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Connecting women and opportunity

Womanthology is a digital magazine and professional community powered by female energy and ingenuity.

Connecting women and opportunity

Womanthology is a digital magazine and professional community powered by female energy and ingenuity.

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Gender balance: Opportunities for women are at the heart of our expanded sustainability strategy – Leena Nair, Unilever

Gender balance

Leena Nair is Senior Vice President, Leadership & Organisation Development and Global Head of Diversity at Unilever, having previously been Hindustan Unilever’s Human Resource Head and Executive Director. On 28 April 2014, Unilever announced a third year of good progress on the Unilever Sustainable Living Plan and an intention to expand further its sustainable living ambition to bring about broader change on a global scale.

Leena Nair
Leena Nair

Our aim is to build a gender balanced organisation.”

Benefits of gender balance for companies

Diversity drives innovation, productivity and performance and repeated research has shown the benefits of a gender balance for companies. For example the 25 Fortune 500 Firms with the best record of promoting women to high positions are 69% more profitable so companies should have a vested interest in this.

Creating an inclusive environment that enables all individuals to perform to their full potential, irrespective of their background, gender, will help us to win equitably and sustainably. However, we have identified improving our gender balance – particularly amongst our managers – as a key priority for the business to address. A gender balanced organisation makes good business sense.

We absolutely want to hire our talent from a 100% of the pool and have strengthened our internal recruiting structure and addressed the supply of talent, placing the building blocks in place to capture and nurture our female talent. But there is more work to be done; more potential to be unlocked in our business.

 

The full Sustainable Living Plan can be found on the Unilever website here: http://www.unilever.com/sustainable-living-2014/

The opportunities for women section can be found here: http://www.unilever.com/sustainable-living-2014/

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