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    India's biggest FMCG company, Hindustan Unilever to upskill all employees by 2025

    Synopsis

    The global initiative, to be announced on Thursday, has three priority areas — raising living standards across its value chain, creating opportunities through inclusivity, and preparing people for the future of work.

    Untitled-7Agencies
    HUL had become the first company in India to launch a formal gender-neutral domestic abuse support policy this year. It is now putting in place new equity, diversity and inclusion strategy.
    New Delhi: Hindustan Unilever, the country’s largest FMCG company, will reskill or upskill all its employees for future-fit skillsets by 2025, increase inclusivity and raise living standards across value chain as part of a global initiative of its parent Unilever.

    HUL has 21,000 plus employees, including 12,000 blue-collar workers, across its 31 company-owned factories and 15 offices.

    The global initiative, to be announced on Thursday, has three priority areas — raising living standards across its value chain, creating opportunities through inclusivity, and preparing people for the future of work — and includes a wide-ranging set of commitments and actions to help build a more equitable and inclusive society.

    India will be playing an important role in helping Unilever globally achieve its commitments because the initiative is very relevant to India, HUL chairman and managing director Sanjiv Mehta told ET.

    The global Unilever commitments include ensuring that everyone who are directly involved in providing goods and services to the company earns at least a living wage or income by 2030; spending ₹2 billion annually with suppliers owned and managed by people from under-represented groups such as women and differently abled people by 2025; pioneering new employment models for its employees; and equipping 10 million young people with essential skills to prepare them for job opportunities by 2030.


    Untitled-8Agencies

    “Building a sustainable business for us is extremely important, and we have always believed in the multi-stakeholder model. We are making these decisive commitments to make the world a more equitable and inclusive place,” Mehta said.

    With Covid-19 pandemic accelerating the hybrid work models, HUL expects to see greater adoption and demand for new flexible formats of work.

    “The world is changing with technology, automation, with 4.0 industrial revolution, and this has got accentuated in the last one year. We will be putting in a lot of efforts to make our employees future-ready by 2025. We will pioneer new employment models and provide our people with flexible employment options, by 2030,” Mehta added.

    HUL had become the first company in India to launch a formal gender-neutral domestic abuse support policy this year. It is now putting in place new equity, diversity and inclusion strategy.

    The company aims to remove barriers and biases in recruitment, and establish leadership accountability. Unilever has already achieved gender balance across its management globally. In India, the gender balance in managerial roles has risen from 18% in 2010 to 42% in 2020.

    “We are also focused on dialling up the presence of women employees on the shop floor,” Mehta said.

    In the next three years, HUL will bring in 2,000 women on the shop floor at some of its remotest sites, said Anuradha Razdan, the company’s executive director – HR. The aim is to create an infrastructure and ecosystem where these women can thrive, she said.

    Under the new policy, the company plans to tackle the prevalence of stereotypes that are often perpetuated through advertising and promote a more inclusive representation of people. It will increase the number of advertisements that include people from diverse groups, both on screen and behind the camera.

    As part of raising living standards, the consumer goods company plans to improve living standards for low-paid workers worldwide, translating to the goal of providing at least a living wage or income by 2030 to everyone who directly provides goods and services to it.

    “We already pay our employees at least a living wage and we want to secure the same for more people beyond our workforce, specifically focusing on the most vulnerable workers in manufacturing and agriculture,” Mehta said.


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