Employees

A changing business environment

Our transformation process has focused on three major areas: restructuring and simplifying our organisation to eliminate costs that the consumer does not want to pay for; developing employee skills and capabilities; and evolving our culture and behaviours to align with a more global way of running our business.

These changes are even more relevant in the present challenging economic climate.

A leaner, fitter business

During 2008 we continued making the changes we announced as part of our One Unilever programme, which aims to simplify our business structure, speed decision-making and improve competitiveness.

As part of this, we announced the creation of a One Unilever R&D function, combining Foods, HPC and Research into a unified organisation to improve the efficiency, speed and quality of innovation.

After creating One Unilever operating companies in each country around the world, we moved swiftly to establish multi-country organisations in all our geographies, with a single management team now leading a cluster of countries. Our operating companies are now much leaner and better equipped to focus on serving local consumers and customers at competitive costs.

As a result of restructuring and a number of disposals, around 5 000 people left our business in 2008. The number of people we employ worldwide (174 000) stayed constant between 2007 and 2008 as we acquired new businesses as well as continuing our restructuring programme.

Decisions that affect employees' lives and livelihoods are never taken lightly. We always seek to uphold our values and to treat people with respect, integrity and fairness. Our approach is to communicate regularly to ensure that people understand what is happening. Where redundancy is necessary, we make every effort to help employees find alternative employment.

Leadership development

A key part of the business transformation has been equipping our people with the skills they need to help deliver our business strategy. Unilever has invested significantly in learning in partnership with Accenture – its HR outsourcing partner – by creating a single curriculum for General Management and Leadership Skills, supported by a one technology infrastructure that also provides e-Learning. This capability has enabled a fast roll-out of our new 'Standards of Leadership' framework. This programme promotes a set of behaviours aimed at ensuring that every manager takes personal responsibility for delivering Unilever's strategy.

In addition, employees are also able to gain more specific training from our functional academies, such as the Marketing and Finance Academies. For example, in 2008 our customer development function launched an online 'centre of excellence' on sustainability. This provides a platform for our teams to collaborate and share good practice from in-store campaigns around the world. Our R&D function launched a new three-day sustainability foundation course. This aims to embed sustainability into our business as a means of achieving competitive advantage. Training was also introduced to help our packaging teams understand sustainability.

A new online tool was launched during the year which will help ensure consistency in the way our employees’ personal development plans (PDPs) are managed across the company.

Health & safety

In the midst of this change, the health and safety of our employees remains a priority.

We regard safety as an essential element of a successful and sustainable business and are committed to providing a safe workplace. We aim to improve continuously the health, safety and well-being of everyone working for or on behalf of Unilever.

Our principal measure of progress is the total recordable frequency rate, which counts all workplace accidents except those requiring only simple first aid treatment. In 2008, this rate decreased to 0.21 accidents per 100 000 hours worked, down 19% on 2007.

Regrettably, three employees and one contractor lost their lives in 2008. The lessons learned from these deaths were communicated across our business.

People vitality

Our People Vitality programme aims to enhance the personal well-being and effectiveness of our people, through advice on exercise, nutrition and mental resilience. During 2008 the programme was rolled out to our operations in Asia, Africa and Latin America. The programme is already showing positive results. Participants have reported improvements in their quality of sleep, energy levels, motivation and work performance.

For our office locations around the world, we have launched an initiative to enhance people's well-being through improved ways of working. Unilever is investing significantly in technology to support virtual collaboration to reduce travel, thus improving people's well-being and effectiveness as well as saving time and costs.

For more on our health and safety performance and activities see Health, Safety and Well-being section of this report.

Global Diversity

Diversity in Unilever is about inclusion, embracing differences, creating possibilities and growing together for better business performance. We embrace diversity in our workforce. This means giving full and fair consideration to all applicants and continuing development of all employees regardless of gender, nationality, race, creed, disability, style or sexuality. Diversity plays a vital role in ensuring we understand consumers' needs.

We are committed to developing a diverse workforce. We have 20 different nationalities among our top-level group of 100 managers worldwide. Our commitment to diversity is set right at the top of the business with our Global Diversity Board, comprising leaders from all business functions and chaired by our Chief Executive Officer, driving our efforts in this area. This commitment from the top has endured through all the leadership changes of recent years.

A key milestone was reached in 2008 with the appointment of former Non-Executive Director, Geneviève Berger, to the role of Chief R&D Officer and member of the Unilever Executive.

Continued focus on gender

Enabling mechanisms include an expanded mentoring programme, new ways of working that promote work–life balance and fostering grassroots involvement through the Unilever Women's International Network (U WIN). Initiatives such as the 'One More' programme focus on diversity in teams, where every team leader is responsible for increasing diversity through each new appointment. For the top 100 teams, this means looking for the opportunity to increase diversity in every appointment they make.

Diversity planning

We have worked to embed diversity firmly into our day-to-day business decisions, via our talent management and people processes, from appointments to development. As part of the Human Resources planning process, our business units are required to develop specific diversity plans that are aligned to the priorities and needs of their regions and categories. Progress on implementation of these plans is monitored closely.

We continue to carry out quarterly measurement and tracking of diversity against our objectives. Gender diversity remains an important priority.

Living our values

Each year, country chairmen provide positive assurance that their business adheres to our Code of Business Principles. The Code provides a clear set of ethical guidelines to enable employees to uphold our business integrity.

For more on how we implement our Code of Business Principles and our approach to respecting human rights and labour rights, see Respecting rights.

Listening to employees

We gather feedback from our employees via Global People Surveys (GPS). The first GPS-Pulse survey after the arrival of our new Chief Executive Officer was carried out in February 2009. Some top-line observations were that ‘People are proud to work for Unilever and feel good about the culture and business'. Feedback also pointed to areas where we need to do better and these are being actioned by the Unilever Executive and our senior leaders. The GPS-Pulse survey will be repeated in September 2009 with a full GPS planned for 2010.