interviews, workshop, and field observation, condensed into an executive master deck that brought together qualitative evidence, population flows, space usage patterns, and daily behaviours across all floors and both buildings, offering management a highly precise blueprint of the organization and supporting a fully informed real estate deployment decision.
IMPACT.
The project transformed a complex real estate dilemma into a concrete, data-backed roadmap. At a moment when Fiditalia needed to decide whether to change headquarters, the work provided an uncompromisingly accurate assessment that masterfully decoded organizational complexity and the relationship between people, space, and corporate culture. This process ultimately informed and validated, in 2025, the strategic move into an ‘all-in-one’ building headquarters, bringing all Milan-based functions together under one roof with absolute operational confidence.
Data only gets you so far: be human.
