Logo for Unilever's new U-Work programme
UnileverRoy, an Operations Manager at Unilever’s manufacturing site in Leeds, has been with the company for 45 years. As he moved into his 60s and towards retirement, he didn’t want to go from full-time work to nothing. The company’s new U-Work policy offered him an alternative. Now, he works two days a week mentoring the next generation and ensuring a smooth transfer of knowledge and skills. And plays golf. He’s delighted, so is Unilever. “U-Work is doing exactly what we wanted,” says Patrick Hull, VP of Unilever’s Future of Work. “It’s just surprising that it is still so rare.”
The current debate focuses on the future of Work From Home (WFH) and the exact mix of hybrid workplace policies and their impact on different employee groups. Unilever is quietly experimenting with broader ‘Future of Work’ redesigns. It launched U-Work to address the demand for flexibility from three different segments of today’s workforce – what I call Millennials, Perennials and Parents - the young, the over-50s, and parents / carers.
Together, these three groups represent the majority of today’s labour force. Each shares a need both for flexibility and its underlying causes: up-skilling and re-skilling, care roles and responsibilities, other projects and side-hustles. Companies have long talked of ‘lifelong learning,’ but few have made time for the theory to become reality.
Unilever realised almost a third of its UK workforce was eligible for retirement within the next five years. It is not the only company with this kind of workforce age profile, but it is one of the rare to start addressing it. It has also publicly made social commitments to flexing employment models to be more inclusive of all ages – and more responsive to every age’s predictable pressures and constraints.
U-Work creates a new contract with employees. They have a contract, but not a job. They get a guaranteed minimum monthly retainer representing a proportion of their former job’s salary, along with a core set of benefits. Health care and pension contributions are still provided. Then, on top of these minimums, they are paid on a project basis. They craft work patterns that suit them – anything from a few days a week for a few months, to short, concentrated bursts of full-time with breaks in-between.
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Led by Morag Lynagh, Global Future of Work Director, U-Work was launched as a pilot in the UK in January 2020. It’s now being rolled out across five more countries (Argentina, Malaysia, Mexico, South Africa, and the Philippines). Initial employee take-up is balanced across the age groups it was designed for: half are over 55, a third are parents and the rest are younger millennials. But it’s on offer to all employees – in manufacturing sites as well as management offices.
Bundling these policies across age groups makes it more attractive and acceptable to each of them. The inter-generational design takes away the judgements and stereotypes that might hit if it were available only to parents or older employees. It underlines what different age cohorts have in common: the need to balance work with life and learning.
U-Work is reminiscent of the Scandinavian countries’ flexi-security approaches in seeking to balance flexibility with security – for both employer and employees. It also prepares the company for the twin trends of lengthening lives and the rise of the gig economy. “The alternatives were very binary,” says Hull. “People liked the flexibility of the gig economy, but not its dark side and lack of security. How could we create a responsible contract that gets the best of both? That’s what we are testing with U-Work.”
More than a third of the UK’s total workforce is over 50 (ONS, 2021), populations across the world are ageing fast, and birthrates continue their astonishing downward spiral. The Covid pandemic has seen record numbers of this age group opt for early retirement. This is a huge brain drain that may cost the economy. With U-Work, Unilever is trying to enable people to “move more gracefully and gradually into retirement phase,” without the company losing precious knowledge, networks and experience overnight.
Not many companies are following suit (yet). “The burning platform on so many companies’ minds is making sure they have the right skills for the future of work,” says Hull. “That’s what is on people’s agendas at the moment - re-skilling and up-skilling. We see U-Work feeding into that. It gives people time to re-train. Otherwise, how do they find the time? There is a dichotomy between what companies say is important and what they focus on. We are trying to develop another model.”
Hull has been sharing the U-Work idea with colleagues in the HR departments of other companies and at Davos. The reaction? “Amazement,” he laughs. “They seem to love the idea but no matter what companies I’ve presented to, they don’t seem to know where to start. They haven’t even come forward to find out more. That surprised me.”
The issue of ageism and how to manage ageing employee populations and customers is only just appearing on the radar of some of the world’s more innovative organisations. The flexibility demands of employees who got a taste of working from home are front page news. Unilever’s inter-generationally inclusive design offers a model to rethink workplace flexibility - for every age and life stage.
Post-pandemic, deciding where people work dominates the debate. We will soon need to be rethinking when they work.
The Link LonkMay 23, 2021 at 07:21PM
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Flexibility For All – Unilever’s Vision Of The Future Of Work - Forbes
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