Unilever Bangladesh was recently declared as the top employer of choice across all sectors in Bangladesh by Universum.
We have also been the top employer in the FMCG sector for a decade now, contributing to the growth and development of the country.
Spanning over five decades, Unilever Bangladesh’s journey has been momentous to say the least.
Distinct market leaders in nine out of the ten categories that we operate in, we have 28 purpose-led brands that reach 9 out of 10 households in Bangladesh.
About 95% of our portfolio is manufactured in Bangladesh across our eight manufacturing hubs.
One of the oldest, largest and most successful corporations in the country, we take pride in saying that our biggest assets are our brands and our people.
The natural question that begs many young professionals is the secret sauce that produces the best leaders from Unilever,
What is the mantra for success to grow and thrive in a large organization? How can one constantly add value to themselves and the business while making a larger difference at scale?
To answer all these and many more, I am happy to share my views, experiences and five growth tips from the last two decades with our readers out there with dreams and aspirations to elevate themselves to a higher level personally and professionally.
1. Be you: The world needs more originals. Be unafraid of being your authentic and passionate self. Speak your mind and have conviction in your beliefs and values. Discover your inner purpose, your true personality and your distinct leadership style. Great organizations celebrate differences and value diversity so bring your whole self and best self to work every day. To shine and thrive in your life and career, you must unearth your true and authentic self.
2. Be bold and ambitious and work hard towards your dreams: Don’t shy away from big audacious Dreams. Aim for the stars; it’s ok if you only reach the moon but don’t be shy to aim for what is the best and give it your best effort always. Let no one define the boundaries of your Dreams. Your failures are actually learning in disguise. Everyone makes mistakes and what really matters is how quickly we recover and bounce back from them. Build personal resilience consistently and don’t shy away from the trips and falls along the way. Get up fast, dust your hands and set off again towards your goals!
3. Treat the business like your own and treat people how you want to be treated: Be it strategic decision making or team management, always think like it is your own and the implications are fully on you. Lead people with authentic care and grow them just as you want to grow. The hallmark of a good leader is Empathy in taking others along as they grow the business. Great leaders embrace their decisions and people with all their heart. They never trade off one for another.
4. Prioritize hard and invest in your wellbeing: Prioritization is an important life skill since our energy is finite. We all juggle multiple roles between work, home and self-care. Use your energy bank wisely. Choosing your life’s priorities mindfully will determine if your life will be fulfilling, happy and purposeful. Our careers are marathons, not sprints and we need to be in our A-form to run this marathon. Just like we need to train our mind and body, consume a nutritious and balanced diet and follow an exercise routine before we can plan to run a marathon, similarly, to have a wholesome career we need to consistently invest in our health, wellbeing and relationships that matter. This is perhaps one of the biggest lessons from the pandemic for most.
5. Be a lifelong learner: Be curious and learn something new every year. Push your boundaries to challenge yourself and go outside your comfort zone. Part of our learning comes from books, online courses, training programs, colleagues and mentors and another big part comes from the actual roles that we do. Build a varied skillset and develop a profile that fills spaces where supply is short. Be courageous to raise your hand for roles that inspire but challenge you. Careers are certainly not linear and many roads lead to Rome. With an optimistic attitude and a beginner’s mindset, take personal risks to pick the path that excites you personally. Don’t opt for a conventional route to grow since there is no one-size-fits-all approach to learning and growing. Travel, meet new people in new places, learn a new language, try a new cuisine, pick a new instrument, discover new cultures to broaden your horizon and yes, take the road less travelled!
Walk the talk
I would love to bring alive each of the above growth tips through some real examples to show how Unilever truly walks the talk.
We have a bold ambition to become a Billion Euro business in Bangladesh.
To achieve that, we are constantly devising strategies to perform and transform. We are also consciously building a culture of experimentation in Unilever Bangladesh.
We invest in product innovations and create a ‘growth mindset’ through systemic and structural improvements.
The idea is to fail fast and learn fast from our experiments.
We are also constantly forging progressive partnerships to achieve our ambitions since we believe in the power of collaboration.
We firmly believe that companies with purpose last, brands with purpose grow and people with purpose thrive.
At Unilever Bangladesh, 100% of our employees and even campus ambassadors have been through the Discover your Purpose workshop.
This helps them become better professionals once they start bringing their purpose to work in their everyday life.
We value and embrace diversity in all forms- diversity of thought, gender, backgrounds etc.
We are proud that globally we are a gender balanced organization with 50% female managers and closer home in Bangladesh, we are at 41% gender balance with steady plans towards a balanced slate in the next couple of years.
We also have third gender employees, people with disabilities and employees from a diverse ethnic background in our workforce in Bangladesh.
This is a matter of great pride since our workforce is now a better representation of our consumer base. We have a host of progressive talent policies like paternity leave, surrogacy leave, policy on sexual harassment (POSH), domestic abuse survivor support or inter-changeable holidays policy to ensure we strengthen our inclusive culture.
Unilever Bangladesh has consistently produced some of its finest leaders across sectors who are proudly contributing to the development of the country.
Our robust management training program called Unilever Future Leaders Program (UFLP) spans across 15 months, gives young talent both functional and cross-functional exposure while grooming them for leadership roles within and outside the country.
We also offer numerous internships and live projects to young students through our ULIP or Biz Learner programs.
Our flagship Learn2Lead and BizMaestros case study competition helps us equip the youth across ~30 universities with business skills in line with our social commitment of equipping 1 Million youth with future fit skills by 2030.
We provide multi-lane and multi-country career paths to our employees to ensure their growth and development.
While we grow your business and support our communities, we also invest in our employees learning, capability building and wellbeing.
We follow a holistic approach to Wellbeing for all employees looking at all aspects of mental, physical, emotional, purposeful and financial wellbeing.
We invest in our Line Managers capability to lead their teams with empathy and care as they build their own future fit skills.
We support our employees and their families with the best medical infrastructure through an in-house team of doctors, medicos and have partnerships for 24X7 counsellors, in-home caregivers etc.
We also track the safety, health, wellbeing and vaccination status of all our employees as well 20,000 outer core professionals whose livelihoods depend on Unilever.
Our underlying philosophy is very simple: “When we care for our employees, they take care of the business”.
To bring it all together, the secret sauce of growing successfully at work and life is to put values above all and give back with a sense of purpose and service.
Unilever’s core values of respect, responsibility, integrity and pioneering act as a guiding north-star and help employees navigate the roughest of sails.
Our innate belief of “doing well by doing good” for the country, community, people and planet is truly the magic ingredient that helps us nourish the soul of this “school of leaders”.
The author is HR director at Unilever Bangladesh
