Case Study
Hindustan Unilever Limited: Providing the Right Work-Life Balance

Ashok Kumar Goute
Associate Professor, Department of Human Resource Management, IBS Hyderabad, (Under IFHE-A Deemed to be University u/s 3 of the UGC Act, 1956), Hyderabad, Telangana, India. E-mail:ashok.kumar@ibsindia.org

Koti Vinod Babu
Senior Research Associate, IBS Hyderabad (Under IFHE-A Deemed to be University u/s 3 of the UGC Act, 1956), Hyderabad, Telangana, India. E-mail: kotivinod@ibsindia.org

Namratha V Prasad
Assistant Professor, IBS Hyderabad (Under IFHE-A Deemed to be University u/s 3 of the UGC Act, 1956), Hyderabad, Telangana, India. E-mail: namrathap@ibsindia.org

The case study discusses the initiatives taken by India's largest Fast-Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) company, Hindustan Unilever Limited (HUL), to enable its employees to strike the right work-life balance. The case delves into details of HUL's various Human Resource (HR) policies and explains how each of the policies made the company's employees execute both work and personal responsibilities better. HUL's initiatives to cater to the varied needs of its women employees are explained in detail. The measures being taken by the company to keep itself abreast of the changing needs of new-age employees are also mentioned. So, will HUL continue to remain an 'Employer of Choice' and a 'CEO Factory' in India?

At HUL, we have policies and workplace facilities that enable a nurturing environment for everyone. We support and encourage our employees not only to be great business leaders but to also lead happy and fulfilling families.1
- B P Biddappa, Ex-Executive Director of Human Resources, Hindustan Unilever Limited, in 2018

Introduction

In December 2020, India's largest Fast-Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG)2 company, Hindustan Unilever Limited (HUL),3 announced a policy to protect its staff from domestic abuse.4 This was the first time that such a policy was being introduced by an Indian company.

As per the new policy, employees who were subjected to, or were survivors of acts of physical or emotional abuse outside the workplace could request paid leave of up to 10 days, apart from urgent medical care and psychological counseling for themselves and their families. The company also provided reimbursement for lodging and boarding facilities for the employee for up to 15 days. It also sought to maintain confidentiality about the employee's identity, while giving them a temporary work arrangement in another city office for up to a month.

This policy was designed in the context of the rising cases of domestic violence in India. According to HUL, for a long time, one in three women and one in seven men had been abused at some point in their life.5 However, the Covid-196 pandemic and the resultant lockdowns had aggravated the situation. According to The United Nations (UN),7 domestic abuse cases had increased by 20% during the lockdown, as many people were trapped at home with their abuser.8

The National Commission for Women (NCW)9 reported that the complaints related to domestic abuse against women that were received by them had doubled in April 2020 compared to the previous month. While the number of complaints received between February 17, 2020, and March 22, 2020, was 123, it rose to 250 between March 23, 2020, and April 22, 2020.10 The UN described the worldwide increase in domestic abuse as a 'shadow pandemic' alongside the Covid-19 pandemic.

As a significant number of HUL's workforce had started working from home after worldwide lockdowns were enforced to battle Covid-19, the company thought that it was the right time to introduce the policy. Anuradha Razdan, executive director of human resources, HUL, said, "We want to stand up as advocates for change that we would like to see in society by proactively coming up with a policy which calls out to our employees: If you are someone who has faced this and wants to come out and talk, the organization is here to support you."11

Analysts lauded the policy as noteworthy and said it demonstrated HUL's concern for the well-being of its employees that went beyond the office and into the employee's personal and home life. HUL's policy stated, "This Policy seeks to protect and grant relief to employees who are survivors of abuse, or acts of physical/emotional abuse beyond the workplace, i.e., in their personal (home) or other public spaces including online medium."12 This policy was one of the many HR policies implemented by HUL to maintain a perfect balance between professional and personal lives for the overall betterment of its employees.

HUL's Work-Life Balance Policies
HUL was generally referred to as the 'CEO Factory of India', considering the fact that it had over 440 CEOs on different boards across India and the globe.13 It was also considered a 'Dream Employer' by aspiring talent across India that included some of the best B-Schools in India. One of the key reasons for the company's desirability among aspirants was its employee-friendly HR policies that aimed to provide the right work-life balance.

HUL believed that finding work-life balance began for each employee when they identified his/her "big rocks" i.e., what was "non-negotiable in their lives, namely, family, health, career, societal contribution, among others". HUL enabled employees to work with those life needs through various policies. The various facilities which it provided its employees were:

Facilities in the Work Place
HUL's head office at Mumbai provided its staff with all the amenities that facilitated them to work and have fun as well. It also had a bank, cafe, shopping center, and a florist. The office was equipped with a gymnasium as well. There was a drop-at-home vehicle facility available for women employees who worked till late hours-escorted by guards. When a woman employee worked late, her line manager got an automated alert. Female employees also had the option of having a male colleague escort them home if they left office after 8:30 pm. Analysts opined that such facilities available inside the office premises not only warranted a seamless working environment, but also encouraged employees to perform well.

Agile Working
HUL facilitated a technology-enabled environment that helped employees to avail policies like flexible hours, work from home, working part-time, reduced work hours, and a job share policy.14

Policy of Career Break
According to this policy, any manager of HUL was allowed to take a career break for a period of five years in total. A manager could avail this policy for different reasons-for higher studies, child care, on the birth of a child, a sabbatical,15 or to pursue any interest or hobby. Experts opined that such a career break policy helped employees pursue their passions and fulfil their responsibilities without giving up on their careers.

Career by Choice Program
This was a program meant exclusively for women employees who had joined work after taking a long break in their career for reasons such as marriage, maternity, or illness, among other things. They were put through an induction training program that aimed to make them progressively move toward the work routine. Women with more than two years of relevant prior work experience could work with flexibility on live business projects, ranging from six months to a year. They were assigned a project guide, who co-owned the project. The guide worked closely with the employee to provide direction and support throughout the project across various functions like sales and marketing, human resources, supply chain, and research and development.

Lamplighter Employee Program
HUL has a health incentive program called "Lamplighter Employee Program", which enabled employees to address their health issues and mitigate health risks. As part of the program, regular health checks were conducted to determine physical fitness, identify mental conditions, if any, and know the nutrition level of employees. After the checks, employees were assigned color codes like green (good health), amber (the need for health improvement), and red (bad health).

There was also the medical and occupational health team, which helped employees implement a healthy lifestyle through various health programs in order to make them change from red to amber and then from amber to green.

Incite - Opening Minds
Incite - Opening Minds was an exceptional leadership intervention program for the leadership team and management committee. It served as a platform to prepare top leaders to face and overcome existing and future challenges. Incite was not limited to the managers alone, but was open to employees across all levels and functions in the company.

As part of the program, potential leaders went through three structured interventions, which were:

1. Interaction with a successful industrialist.
2. Involvement with an external organization; and
3. Digital certification powered by Google LLC16 for the sales and marketing leaders and best-in-class learning practices.17 HUL stepped up international exposure for all its employees, right from summer interns to the Unilever Future Leaders Programme18 participants and managers.

Thus, Incite offered HUL's employees an opportunity to work with other organizations, including start-ups and government organizations, in order to learn to deal with business problems faced across industries. It was also intended to expose employees to modern technologies and work culture, so as to make them future-ready.

The company believed that from a talent perspective, people liked to work on varied and diverse areas, and to gain external exposure and opportunities to work with people at different levels. B P Biddappa, executive director, human resources, HUL, said, "We want our people to go out there, experiment and work on things that are not part of their regular day job, but part of a larger ecosystem that is gearing up for the future. Secondly, we are giving our managers experiences outside HUL while working here. It could be experiences of working with customers, digital companies, (and) organizations that could play an important and strategic role in the future."19

HUL's Gender-Balanced Workforce
Based on well-documented research that showed that a gender-balanced workforce was more innovative and successful, HUL set clear goals, akin to business goals, to create a gender-balanced organization. Beginning 2011, the company adopted metrics, listening, and cause correction to correct gender imbalance in a scientific way. HUL had women working in the supply chain, as well as in office locations. Within a decade, the company had moved up from 18% to 42% of women in its managerial cadre, with its intention being to reach 50%.

The company adopted several measures to protect and encourage women. It encouraged women employees to bring to notice any sexual harassment that they faced, without fear of retaliation. The company organized classroom training and town halls for blue-collar employees, who might not have been aware of sexual harassment laws.

HUL enabled anonymous reporting of sexual harassment through online portals accessible internally and externally to promote higher reporting of cases both by employees and also by non-employees (third-party suppliers). Considering women employees' hesitation to open up about sexual harassment with male bosses, HUL had a policy where female managers were encouraged to have discussions with the women employees about such issues.

Several human resource consulting firms stated that HUL was among the companies women preferred to work for because of its female-friendly rules. The senior vice-president of a large HR firm said, "A lot of practices against sexual harassment are driven from the top, which is why one would find HUL remains a preferred brand for women job seekers."20

Another key area in which the company demonstrated its concern for its women employees was maternity benefits. According to a report by a US-based global strategy consulting team Booz & Company, India generated about 14% of the global talent pool, among which there were around 5.5 million women entering the workforce each year. Of the women employees, 45% of them believed that they were treated unfairly at work because of their gender and they struggled to re-join the workforce after they became mothers.21

HUL's Maternal Wellbeing Standard policy (MWS) provided for 26 weeks' paid leave, facilities, and workplace flexibility to help its working mothers foster their family and their career. The company ensured that women employees were given the same roles and responsibilities once they were back from their maternity leave. The company also gave paternity leave of three weeks that was available to the employee within one year of becoming a father.

Furthermore, the MWS had different provisions for parents and new parents (see Exhibit I). An integrated online portal called Maternity and Paternity Support (MAPS) was established to guide the employees during this transition period through the provision of different resources and supervision. MWS aimed to assist new parents by enabling them to take care of their babies and women returners to have the flexibility needed to effectively balance their careers and child-rearing.

HUL provided day care facilities in its offices in Mumbai and Bengaluru, apart from 15 day care centers in its various factories. Its Mumbai day-care center took care of children aged between six months and six years, while the employees were at work. The center operated on the system of an integrated playschool with the provision of various enriching activities.

HUL had 'Lean in Circles', a community care where women could reach out to each other for support and build networks. It also promoted peer-to-peer learning and group mentoring, which were believed to go a long way in encouraging women to think about self-care. With these measures in place, the company claimed to have a maternity return rate of 97%.

Future-Ready for New Labor Codes
HUL believed that the future workplace would be all about flexible schedules, collaboration, and open workspaces. It thought that physical interaction, creativity, collaboration, and face-to-face discussions played a crucial role in business growth. So, even though it offered the work-from- home option during the Covid-19 pandemic, it had no intention of extending it beyond.

For a long time, there had been a debate raging around work-life balance in offices in India. In February 2021, Apurva Chandra (Chandra), secretary, Indian Ministry of Labor and Employment, announced that a new 'Labor Proposal' with four new 'Labor Codes'22 was under consideration in India that would give employers the flexibility to provide a four-, five-, or six-day work week. Furthermore, Chandra stated that companies were bound to limit the working hours per week to 48 hours and to 12 hours per day. The new 'Labor Codes' would be applicable to all establishments and factories.

In the context of the new labor codes, Nitin Paranjpe, chief operating officer of HUL, opined that the four-day work week had the potential to become the new normal as people started to give more importance to work-life balance. He said, "It is very unlikely mandatory 5 days in the office is ever going to come back again. Four days' work can also become the new normal, which was a part of social change. One thing is for sure - the future of work and workplace will not be the same."23