Com 161.000 funcionários em mais de 150 países, a Unilever opera globalmente e em escala. As marcas do grupo de bens de consumo vão desde o chá Lipton e o sorvete Magnum até o detergente para roupas Surf e a linha Dove de produtos para a pele. Sob o comando de Paul Polman, CEO desde 2009, o grupo anglo-holandês tem buscado impulsionar o crescimento por meio da inovação e remodelagem constante do seu portfólio ao reduzir a complexidade operacional e ao priorizar a sustentabilidade como um dos principais temas discutidos.
Leena Nair, diretora de Recursos Humanos (CHRO), ingressou na Unilever em 1992 como trainee da área de gestão. Antes de assumir sua função atual, foi líder global do grupo em diversidade e inclusão. Segundo ela, “Se olharmos para o diferencial competitivo que uma empresa de fato tem, tudo se resume a ideias, criatividade e paixão das pessoas, pois todo o restante pode ser conquistado.”
Em janeiro de 2018, Nair conversou com Rik Kirkland do McKinsey Publishing para compartilhar seus pontos de vista sobre como os líderes de RH podem desempenhar um papel fundamental na criação de valor ao utilizar a análise de dados, as funções de criação de valor mais importantes e ao desenvolver uma estreita parceria com as equipes de finanças. A entrevista foi realizada durante a reunião anual do Fórum Econômico Mundial em Davos, na Suíça.
Transcrição da entrevista (texto original)
McKinsey: How do you view the relationship between the HR function and the finance function?
Leena Nair: I believe that the CFO and the CHRO have to be very close. Their agendas have to be intertwined. Graeme [Pitkethly, Unilever CFO] and I have ensured that a key finance person from his leadership team sits on my HR-leadership team and that key person from my HR-leadership team sits on his finance-leadership team. We also make sure that we have regular catch-ups, both with each other and with the CEO, to ensure that we’re looking at business strategy in totality.
We’re discussing how we want to deploy investment into certain countries, markets, and categories but at the same time seeing if there’s organizational readiness. Because if you invest but the people are not ready—if there’s not enough talent and capability there—we will never see the investments being turned into reality. So, making the strategic investments in financial capital and human capital at the same time is really important.
McKinsey: Can you give some examples of how this works in practice?
Leena Nair: When we have defined our key strategic levers for the year, we ask ourselves, “Which are the five or ten or 15 roles where the biggest impact of value creation in the business could be seen?” Then we use analytics to see whether we’re putting the right people into those roles.
For example, we look at what we call “stubborn cells”—parts of the company where we haven’t seen the traction and performance we would like to see. And we look at the talent that we’re putting into those roles, the teams we’re getting ready to take on these challenges. How equipped are they? What’s their level of readiness? What’s their level of capability? What’s their level of experience? What’s their level of passion and perseverance?
So, we look at these human dimensions through the data analysis we have and also look at the business challenges. Then we’re able to say that, for example, “This team created value equivalent to €100 million.” We’re able to link the appointments and placements of talent to the actual value creation that’s happening in the business.
McKinsey: Are you focusing mainly on key leadership roles in the organizational structure?
Leena Nair: Increasingly I find that we need to be far less hierarchy-conscious in the way we think about value creation. Often the value is being created in roles that are probably two or three clicks below the CEO.
In Unilever, we are creating multifunctional, empowered teams, which are actually the front-facing teams looking after a particular category in a particular country. In many cases, you find that the person in the country handling the P&L [profit and loss] might not be very senior in terms of hierarchy but is in the most important role to create value as part of one of our key strategic thrusts.
An agenda for the talent-first CEO
McKinsey: What role does analytics play in these conversations and decisions related to value creation?
Leena Nair: Most of the measures that you see HR teams looking at are very internal measures. What bench strength do we have? How many people do we have on a talent slate? These are very internal measures that don’t tell you what difference it’s making to the business. At Unilever, we are using people analytics to change this.
We are, for example, the number one employer of choice in 44 of the 52 markets we recruit in. This is great. It’s also a number I like because it’s externally measured, based on Nielsen Universal. But with the power of data and analytics, I’m able to connect the dots and show that in markets where we are more attractive, we are attracting the right kind of people, our costs of recruitment have fallen, our conversion rates have gone up, our recruitment yield is better. So, suddenly, I’m able to show the business that we’re saving €15 million because of the sheer strength of our employer brand in some of our key markets.
These are the kind of conversations that HR leaders must hold themselves and their teams accountable for.
McKinsey: The Unilever Sustainable Living Plan has been one of Paul Polman’s signature initiatives. What does the data tell you about the business impact?
Leena Nair: I passionately believe that the future is about meaningful work and purposeful work. Because the pace of change is so fast, people do tend to be overwhelmed and threatened. One of the things that can give them anchor is a sense of meaning and purpose in their role. It is a key part of our talent strategy to help people discover their own purpose and therefore deploy them into the roles where they can live their purpose.
And I see the results in our employee surveys. Ninety-two percent of people say that they’re proud to work for Unilever, they want to work for Unilever. Employee-engagement scores are higher than any of our peer and benchmark companies. I see that in the retention numbers—our talent attrition is far lower than the market in almost every market we operate in.
So, I see the impact of what a meaningful purpose does to employee engagement, motivation, attrition. And I passionately believe that companies with purpose last, brands with purpose grow, and people with purpose thrive in uncertain times.
