Creating the future workplace | Unilever

Traditional employer-employee dynamics are no longer fit for either individuals or businesses. People are increasingly looking for more personally and professionally satisfying work. They want to move beyond the traditional 40-hour/40-week/40-year employment contract to something more flexible that’s tailored to their needs and stage of life.

Older and more experienced workers are increasingly choosing to work for longer; and younger people are after meaningful jobs with more flexibility. And Covid-19 forced us all to think differently about how and where we worked.

So we’re pioneering new ways of working to create a flexible environment that values openness and adaptability, builds resilience, and elevates skills and performance.

Our new employment models

Our new ways of working are, ultimately, all about helping people access word and stay employed while also making sure we have the resources we need as a business. They promote chances to learn and work differently – so that people can enjoy a rewarding working life, both now and in the future.

U-Work

U-Work gives employees the freedom and flexibility associated with contract roles with the security and benefits typically linked to regular employment.

People in U-Work don’t have a fixed role. They work on varying assignments, and between assignments are free to do other things that are important to them. They get a monthly retainer and specially designed suite of benefits whether they’re working on an assignment or not. Assignments can have varying work patterns – anything from a few days a week for a few months, to short, concentrated bursts of full-time with breaks in-between. And they get paid for each assignment when they’re working.

This more flexible way of working brings many benefits. It helps people who want to reduce their working hours as they get older. It allows working parents to manage their time more effectively. And it allows people to travel, study or work for other businesses while maintaining a meaningful connection with Unilever.

U-Work benefits Unilever too. Managers have access to skilled people who are familiar with Unilever and can hit the ground running, avoiding the hidden costs of finding freelance workers and getting them up to speed.

U-Work is live in the UK, South Africa, Malaysia, Argentina, Mexico, Philippines, United Arab Emirates, Turkey, and India and is planned to be rolled out in other markets.

A member of our UK legal team wanted to spend more time with her family, and to be able to help part-time at a friend’s legal firm without sacrificing her job at Unilever. A seemingly impossible bind, until she discovered U-Work.

Susanna Speirs, our Senior Legal Counsel, explains: “I’d decided to leave Unilever to pursue a new venture that would allow me to work from home during school hours so I could spend more time with my children while they’re young. U-Work gives me some security of income and keeps me connected to Unilever.”

Hybrid working arrangements

Even though Covid-19 fast-forwarded the shift to more flexible and remote working, at Unilever we were already examining how to move to more balanced ways of working. We’ve learned from the pandemic-induced changes to how we work to shape new and better arrangements for our people.

We believe that when done right, hybrid working creates an inclusive, flexible environment where people can perform at their best and teams can collaborate, connect, create and celebrate successes together. In 2021, we introduced a set of global principles to guide how we can make best use of our office spaces while giving our people flexibility and choice, which include spending at least 40% of our time in the office to collaborate and connect with each other.

We see a future where we focus primarily on what people produce, not on where or when they work. So we’re designing working options that will help people balance work and home life without completely losing the value that face-to-face contact brings.

Deep link to providing skills for life