Being caring, accommodative and patient is the need of the hour

It has been six months since the pandemic hit the nation, throwing the economy, life and livelihoods into a crisis. The Daily Star sought feedbacks from business leaders, executives and analysts to help highlight the real situation and realisation of top executives on the ground.

Here are some thoughts of Kedar Lele, chairman, chief executive officer and managing director of Unilever Bangladesh, based on some talking points suggested by the newspaper.

What did we do right?

Bangladesh as a country understood the challenges this pandemic could bring and started to put all the right measures like restricting inbound travellers and quarantining, creating mass awareness, putting a hotline for the nation and creating a coronavirus coordination cell under the highest authority of the country. Bangladesh did not hesitate to put a nationwide restriction from late March and deployed national law enforcement agencies to monitor the movement and encourage social distancing. Soon the government rolled out two stimulus packages, worth over Tk70,000 crore. Most of this support was in the form of loans for industries, the services sector, small and medium enterprises and farmers.  

When the Covid-19 crisis struck the country, Team Unilever decided to implement the highest level of behavioural protocols (Tier 3 & 4, while Bangladesh was at Tier 1 & 2) in its manufacturing and sales operations. We trained every employee, provided them with protective equipment, installed hand-washing facilities, equipped the locations with sanitisation info and announced work-from-home operations for its office based employees.

We also decided to expand our area of direct influence to nearly 20,000 people who work in our outer core – third party manpower, field distributor force, merchandisers, logistics and depot teams and other helping staff. Right from providing them with necessary information and guidance to protect themselves and their loved ones from being infected, Unilever also decided to supply them with care kits and track their health and wellness on a daily basis.

We had recognised that it was essential to sustain the supply of hygiene products such as soaps, handwashing liquids, sanitisers, washing powder and toilet cleaners for the benefit of millions of Bangladeshi consumers. Lack of availability of these essentials would have caused havoc and the personal hygiene levels would have sharply fallen, allowing the pandemic to expand further. By ensuring supply of these products, we not only managed to sustain livelihoods for thousands of people directly involved within our operations, but also save millions of other lives in the larger ecosystem. Thousands of vendors, partners, suppliers in the back-end and millions of retailers in the front-end have continued to work responsibly, earning their livelihood while helping the country fight the pandemic.

What went wrong?

Though the government had the right intention and restricted movement by imposing lockdown, the initial announcement of a general leavecreated confusion amongst the people and a large number of people moved out of the cities. The government and businesses were debating on the question of saving lives vs livelihood which led to a few steps like relaxing the restrictions during Ramadan and Eid as well as opening up garment factories. Of course, these were important steps to take care of the overall economy, but the decisions could have been more consistent and well communicated.

Since the beginning of April, we were engaging with the government through private sector platforms under BIDA and UNDP and had proposed zoning protocols in towns as well as safety protocols for industries to follow and continue the production. We had the first-hand experience of doing it as we never stopped our operations even for a single day and continued serving the market demand for much-needed health and hygiene products while keeping our people safe.

We have seen the government taking the decision to impose zoning protocol a few times, unfortunately it could not be implemented as planned and turned out to be ineffective.

What was the impact on businesses and jobs?

From the very beginning, it was clear to us that the Covid-19 issue is a crisis and it will impact everyone – people, community and nation. Of course, we felt the impact from mid-March, and it continued till the end of August. Garment export fell 14 per cent (between July 2019 and April 2020) which was the lowest in 5 years. This impacted multiple industries, for instance the transport sector, banking and fast moving consumer goods. On top of that the flood situation also turned grave.

Covid-19 impacted all parts of our value chain. However, being a multinational we had already set in process identification of alternate sourcing locations as soon as the crisis became visible in China. Once the local lockdown started from mid-March, the country experienced serious congestion across different ports and it did impact availability of raw and packaging material, disrupting our supply lines and implementation plans. However, the team worked hard to ensure our factories continued to function, focusing on the part of our portfolio that we called COVID-Essentials, for instance soaps, detergents and hygiene products. It was a timely realisation that a humble bar of soap was all we had to save ourselves during this crisis until a vaccine arrived.

I am thankful to each employee of our company, who operated from a higher purpose to help the consumers and communities and worked almost like a soldier of a country to save its citizens. 

Though we managed to run the production uninterrupted, reaching the market was not without disruptions. During the month of April, more than 40 per cent of the outlets were either closed or it was not possible to service them for various reasons. A number of our distributors' staff members were also keen to leave for their hometowns and villages during the general leave. We knew in order to protect lives we needed to ensure livelihood, train everyone in the new behavioural protocols and make them play the role of formers of key opinion in their neighbourhood. We ensured there was no job loss, no pay loss or even reduction in any incentive. We did not only commit to protecting our 1,400 core employees but we also took care of around 20,000 people working in our ecosystem.

I must mention the role of government employees and law enforcement agencies who responded to our request and partnered up with businesses, adopting the new ways of working, for instance online approvals, non-physical document processing, relaxing time-limits and then being accessible and eager to help.

What were the responses of businesses and your organisation?

I have mentioned earlier that we knew it is going to be a long-drawn crisis. With more than 80 per cent of the working population being part of informal employment, they faced a stark choice. Behavioural protocols, frequent handwashing, social distancing, covering your face with a mask and boosting your immunity are critical to reducing the spread of the virus. Early detection and display of symptoms could lead to faster quarantine and contact-tracing to isolate subjects who might have been in touch with the infected person. Quick isolation and aggressive treatment of the symptoms could lead to a substantial reduction in infected cases while also saving thousands of lives.

We exactly followed these principles. Setting up a cadence of morning meetings of the Incident Management Team comprising members from all functions who took stock of health conditions, provided quick solutions, brought in partnerships like Praava Health to organise testing of our employees and helped individuals through supply of medicines and even counselling. 

In a nutshell, companywide discipline and dedication helped us maintain our business momentum throughout the last six months of crisis.

What are the strategies you have taken to overcome the crisis and grow?

Our roadmap to manage this crisis was driven by a simple five-pillar model focusing on the workforce (People), protecting supply chain (Supply), adjusting to fluctuating demand (Demand), preserving cash (liquidity in the organisation) and supporting the larger community with our purpose driven brands (Community). 

In the last six months, I along with my management team simply followed these 5 pillars putting people as our first priority. Our philosophy has been if we took care of our people, they would take care of the business. And that came true when we see how we managed to weather the storm.

We have worked with the government and other stakeholders to ensure the supply of our products in the market. Consumers needed our brands to be available and we have ensured that.

We have closely observed demand signals with the emerging situation and planned our business accordingly.

And we have ensured cash to support our business and ensured on-time payment of all our suppliers and vendors along with duty and tax submissions to government exchequer.

Finally, we were one of the first few companies who committed certain investments for the community and help Bangladesh in its fights against Covid-19.

I am happy to share that in the past six months we have worked with so many partners like BRAC, WaterAid, UNICEF, UNDP, UNWOMEN, Bangladesh Red Crescent Society, 2030WRG, Bhumijo and have already invested over Tk 350 million to support over 60 million Bangladeshis through different initiatives.

What have you done to utilise consumers' new habit of buying from digital marketplaces?

In Bangladesh we started to offer Unilever products through our online shop UShop (www.ushopbd.com). We had launched this platform for exclusive use of our employees, but the growing popularity amidst the crisis gave us the confidence to scale it up for general consumers as well.

When the lockdown was getting extended beyond a few weeks, the UShop team realised the need for a reliable and authentic online source for Unilever products. Within just two weeks, UShop unlocked flexible features like home delivery, online payment, and e-commerce ready packaging to service the consumers outside of Unilever.

The UShop team first communicated and on-boarded employees from 46 different corporate houses. Over the last few weeks, this service is now delivering in 10 different districts across Bangladesh, and the team is successfully maintaining close to 90 per cent on-time delivery.

What is your take on government responses to help business overcome the situation?

I have already mentioned that we have received constant support from the government and that helped us continue our operations. This is because Unilever is one of the trusted companies in Bangladesh and we have constantly engaged with the government at every level. I appreciate the initiatives the government has taken in the past 6 months and engaged with businesses to understand their perspective. However, stronger coordination is critical to recovering from the economic shock and putting the country back on the path of sustained growth. 

And finally what are the lessons learned?

1.    It is a crisis – at human, health and economic level that is forcing all of us to relearn principles of our lives and business continuity.

2.    Human resilience is the strongest defense known to mankind. However, the physical, mental and emotional suffering caused by the crisis has impacted each of us. Being caring, accommodative and patient is the need of the hour.

3.    Digital transformation across all walks of life, government, business, education and healthcare was accelerated during this crisis. This change is here to stay. We must learn and make use of it to drive efficiency as well effectiveness.

And what the government and businesses should do to take the economy back to normalcy?

1.    Support demand creation: through direct benefit transfer, wage(s) for work and supporting industry, agriculture and development projects to prosper.

2.    Promote and support entrepreneurship – that would be a great way to unlock the potential of this country and her talented citizens.

3.    Simplify, not reduce tax & duty structure – bring more clarity by not leaving scope for different interpretations. Also provide predictability for businesses to invest, plan and reap the rewards of their hard work.