Unilever scoops Top Employer award again

Mechelle Chetty, Unilever HR Vice President: Central Africa and Antoinette Irvine, HR Vice President: South and Southern Africa receive the Top Employers award at a gala event in Johannesburg.

Survey criteria

The survey scores companies on their human resources (HR) practices, and these criteria include:

• talent strategy
• workforce planning
• on-boarding
• learning and development
• performance management
• leadership management
• career and succession management
• compensation and benefits
• culture 

Research is at the core of the Top Employers Institute certification process to determine whether an organisation meets the required standards.

"Spanning these nine topics are 100 questions covering approximately 600 practices. The in-depth survey consists of questions about the company's employee offering. Companies with a proven strategic investment in employee conditions earn the certification after completing a six-stage process - if their results meet the certification cut-offs in the programme," says Samantha Crous, Regional Director: Africa & Benelux for the Top Employers Institute.

What makes Unilever stand out?

With about 3800 employees locally and a staff turnover rate of less than 10%, Barry Dijoe, External Affairs and Media Relations Manager for Unilever, says it's not so much what Unilever does to differentiate itself from other employers, but how it does it.

"We do have in place great physical working conditions, including an in-house gym, salon and Ice Cream Happiness Station, but it's more about the rigour with which we implement our HR policies to enable people to work effectively that sets Unilever apart."

"We have a team of great HR professionals who equip our line managers with best-in-class HR processes to follow. This, combined with our values of respect, responsibility, integrity and pioneering mean that we truly value everyone who works in Unilever and we have the tools and processes to ensure they can be the best they can be," he says.

Investing in people

Part of Unilever's investment in people is to develop interventions that contribute to the success of the organisation. These include:

• Creating optimal conditions to ensure that employees develop themselves personally and professionally.
• Offering employees flexible and agile working patterns.
• International career opportunities for employees.
• Mentorship programmes. 
• A graduate recruitment programme. 
• Driving the gender and racial balance agenda across the business.
• Offering a leadership development curriculum.

Keeping abreast with the trends

However, holding on to that one spot as South Africa's and Africa's top employer means Unilever has to consistently stay in touch with global best practices in human resources.

"Our HR Vice President, Antoinette Irvine, attended a global HR conference in our London Leadership Development Centre. She spent two days looking at best-in-class HR practices and new trends in HR and is bringing this back to South Africa. The fact that we are a multinational and have access to this type of best practice, and that we can leverage off good examples from other Unilever countries means that we are able to continuously improve in all that we do," concludes Dijoe.