Case Study: A Vision for Unilever
In 2009, the multinational company Unilever adopted a new strategic vision that integrated societal and environmental responsibilities. The company's Sustainable Living Plan was the center of this strategy. This plan aims to help more than a billion people improve their health and wellbeing, decouple Unilever's growth from its environmental impact, increase its social impact, and enhance the livelihoods of all those involved in its supply chain. Read this chapter to discover how Unilever merged sustainability with profitable growth.
What steps did Unilever take to re-engineer the company and implement the Sustainable Living Plan successfully? How did sustainable innovation play a role in helping Unilever achieve its goals? What were the results?
Human Factors
"You cannot be sustainable as a company if you do not have a sustainable workforce. Physical wellbeing is the starting point. Then you have emotional wellbeing, mental wellbeing, and spiritual wellbeing (what we call purpose). These dimensions are important, and we spend a lot of time and resources on supporting our employees.
One of the reasons why women represent 47 per cent of our managerial workforce - with 45 per cent women on our non-executive Board - is because we provide the environment for everybody to apply their potential, such as flexible working programmes and strong employee benefits.
"Most important is what I would call spiritual wellbeing, or purpose, which is really what gives people the energy to get out of bed and come to work. More and more people want to be a part of that. Mental wellbeing is also critical, especially at a time when one in four people will experience a mental health problem each year. Every hour in the UK a man commits suicide - that's why, through Lynx (known in some countries as Axe), our personal care brand for men, we are supporters of the Heads Together programme that Their Royal Highnesses The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and The Duke of Sussex are championing.