How Unilever Powers Growth with Customer Centricity

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Hello, everyone. I'm. Here, to talk a little bit about how, our way unlocking capacity. And capability, for growth in, Unilever, and we're calling that but, being, resourceful, because we will do that by being, resourceful. First. Of all who. Are we so first of all at the center of offices our purpose which is make sustainable. Living a common, place and, I'm on purpose, presenting, Unilever, as its. Purpose because, this is really at the core of what we do we. We. Have we are a company, of 53. Billion euros, and we touch every day, 2.5. Billion, people with, our products so we do personal, care and conquer, ice, cream foods, etc so, a huge company, therefore we have a huge. Responsibility, and purpose. 51. Percent of our products, are sourced. From sustainable. Materials. And we. Have. Decreased. The total waste, in 96. Percent. So we're taking seriously. Sustainability. As well as we're upskilling, women, all around the world many many women as you can see giving. Them my, microscopes. For them to drive. Oops. There. So. What, is it that we've seen in Unilever, we solve some market, trends. And I'll. Discuss, about our open talented, economy, initiative very searchable but, why is that, on this in Unilever, what is it that we spotted, we. Spotted explosion, of the gig economy and, for all that, we meant is skills, which. Are ready now, fast. Access, for dosa skills that we meet. In Unilever, we. Also spotted the digital, boom, so many, artificial. Intelligent, platforms, now working, working, much more better than in the past, also. Changing. Expectations of, the millennium so no longer people wanting, to work from 9:00 to 5:00 they want to work remotely they don't like a workplace, which is dull or boring they. Were they, want exciting. Environmental, and they want exciting. Work as well and. Then is it is the age of the partnerships. So thinking about this how do we disrupt. Ourselves but. How also, we. Build different consortium, models we, partner, with different, technology. So we come up with a third business, model how, can we really partner, with. Technology. To bring in internal, market place or with technology, to, deliver, a digital, recipe, for our consumers, so. If, we connect, all these dots in terms of what's happening in the market, place. And the. Future of work this, is why we're, doing open, talent economy, also just, to mention what, what is a holistic change that, we're driving in Unilever, it's, about the future of work so that means for us we're moving, from only, thinking and profit to, thinking in purpose, its organizational. Purpose, brands, with purpose, and people, with purpose, we're, driving, purpose, workshops, in which people discover, why. What's, their mission. Here. On earth in, Unilever, whether that is a bigger a small, mission, the. Point is for them to know more more, themselves, and to have a, drive, towards, that we're, moving from her keys to networks, we've removed, every, possible level in Unilever, in, the past we had high potentials, and we called them out we'll remove, all of, that and we're removing a lot of the icons, of her key also. We've. Moved. From a controlling, command and control culture, do. A much more empowering. Culture, and we call this connected. For growth so we started multifunctional. Teams with within. Our core with, marketing, people. Directly. Having. Consumer insight so Unilever, was very very global, company we've. Moved the, global, decision-making, into. The, local countries, so, look, at all, of the countries, they manage their own P&L, categories. In countries, manage their own P&L, with, multifunctional, teams with a marketing, leader which is a small. General managers, for that, for. That given category and they're working like a scrum team there, and with, more from planning to experimentation, from, privacy, to transparency. As well so. This is a whole ecosystem, of change, that we're doing in Unilever, but, what then is be. Resourceful, or our open Talent economy, we've. Heard the business, and the business was, in an industry. Like ours in which we grow. 3.5%. Annually. More or less the, name of the game for us is how can we keep, growing and selling, increase. In volume increase, in pricing. But. At the same time how can we reduce costs, as well from a financial, perspective right, so. How could we in HR, stop saying no, to, line managers, in terms of the constraints, whenever, they came with, us and say hey can I have a full-time employee I'm dying in silence III. Can't. Do, this work I don't have the right skills, everyone. Was complaining about that because we're also. Moving. Unilever, to be a much more leaner organization. Also, because of agility right, so. Then what, other things, we could could give them so this is where we start and say this we, need to drive a huge, mindset. Shift in Unilever, and this, is how do we show. Our our. Business, our leadership. Teams be. Resourceful. To, think without constraints.

And Think of the abundance, of resources. That. Exist Elsa, outside, with, new skills, we. Ready now skills abundance. Of new business, models and abundance. Of new, business, ideas. So. We've, done that and and. What is it that it's open, talent economy or be resourceful it's, all about fast, access, to new skills through. Freelancers. Through I'll show a little bit what. This is about it. Is fast access. To talent and intrapreneurs. And, fast access to new business, idea a new business model how can we have that right, away it's. Why. Would, the business care, about all of this how is it that we will show business, value so, we're, we're. Finding news cases, that that are showing growth, incremental. Turnover, real incremental, turnover, so we, are. Doing a very strong effort in terms of measurement. We're, reducing people, cost because, our vision is how can we become linear, for agility and how. Can we bring, in a higher, flexible. Layer of dynamic, resources, seasonal, ones coming and going to, perform specific, jobs. And decrease. A little bit the structured, fixed. Layer of full-time employees, how, can we become much more flexible and agile, then. It's about, less fix more, flex. Less. Costing our balance sheet more, dynamic, and seasonal, and then. Is why, is this important, for people, it's because for people we. Will get them to do more purposeful. Work so, less of transactional. Boring, work it's, all about how can we get them to develop, into. Different, other projects. To work with, a freelancer. To do crowdsourcing. To partner. With a startup, with a small, consultancy. How. Can we get them to do that. So. This, is then be resourceful and open talent economy, this, is our will and we're, basing. Our strategy. In six different pillars, one. Is about, partnerships. With. Small. We're either with startups, smart a small consultancies. Big companies, why, we do this is because we want to ring in skills. Let's. Say that we I. Go. And do a swap, with Deloitte. For. Six months because I want to learn about future. Of work and someone in Deloitte gets into Unilever for six months right, how, can do. Sorry. That is a talent, advant how can we do partnerships, inter. And this is an example so we have in. Europe the. Hellmann's team the marketing team doing, the partnership, with quick web which was a, startup. Because. We don't know how to get into the digital consumer. We partner with that digital, startup, and we, launched a recipe, resulting, in an incremental, turnover, and resulted. In our team gaining, digital, skills at that right moment then. We have what we call internal, marketplace. So. Internal marketplaces. Artificial, intelligence, matching, people against, jobs and tasks, and as, well that would be developed to match people against, jobs. Itself, why. Would people would, like to, put. Twenty, ten percent, of their time into a project it's, because, either that taps into their passion or. Into, their purpose, or. Because they want to develop so we're not pushing this, is a poll we're, asking, people do, you want to participate just, as an example I just posted myself, a, small. Project and I receive in one week 15, people wanting, to work for be resourceful, so. This is quite quite good it will enable remote working it will enable a truly global.

Way Of working because, it doesn't matter if I'm working from Singapore, with someone from the, US or from Ukrainian. Or from South Africa. So. Then. Is about. Ideal. Ways of working through, Sprint's. Through, scrums, and. Freelancers. Of course that I think, I don't need to explain right with cattle, and also were working with up work so. Basically, what. We started doing is. Sending. The. Allowing. A lot of experimentation, within, Unilever, and that is resulting. In 40, different you. Cases, that I will mention some of them so. We have in Pakistan, an. Incremental. Turnover use case, so, what Pakistan, has done they they've, gone and said how can I deliver ice cream in ten minutes, basically. They a huge, challenge they did a hackathon received, three hundred and fifty ideas they, partner, with a. Logistics. Company. Which develop, an artificial intelligence, for us so, basically, they connected, the deliverer, which, is a neighbor within, a neighborhood, to the consumer, which is the other neighbor so if you're in that neighborhood, you, will go into a grocery store and in you'll deliver ice cream to your neighbor and that, person will receive an incentive, this. Is. So. The result of this is one percent of growth for, the Pakistan, company, which is a 1 billion euro. Business. For Unilever imagine. One percent of business, growth it's just. Amazing. Then. Is in. Indonesia, I'd. Receive a call from the vice president, of personal, care saying. Raquel. What can I do I cannot have more of these and I, need to launch five different. Brands, variants, of brands this is a real story so, then we called up cattle and they helped, us deliver five. Different. Market, ears and we've, launched, five different brands. Through. Those marketeers, just, in the market in six. To, nine months his. Amazing, example, as well then. For fast innovation. We're using crowdsourcing, so. In. China. What. We did is we we. Do. Shampoo as well so, a clear, brand we wanted to launch a millennial campaign, but the marketing, people they, are 40, years old so so so they don't own the insight right it's like me trying to do beacon campaigns. If I'm not a beacon so. That what they've done is that they crowdsource, of the idea they've gotten, Millennials. To, work on that millennial, campaign, and that, resulted, from nine, months to deliver the campaign in only two months and with. As, well, much more incremental, turnover, it was, a quite, successful innovation. Because. You, have the right consumer, insight. Then. We're, also launching in Turkey what, we call our millennial. Crowdsourcing. You can for. Different use cases so basically we have a platform in, which we put in their students, digit, with digital, skills and we, deployed those, students, to the reverse mentoring. For our leadership teams in terms of millennial, consumer, insights, but as well we. Are substituting. Some full-time. Employees, or some. Job. Descriptions. Full-time, roles with, students, so, we've tested already and we've decreased, 30, FTEs. By, bringing in students with the right consumer. Insight, with the right profile, digital, savvy and and, we're, doing that while, bringing in decreasing. People cost increasing. As well the, insights. That win it, what. Is it that we have learned, so far by, doing this in Unilever, and we've, gone. Through, one-year. Journey, as for, now is, it's, all about mindset. Shift so if I would say one thing it's. We've, been working. A lot with the leadership mindset, chip and HR, mindset shift is moving, literally, from. Thinking in constraints, to, showing the whole bunch of abundance, of resources. Possibilities. Use, cases bringing. In practitioners. Such as. Turkey. Team. Bringing in reverse mentoring and so and showing. That to the world and you, cannot imagine the amount of people that are willing to do so to experiment, with that then. In terms of adoption you need them to inspire you need to allow so just forget. About control. Just. Inspire, and let people do of skilled. People and show value so we've we've. Gone through a, strong. Upskilling, of HR, and leadership teams how to do this and also, we've shown value, we've shown incremental, turnover, we've shown that decrease, in people cause we've shown new, business models.

And Then it's allow, experimentation. On the business in HR local. Versus, global this. I get a lot is you, need to give freedom, for, intrapreneurship. But. Also give a framework if you want to scale up so, these, thing in terms of letting people experiment, you should do this is a way to get going but, then yes as, well you need to give clarity and framework, to be able to scale up then. Agile, innovation. But, but what are the the roadblocks that we have hit is in, large companies as ours it's about bureaucracy, so how, to overcome. Bureaucracy. Finance, bureaucracy, how can we pay faster, how can we do. Faster, processes, how can we really bring agility and flexibility, and then. The, the most. Difficult. Thing for us that I hope, we're cracking hopefully, next week we're. Working on it is how, to break, down roles, into, smaller tasks. And jobs to be done how, to obscure, HR, on doing, so how to to. Obscure HR to really, become a business, partner a consult, consultant. Almost, going. With the business. Understanding. What's the business strategy, translating. That business strategy into. A be resourceful, strategy, in terms of how to resource, flexibly. And then. What are the jobs to be done there, and this, has taken us a lot of time top. Skill HR, we're, now doing a very comprehensive, all methodical, way on doing this so. Let's see how it goes, what upskilling, HR, is it's. Very very important, as, well as finally. Is, we. In HR we are not enough, externally. Connected, we're. Not enough it connected, with the business we're not enough, externally, connected so, if we want to be cutting edge in nature, we really, need to know all the time what's happening outside what are the most relevant platforms. Which, technologies. Outside we need to be super digital, savvy we need to be data-driven, we. Need to be emotionally, intelligent we, need to obscure, ourselves. All the time have learning agility because, how are we going to ask something, from from the business that not doing ourselves, so. With. That thank. You so much and if I have any. Time I don't know I've eaten all my time for questions but no we have time for questions thank you Raquel first thank you very much. So. I. Think you've given us a lot to think about there's certainly a lot underway at Unilever questions. From the audience for Raquel, Kevin. We. Talked to breakfast for about 30 minutes so I. Got, I got a lot of good insight. From. Raquel, so, I'm gonna give the floor to somebody else. Hi. Raquel I'm quad-core with bows had. A quick question for you regarding that last topic, of breaking. Down roles into tasks, and jobs to be done how. Do you go about doing that any early insights you can share with us, so. With that one either you can boil the ocean on me or make it very practical so we've gone into, thinking is we need to. Transform. The whole organization. And and, understand. The taxonomy, of the work we're doing and, ideally. Break, that into chunks of work, so. Let's see if you understand, what marketing, is, doing. And you break down that you. Then bring in talent pools you send those talent, pools of freelancers, let's say for the, for marketing, to, tackle those chunks, of work right but, that is a very, heavy. Organizational. Transformation. Work. To. Be done which we, are doing by the way but, it will take a little, bit more of time and also you need to do that together. With. The, digital. Transformation together. With the business transformation. So we are understanding. That more and more in, summary is about and. We've done theoretical. Exercises. On that so, what. What's, the work you can I to automate, what, is the word you should keep because it's your, your competitive, advantage, and your strategic capability. That you should keep inside your organization and what's, the work which is not strategic. For, you that you can outsource right. So that, we're doing but to be honest that is not the biggest, unlock, I'm not going to be able to scale, up in Unilever right now be resourceful by doing that right because, it's quite, theoretical still.

We're Working on the. Most practical, way is. We're, developing, so if I see, what. Those. Was showing, in terms of the strategy, right if, you get business partners, to really understand, what's the outcome, of, a given, business challenge. So. Let's say I go and talk to supply, chain leadership, team I ask, them what are the three business, strategy, for this but, for that your jobs to be done then. I link that into saying how can I get that work done through. B, research for that is. A sort, of way of breaking, that, mission. Into. Chunks off either tasks, or a little, bit bigger projects. But then you can't resource, flexibly, whether. That flexibly, means freelancer. Crowd sourcing and, internal. Talent doing a partnership etc. It's, this, is where, we need to really upscale HR in terms of how to have that conversation and, bring. It to business and we're doing that by, doing a kind of leaner startup, workshop. To. Show to get them through how to do that and to in reality, go as their business and come back into the workshop, and end up with your action. Plan the business together with HR I think. We have time for one more question before our break. Hi. Robin Cohen from Johnson & Johnson so a. Couple people have talked about this that you know it all boils down to shifting, the mindset, of an organization, which is no easy task so, any tips on what you did there. Work. Hard. What. We've done is. So. It's the most important, thing to do right so you really, need to think through it is what we've done is both. Top-down and, bottom-up so. Top-down. We've. Shown this several, times with the leadership team saying what. Is the business case so, how can we really decrease the cost and bring in growth opportunities. And show, what's possible inspire. Show, the whole ecosystem of abundance. Of resources, outside to, the leadership teams and we've done that repeatedly. With, sexy, videos with sexy, presentations. With sexy, everything, right so you need to do that then. The, way in which you get the will running, in the organization. Is not necessarily. Through that is, by letting. People. Experiment. So what we've said is that we started socializing this. With, every, country, in Unilever, starting, with the top 20 country store number based in. Terms of what be resourceful, is and, the, amount of possibilities, you have and then we found four, hundred and trepan ores that despite. We didn't. Have the policies, the governance, the process as they IP the confidentiality, all of that they just went, and undo, it and, therefore. We have four hundred different use, cases that, we've. Shown, that that. We've measured in, terms of business value and that, we keep showing and showing and showing so, because, we've done that we've, shifted. The mindset, but also you need to think that we. Are in a world in which F these scars. So, scars city, plays a big role you need to have scarcity for people to get creative as well. Thank. You very much for Kel and.

2019-06-01

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