Unilever 2007 Annual Report Download - page 11

Unilever Annual Report and Accounts 2007 9
Report of the Directors continued
About Unilever continued
Within these groups, we also include sales of our Unilever
Foodsolutions, which is a global food service business providing
solutions for professional chefs and caterers.
In Personal Care, six global brands are the core of our business in
the mass skin care, daily hair care and deodorants product areas –
Dove, Lux,Rexona (including Sure and Degree), Sunsilk (including
Seda/Sedal), Axe and Pond’s. Other important brands include
Suave, Clear, Lifebuoy and Vaseline, together with Signal and
Close Up in oral care.
Our Home Care ranges include laundry products, such as tablets,
traditional powders and liquids for washing of clothing by hand
or machine. Tailored products including soap bars are available for
lower-income consumers. Our brands include Omo (‘Dirt is Good’
platform), Surf,Comfort,Radiant, Skip and Snuggle. Our
household care products include surface cleaners and bleach, sold
under the Cif, Domestos and Sun/Sunlight brands.
Corporate venture activities
Unilever has allocated €350 million to its venturing activities in
order to create new business opportunities that have the potential
to help build our core brands and business interests in Foods and
Home and Personal Care. These activities include:
• Unilever Ventures, an early-stage business development fund
for businesses from both inside and outside Unilever;
• Langholm Capital, an independent fund investing in private
European companies with above-average longer-term growth
prospects; and
• Physic Ventures, an early-stage venture capital fund investing in
technology driven, consumer-directed health, wellness and
sustainable living companies.
Our employees
Our One Unilever programme is already streamlining the business
by creating single operating companies for each country and
outsourcing parts of our IT, HR and Finance functions. In 2007 we
announced plans to accelerate our change programme further by
developing more multi-country organisations (MCOs) – clusters of
countries with a single centralised management and shared
functions. MCOs reduce duplication and free up resources to
focus on customers and consumers. All regions announced or
continued to implement MCOs in the year. The newly announced
MCOs include Benelux; Germany, Austria and Switzerland;
UK/Ireland; and Central Africa.
Our leaders make diversity a top business priority. Signalling this
commitment, the Global Diversity Board draws together 15
leaders from all business functions and is chaired by Group Chief
Executive Patrick Cescau. The board focuses on driving the
diversity agenda into our business processes and tracking the
progress of diversity initiatives. It also champions new ways of
working to boost employees’ personal vitality.
The Senior Executive Seminar, our pioneering leadership
development programme, was led this year by leading business
academic C K Prahalad. The event brought together 28 of our top
leaders to examine key business issues, with a particularly strong
external focus. They concentrated on developing and emerging
markets, visiting more than 50 companies and 20 NGOs to gain
insights into global trends and practices for opening up
opportunities at the ‘bottom of the economic pyramid’. The
group’s findings have been shared with the Unilever Executive and
Board of Directors, and are helping to shape further our approach
in these markets.
Our Standards of Leadership programme is a set of behaviours
aimed at ensuring that every manager takes personal
responsibility for delivering Unilever’s agenda through excellence
in strategy execution. During the year, the framework was rolled
out globally to an enthusiastic response. In Asia the process was
particularly effective, with managers across 15 countries attending
interactive workshops. Individuals made personal commitments to
‘live the behaviours’ and to model them in their daily working
lives.
We aim to offer our people stimulating ways to broaden their
skills and experience while at the same time giving something
back to the community. Salvatore Lucia, a Supply Chain Manager
from Italy, was one of the Unilever specialists seconded to the
World Food Programme (WFP) as part of their professional
development. He is helping WFP Ghana deliver its school feeding
and nutrition programme – and learning valuable skills to bring
back to the business.
We are committed to finding fresh ways of working that improve
business effectiveness, enhance work-life balance and benefit the
environment. We created four ‘Telepresence’ video-conferencing
rooms: in Englewood Cliffs, Rotterdam, London and Singapore.
Telepresence uses high-definition video screens with life-size
images around a single ‘virtual’ table, to replicate as closely as
possible a face-to-face meeting. It is also the first technology of
its kind to be certified by the CarbonNeutral Company. A further
eight rooms will be added in 2008.
Our total employee numbers over the last five years were as
follows:
Year end in thousands 2007 2006 2005 2004 2003
Europe 43 44 49 52 55
The Americas 43 45 47 47 50
Asia Africa 88 90 110 124 129
Total 174 179 206 223 234
The total reported numbers included approximately 26 000 part-
time or seasonal employees in both 2007 and 2006.
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 to all employees regardless of gender, nationality,
race, creed, disability, style or sexuality. Diversity plays a vital role
in ensuring we understand consumers’ needs.
The commitment to diversity is set right at the top of our
business. It is driven by the Global Diversity Board, chaired by
Group Chief Executive Patrick Cescau, who has emphasised that
“diversity is critical to our business competitiveness and long-term
sustainability”.