Unilever

Using the CiZone to attract and develop its employees.

Introduction

Unilever recruits individuals with a view to providing them with a challenging career that stretches beyond their current role. Careers in Unilever are based on outstanding performance and are founded on the development of skills, experience and leadership behaviours. Individuals ultimately hold the responsibility for their own career development and Unilever is responsible for ensuring that individuals are provided with clear advice and guidance about career options within the organisation.

What was Unilever’s rationale for introducing the CiZone – internally and externally?

Stephane Le Camus, Global HR Branding Director at Unilever explains, “Having the Career Innovation Zone (CiZone) tool on our external careers site enables individuals to understand their own strengths and preferences more clearly, so that they are more able to decide whether the Unilever career proposition and culture meets their expectations and aspirations. Having the tool demonstrates, in actions rather than words, that professional development is at the core of our value proposition”.

http://www.unilever.com/careers/personal_evaluation_toolkit/

As the Unilever organisation structure, culture and internal career proposition develops to adapt to market influences, the internal CiZone provides an opportunity for employees to re-evaluate their skills, priorities and preferences and understand how these can be most effectively matched to the organisation, both today and in the future.

How you have gone about implementing the CiZone?

Unilever worked with Career Innovation to adapt the content to make it relevant to the internal and external audiences respectively. We took into consideration feedback we had received. We aligned the look and feel to our website, adding Unilever branding and images which better reflect our working environment.

For the internal CiZone, links were added to other tools and resources on the intranet including pages for Learning, Jobs and Careers and functional specific pages. Once the site was live we then added links to the CiZone from relevant pages on the intranet, such as from the Unilever Career Principles and Functional Career Paths, to encourage more visitors.

What are the outcomes you are looking for?

“We want employees and potential applicants to feel supported by Unilever. By providing the tool we acknowledge that there are difficult decisions to be made and that we will assist them”, says Chris MacRae, Global Talent Director at Unilever. “Future business success is underpinned by our ability to attract, develop and retain top talent. Enabling current and future talent to understand how the Unilever career proposition can meet their personal preferences and priorities is a key tactic in the strategy”.