A popular topic and trend in HR networks over the past decade has been the Open Talent Economy and how it will shape the future of work and resourcing. The benefits for both organisations and workers of the Open Talent Economy have been extensively explored and documented (Deloitte, 2013). Many companies have followed this trend and started to adopt a blend of full-time employees and short-term, project based, highly skilled talent who enter and exit the business as required. Research by Korn Ferry (2018) suggests that companies need to truly disrupt and not just evolve their talent strategies, ‘[harnessing] the gifts of talented individuals and [unleashing] them in a way that will deliver real market advantage’. Included in the eight imperatives they discuss to achieve this are: bending the organisation to suit talent as opposed to bending individuals to suit a job as well as creating an internal market ‘to enable the free flow of talent to meet capability needs’ as opposed to focussing on succession plans.
In addition, in their Talent 2020 report, Deloitte (2013) identified one of the biggest challenges facing companies is that if employees are not engaged in meaningful work they will leave. Employees value meaningful work over other retention strategies. Furthermore Gallup (2016) shared valuable insights on how millennials want to work and live. Understanding these important insights and integrating them into a disruptive talent management strategy is key for any organisation that is passionate about retaining their critical talent and impacting business performance.
At Unilever we have embraced the need to change the career narrative of our internal employees and implemented several initiatives that enhance internal talent fluidity and enable employees to manage their careers on their own terms. Two of these initiatives will be elaborated on in this article including the Flex Inner Mobility Platform and the UWork Program.
The Flex Inner Mobility Platform (Flex)
Employees need visibility of opportunities for new experiences, to see how they can continue to grow and develop in Unilever. Flex is a platform which allows all employees to create a profile. Managers requiring skills for specific projects advertise these projects specifying the skills and time required for the said project on the platform. On Flex, all employees irrespective of their work level, can search for available project opportunities which align with their career aspirations, purpose and potential and then choose to apply. The platform then instantly matches employees’ profiles with the opportunities available across Unilever globally thereby creating a borderless workplace and allowing an unrestricted flow of talent to address business needs.
Flex experiences at Unilever have enabled us to democratise talent development for our employees allowing them to shift their careers from being title/hierarchy driven to being growth based, focusing on knowledge, skills and experiences & remaining relevant and future-proof. In this way, people can have diverse careers without leaving the company. At the same time the organisation can quickly resource critical projects with employees who have capacity and the skills/talent required thereby fuelling business capacity for growth. It is great way for managers to build a network of diversely talented individuals across the globe.
Flex was launched in Unilever long before the COVID-19 pandemic, however, with the complete disruption of all business activity in 2020, our Flex platform has become one of Unilever’s most valuable investments. Using agile methodology, every business function was required to evaluate their priorities and shift focus to work on the critical projects identified. At the same time surplus and deficiencies in resourcing were identified with the changed critical focus areas. The resourcing focus of the business shifted from external talent acquisition to redeployment of internal talent. In order to preserve jobs, employees who had capacity were redeployed to critical projects. While this redeployment could have been executed manually via local cross-functional conversations, the Flex platform effectively enabled thousands of employees to be redeployed across the globe. The use of Flex has resulted in effective global collaboration and job retention across Unilever, demonstrating its power and efficiency as an inner mobility platform. This agile way of working has become embedded in our organisation and before advertising for any vacancy, managers are encouraged to be resourceful and consider segmenting the role into projects that can be placed on Flex and resourced by talent across the world. The exposure and development experiences for our employees has been phenomenal as has been the business impact in terms of thousands of hours of capacity that have been unlocked for Unilever.
The U-Work Program
U-Work is a Unilever employment model that is already live in the UK, Malaysia, Argentina, South Africa and the Philippines. In 2021 the programme will be rolled out in Spain, Russia, Turkey, Australia and New Zealand. The U-Work concept affords employees the flexibility and freedom associated with contract roles without having to sacrifice the security and benefits which are typically linked to permanent roles.
U-Work is entirely voluntary and open to all permanent employees who desire a more flexible working arrangement. How it works is people in U-Work do not have a set role. They work on varying assignments as and when they choose, and in between assignments they are free to do whatever they desire. U-Workers receive a monthly retainer and set of benefits irrespective of whether they are on assignment or not and get paid for each assignment they work on.
This flexible working model enables Unilever to retain highly skilled resources while at the same time it allows working parents to manage their time more effectively, people to travel or study without having to sacrifice their jobs and for people to reduce their working hours as they get older, just to name a few of the benefits.
As the world becomes more agile, so will the workforce. As an employer, we need and require flexibility in our workforce to remain relevant especially as the workplace becomes increasingly automated where jobs are broken into tasks and projects. The benefit of the U-Work model to our business is having a pool of highly skilled resources, who know our business and who can hit the ground running and flow to work as required. At the same time people are afforded the opportunity to work on meaningful projects and continue to develop their skills and learn while enjoying the flexibility they can tailor to their stage of life, enabling professional and personal satisfaction.
In summary, harnessing the power of our internal talent marketplace is a growing movement within Unilever and a strong culture of internal talent mobility is being created. Through democratisation of talent development and increased flexibility for our employees, we are reshaping our business. Not only are employees being empowered to manage their careers, but similarly Unilever is also being enhanced with agility, access to the right skills on demand and retention of key talent.
About the Author
Debbie Brien – Unilever Talent Acquisition Manager, Africa
Debbie Brien heads up Talent Acquisition for Unilever across Africa. She has been with Unilever for 1.5 years prior to which she ran her own HR Consulting business for 14 years. She is psychologist with a special interest in Talent Management and 20 years experience in the recruitment industry.
References
Deloitte, 2013: The open talent economy People and work in a borderless workplace. https://www2.deloitte.com/global/en/pages/human-capital/articles/open-talenteconomy1.html
Deloitte, 2013: Talent 2020: Surveying the Talent Paradox from the Employee Perspective. https://www2.deloitte.com/us/en/insights/topics/talent/talent-2020-surveying-the-talent-paradoxfrom-the-employee-perspective.html?id=us:el:dc:redirect
Gallup (2016): How Millennials want to Work and Live. https://www.gallup.com/workplace/238073/millennials-work-live.aspx
Korn Ferry (2018): Reimagining Talent Management. https://focus.kornferry.com/reimagining-talent-management/