Diversity and Inclusion

As a responsible business we are driving equality of opportunity and inclusion, not only within our organisation, but across society. Starting with progressive policies and practices in our workplace, we are building on this foundation by collaborating with other businesses and organisations to create opportunities for women across our extended supply chain, in our sales and customer development operations, and via products and brands for our 2.5 billion consumers worldwide - 70% of whom are women.

Within our business, our diversity and inclusion strategy is driven at the very highest level through our Global Diversity Board, which is chaired by our CEO, Paul Polman, and championed by Aline Santos, Unilever’s SVP Marketing and Global Head of Diversity. The board provides the overarching vision, governance and target setting for diversity and inclusion across the global business.

Building a diverse, inclusive and performance-based culture is at the core of our action plan for our UK and Ireland business.

We are making strong progress across our business, where women account for 50.7%* of all management positions in the UK and Ireland, this is up from 41.8% in 2010. We are very proud that our progress has been externally recognised. As in previous years, in 2017 we featured in the Times Top 50 Employers for Women list, as well as winning the Business in the Community Responsible Business Award for Gender Equality. We have received gold accreditation for Mumsnet Family Friendly, as well as being awarded Employer of the Year in the Mumsnet Family Friendly awards.

^{*Data from April 2017}

At Unilever, we have a range of market-leading, family-friendly and flexible working policies, which enable our employees to balance their day-to-day responsibilities.

These policies and practices include:

• Agile working, which gives employees the possibility to work remotely and flex their own hours, whilst ensuring business needs are met.
• Flexible working arrangements including, but not limited to, part-time and job share opportunities.
• Enhanced leave policies - all employees taking maternity or shared parental leave have up to 16 weeks’ paid leave and some eligible employees can have up to 39 weeks’ paid leave. In addition, our Maternity & Paternity Services portal provides online resources to support employees at all stages of parenthood, as well as tailored guidance for line managers.
• Practical support including, nursery benefits and back-up care for parents and carers.
• A constant focus on wellbeing for employees, including regular health checks, mental health support and our Employee Assistance Programme.

We have a strong culture of mentoring, training and learning across the organisation, with a range of resources and initiatives available:

• Mentoring and coaching
• Leadership and general business skills training, including unconscious bias
• Learning for all, via access to internal and external resources
• Workshops which support personal and team development.

Clare Dolan and Rosie O’Malley, Water Innovation Directors, have been successfully job sharing for the past five years.

David Tregido, Human Resources Director, decided to take just over one month off work to focus on his family and support the birth of his son.