Dissecting the success of Unilever Bangladesh
With more than 17 years of experience in human resources, brand communication and corporate communication under her belt, Mononita Syed-Haq became the first female director on the management committee when she joined as Human Resource Director at Unilever Bangladesh Ltd (UBL). She sat with The Daily Star in an interview to discuss UBL's current and future trends in human resources.
Unilever has been recognised as the Employer of Choice in Bangladesh for the third time around. Please tell us something about the survey procedure and nomination criteria.
Employer of Choice is a key indicator of employer preference in the Campus Track B-Schools survey conducted by Nielsen Bangladesh annually. The survey selects 600 final year students from 16 business schools and conducts a quantitative face-to-face interview with each respondent. In the survey, students name companies based on their personal preferences in terms of employment. We are delighted that in the last two surveys, Unilever has been recognised as the Employer of Choice, not only in the FMCG industry, but across all industries.
What is the recruitment procedure like? Is there a fixed time or pattern?
UBL does not have any fixed recruitment season. We hire talent as per our business requirements. There are three types of recruitment that occur here. The first is for fresh graduates who can enter through the Unilever Future Leaders Programme (UFLP), i.e. the Management Trainee programme. The Unilever Leadership Internship Programme or the Territory Manager recruitment is conducted for the sales function and Production Shift Officer recruitment for the supply chain function. For mid-career and senior position recruitments, we identify the right talent with third party support who face direct interviews with the leadership teams at Unilever.
Our recruitment opportunities are advertised widely through our webpage, LinkedIn profile and newspaper advertisements. Anyone interested can submit their CV for any opening at Unilever or connect with us through our Facebook page, Unilever Careers.
What is the career growth prospect and remuneration package like at Unilever?
Large responsibilities early on in their career, open and honest career development discussion, cross-functional and international exposure – all of these help our talent develop into strong business leaders. Our managers would typically obtain work experience from the factory and field in addition to working in the corporate office. This empowers them as business managers, giving them a real taste of business very early on. We have a continuous learning environment that helps talent to hone their functional and leadership skills to obtain both lateral and horizontal career development.
As for our remunerations, we design our compensation package such that it is at par with the top quartile of industry standards.
Does Unilever post its Bangladeshi employees to its global subsidiaries?
There is a constant exchange of resources between Unilever Bangladesh and other Unilever businesses. Almost all of our high performing managers will obtain at least one international exposure within two years of being in the business. These exposures may be in the form of an operational visit, training, short-term assignment or international assignment.
Almost all members of our leadership team have had extensive foreign stints. We want these talents to return to the Bangladesh business to take on bigger responsibilities. In the last 5 years, we have had 11 managers from Unilever Bangladesh go for short-term assignments, international assignments (long-term) or permanent transfers. Some of them have recently returned to take up bigger responsibilities.
Finally, what would be your one advice to fresh graduates and final year students?
My personal advice would be not to take any shortcuts. Hard work is the only way to shine in life and at Unilever. We want people with strong values to join us. Those who are not afraid of hard work, who are ready to face adversities and not afraid to fail. We want people who can accept failure, learn from it and get back up fast.
We are a performance based organisation and have high expectations from the new generation. So it is important that you develop that hunger for innovation and a pioneering spirit.
There is also never an end to learning once you join Unilever. So if you are thinking that with the end of university, your time to learn is over, you are in for a big surprise.
For the full interview, visit the Next Step webpage.
Comments