Bill Kerr: Welcome to the Managing the Future of Work podcast from Harvard Business School. I’m your host Bill Kerr. This episode is one of a series of special dispatches on the sweeping effect that Covid-19 is having on society, the economy, and the future of work. In addition to our regular podcast episodes, we’ll be bringing you shorter and more frequent interviews with business leaders, policy makers, and leading scholars on the coronavirus. Unilever creates many of the household products that we rely on, ranging from Dove soap to Lipton tea to laundry detergent. My guest today is Nick Dalton, executive vice president of business transformation at Unilever. Later this summer we’ll be releasing a regular podcast with Nick about the inspiring future of work program that’s currently underway. In this advanced episode, Nick is instead going to talk with us about Covid, specifically, and its implications for a global company like Unilever. Welcome, Nick.

Nick Dalton: Hello, Bill. Good to speak at these difficult and strange times.

Kerr: They are difficult and strange, and they will be as this gets released very quickly to our audience and listeners. Nick, Unilever operates with 155,000 people across, I believe, more than 160 countries. And so I want you to maybe just start by taking us inside Unilever as the Covid crisis has unfolded. What’s been some of the biggest challenges that you’ve had to overcome? And maybe, even if there’s opportunities, what were some of those?

Dalton: Yeah, so really Covid first hit us when it hit China. We have a big business in China, and our Chinese business, of course, was impacted early in January. And in many ways, that for us was a dress rehearsal of what we’re now experiencing in Europe and North America and the rest of the world at the moment. So we immediately saw that business continuity—because we make food and hygiene goods—really was a key focus for us as the Covid crisis got a grip. And what we learned from our Chinese business was the importance of really putting our arms around our people to ensure that, number one, as they came to work and kept our factories running or kept our products in the shops, that they were safe. Coming to work was, we looked at all the different means of getting people into work. We looked at a series of protocols when people are at work, in terms of the physical distancing and the temperature checks and all the other things we need to do around hygiene and cleanliness that anyway is in our factories but it stepped up even more. And we’ve been seeking to ensure that our frontline employees are properly supported in all they need to ensure that we can keep meeting the needs of our communities for really what are essential products. But the challenges really were immense, and we luckily saw them in China, and we were ready for them when they came out of China—raw material supply, managing absence, as I said before, ensuring people can get to work. And then, from people who work in your offices, the challenge from working from home, ensuring everyone’s connected. And continually communicating and reassuring our people who are sitting often on their own in a lot of places around the world, and making sure that they are always connected with their colleagues and with their bosses. And they know that the company is there for them should they need us.

Kerr: Yeah. With your big range of environments you work in—your headquarters are in London, you have operations, large operations, in India and Africa, as well as also in Asia and China—how have you been able to transfer what you’ve learned in China to other countries? And also, to what degree does the playbook get localized versus being universal for Unilever at this point, in terms of operations management in the face of the crisis?

Dalton: Yes, so I mean it’s amazing how quickly actually the playbook becomes common, because the crisis is really happening very quickly. We can go back really just a month ago. I don’t think any of us were expecting to be where we are now, with probably three-quarters of the world on lockdown. It’s quite remarkable when you hear yourself saying it. So what we thought might actually be a phased playbook—China and then Italy and then into Spain and then into [inaudible 00:04:31] is now actually a playbook that really is common everywhere, other than China. Because our business in China is in a phased way starting to go back to work. So while China, in a very phased and slow and considered way, is beginning to go back, the rest of the world is now adopting our Chinese playbook of ensuring that we have the business continuity, ensuring that we look after our people, ensuring the safety of our people, and ensuring that we are able to meet the needs of our customers and our consumers. Dealing with some of the supply issues that have emerged because of panic buying, for example, in parts of Europe, and because of raw material supply, we’ve really had to use our agile muscles in ways that I guess we knew we had—but you never quite use in normal times—in terms of thinking about how we do sales and operational planning, thinking about how we specify products moving forward, and ensuring that we simplify some of our product ranges so that you have less line changeovers and you’re able to meet customer needs and the customer service requirements that our retailers ask of us. So really, really challenging times. And in many ways, it’s through 30 years of experience in three months for a lot of our leaders, because the leadership that’s needed during this period is at a different level than leadership in normal times. Just the resilience, just the thinking about ensuring that you’re thinking about people’s well-being, as well as meeting the business challenges of today. And then also ensuring you’re thinking about horizon two and horizon three as we come out of the height of the crisis, and begin to get our minds around what the “two-meter” economy might look like as we begin to phase out of lockdown in a number of countries. So having had the China experience is really helpful for us, but actually applying the Chinese playbook has happened far quicker than I think any of us expect it to be the case.

Kerr: Yeah, I’d love for you to maybe dwell just a little bit longer on that leadership journey, getting 30 years of experience in three months, whether you wanted it or not. Have there been ways that you’ve been able to support your leaders specifically? We’ve talked, and you’ve already mentioned a bit about supporting your employees that are coming to the factories for work, for personal safety, and so forth. But how can you help the leaders? Or is it really they’ve got to be able to just learn by managing the crisis directly?

Dalton: Yeah, so I think in many ways, things we had already done, you start to realize why you did them, even if you didn’t know that when you started to do them. So we’ve been working on purpose for a number of years in Unilever. So all our 55,000 of our employees—and certainly all of our employees in leadership positions—have been on courses where they’ve had a chance to think about and start to develop their life’s purpose. And we’ve done a lot of work in terms of leadership development. We call it our “standards of leadership,” where we focus on what we call the “outer game,” which are very much the standard leadership competencies, but also in the “inner game,” which is about how we as leaders be—not do—but as how we are as beings. How we think about bringing our purpose into the world, and how we think about working and leading through others—developing what I’ve called “the Nelson Mandelas” of the business world, if you like, which is quite a high bar. But leaders you can connect, leaders you can integrate, and leaders you can actually energize, and leaders who are resilient in a way that they don’t let their own emotions negatively impact those around them. And when we’re working virtually now, that’s a higher level. Again, when I first started to work 30 years ago, the leadership and management I learned was the same location in the same time zone. And you learned to manage in quite a hands-on way. When I worked as a shift supervisor in a factory, I actually worked across time zones—a bit in the same location—and that way I learned to manage information flows. Colleagues of mine who worked in field sales worked in the same time zones but across locations, and they learned to manage relationships. And now today, we’re having to manage across time zones in a funny way and across locations, because we’re all virtual. And that’s really leveraging our relationships with people, which are really, really important. Just connecting, and making sure we stay in touch. And managing information in different ways as well, which requires a discipline and a process and a way of thinking about how you pass on information and how you involve people in scrums and sprints and things you need to do when you need to do them really quickly. So we’re learning and adapting these types of skills, these types of competencies, very quickly on the go. But the work we did in the past in preparing our leaders—we had no idea this would happen—but in preparing our leaders for the future of work is, I’m hoping, now it’s starting to pay dividends. I mean, we’re really proud of our leadership response in Unilever to date. The things our people have done have been amazing at the moment. And I think in many ways, as I said before, we’re getting 30 years of leadership development in three months, and it’s quite something to behold.

Kerr: You know, as you think about in China, where you were both very much on the ground and experiencing the beginnings, you’re probably about four months into the cycle at this point. And for Western Europe and in other places, more like two months. Have you uncovered new ways that you’ll be managing people that might carry over into the future for Unilever? I think many organizations, including Harvard Business School, have been shocked by the Covid crisis and have made some adaptations. And some of those, you’re like, “Wow, that actually works much better than I thought it would, and that’s going to be part of our playbook going forward.” How’s that playing out at Unilever?

Dalton: Yes. I mean, well, I think it’s to be seen still. I think it is still very early days as to how this will play out. But the obvious areas you can start to point to—and I’m an HR guy, so I look at it through an HR lens in this regard—is virtual working and working from home. The realities are that we are doing things from home that we never thought we could do before, and we’re making connections, and we’re making the technology work for us in ways we never thought we could do before, in ways that were going to take quite a long time. I mean the adoptions of digital technologies really accelerates it across our business. And I think it’s true for all businesses. So I think in many ways, the way we work, the way we think about work, the way we think about traditional office hours, the way we think about needs of leaders to have everyone in one place just so that it can be with them, I think that will change. I think that will begin to change now. Because even if we start to come off lockdown, it’s going to be phased. People who can work from home, I think, for many months will continue to work from home. And that will create, as I say, new ways of working that are around different time zones and different locations. And they’ll become more familiar to us. I mentioned before about the leadership lens. I really do think that we will end up having a whole new generation of leaders, a whole new level of capability of leadership because of the intensity and the experience that our leaders are getting during this period. I mean, as I say, 30 years in three months, it’s going to be amazing in that sense. And the opportunities for the next-level leadership to emerge, I think, are really there. And I think the way we change will change. So not only within Unilever, but I think across the whole society. We can’t on the one hand be talking about our retail workers and our nurses and our care workers and our factory workers as frontline heroes today, and then in three or four months’ time be restructuring and reorganizing them in the ways of yesterday. So I think employee relations will change. I think the way we work with people will change. There will be a new people wave, if you like, that will come into business. And the importance of people and the need to stand by people and work with people will be elevated, I think, through this crisis. It will bring forward 30 years of changing, and again, in three or four months. And I think they are the themes, Bill. Beyond those themes, I wouldn’t want to speculate further. Because, obviously, anyone who says they know what’s going to happen, I think no one knows what’s going to happen. But I think those themes are: different ways of working because of working from home; changing the way we change because of the way we know the good frontline workers, the level of leadership we have in society. I think all of those things will come to the fore as we come through the end of this. And I think in many ways the horror that we’re going through now, as awful as it is, I think what could come after could really give us all real hope.

Kerr: Yeah, let’s hope that inspirational side does come out. And you mentioned that doing things from home that we weren’t expecting to do, I think we’ll count this podcast and these transatlantic connections from our homes as one of those. Nick, given the number of environments that you’re working in—with many different sorts of policy structures and different types of responses—are there some things that, from the HR perspective, you’re finding are the most beneficial places or environments for Unilever to be able to do its work—either in terms of being able to stay connected to its employees and help them, or in terms of this supply of essential goods that you’re providing into many households?

Dalton: Yeah, I think one of the great things that I’m finding, myself, is that we are really using our technology to keep people connected. And you know, our CEO, for example, every week now is doing a global town hall that we do on-screen, and answers any questions any employees have got. We have, in the UK, our HR function started a radio show every morning at 8:30 in the morning for half an hour. And I’m a sort of a hard, old devil, but some of the songs they were playing the other day even brought tears to my eye. It was quite moving. We’ve got people doing yoga classes online, we’ve got real connectivity going on. And we’ve really started to use that technology in quite a touching way. So I think, as I said before, we’re learning in terms of the digital opportunities that we will have in terms of HR that we’ve never used before. We have a box in HR that none of us ever used called “Una,” and people started using Una because Una’s connecting with us. And by connecting, of course, is then getting the machine learning to be able to be even more effective in terms of just answering routine questions. Our occupational health and medical services are really stepping up to ensure that employees all around the world can actually contact someone within Unilever who can help them if they need help, for whatever reason. And we are really making sure that we know if any of our employees is ill, or seriously ill, or indeed ends up dying as a result of this so that we can support the families in the appropriate way. So in a funny way, the distance we’ve got doesn’t feel distant—actually feels that we’re a bit closer together in some ways, even though we’re physically apart. So social distancing—I think “socially” is not a good term—I think we’re socially closer by being physically distanced during this initial period. But I think this will be the age of HR. I think, as we come out of this crisis, the whole people side of our businesses will end up being elevated to a place that I don’t think we’ve seen before. I really think we’re seeing now how important people are. We’re seeing the frontline roles, the key roles. They’re not roles that you can just have as contingent and are disposable. And then the final thing, Bill, is agility. We, as many businesses, had been working and looking at agile ways of working—scrums and sprints and other things. My word, are we seeing agility in practice now! Like many global companies, we’re seeking to address and change HR policy as we go, because we need to. What do we do about people’s wages if otherwise the jobs disappear? How do we redeploy people? How do we respond to our employee’s needs? And we’re having to work in such agile and much more speedy ways than we ever had before. So agility is really becoming a thing that I don’t think will change. We’ll keep this agility as we move forward, because really, again, the investments we made in terms of agile ways of working and training are beginning to come to fruition for us. So, hopefully, that answered the question. I know it’s many, again, many, many themes. There’s a lot in there, but hopefully you’ll see how I think HR will start to become even more important than it’s ever been before.

Kerr: Yeah. Maybe one final question. As you think about toward the future, there’s, as you highlighted, no one knows the future in that we could have maybe faster than we’re anticipating being able to resume economic activity, there could be second waves that are going to happen. There’s so much uncertainty right now. And just from the HR perspective, as you think about that uncertainty that lies ahead, is there any advice you could give to people about scenario planning or having contingencies? Or how are you approaching that range of potential outcomes?

Dalton: Obviously, the importance of scenario planning is fundamental, because—while we’re all focusing on the here and now in terms of dealing with some of the issues we’re having to deal with that are coming at us from all over the place—thinking through the different scenarios and how we might respond to them in advance does allow us to have considered responses at the appropriate time. But underpinning the scenarios, I actually think, for me, the most important thing is values and purpose. Because in Unilever, values is at the heart of what we try to do. It’s at the heart of our strategy. It’s deeply embedded within the history of the company. And our focus actually is around two key things. Firstly, the safety of our people now, and then being able to serve the communities in any way we can, whether that be through donations of hand sanitizer, PPE, and other equipment, and through making sure that our products are on the shelf. And that, primarily, is, I think, what sets us up for the future, because by living our purpose in the here and now—and obviously doing the scenario planning as we see different futures potentially emerging, even if those scenarios then come to fruition as we imagined them, which they won’t—what we do will be grounded in what we’ve done now in these weeks and these months as we try to live and bring our purpose alive. Try to look after our people, try to service our communities, and try to service our customers. I think everything will flow from that. So yeah, we got to do the right brain, left brain. We’ve got to do both of those. We’ve got to stay true to our values and true to our purpose. And we call it a “compass” within Unilever. And my heavens, don’t we need a compass at the moment? And that compass is proving invaluable to us.

Kerr: Nick, thanks for ending us on that inspirational note. And yes, we do all need a compass. Nick, thanks a lot.

Dalton: Thank you, Bill, and keep safe.

Kerr: Yes, you, too. Nick Dalton is the executive vice president of business transformation at Unilever. We appreciate him sharing with us some real-time thoughts about Covid. And later on this summer, we’ll be releasing a podcast with Nick about Unilever’s future of work program. Thanks.

Kerr: Thank you for listening to this special episode of the Managing the Future of Work podcast. To find out more about our project on the future of work and for more information on the coronavirus’s impact, visit our website at hbs.edu/managing-the-future-of-work and sign up for our newsletter.