AFTER a distinguished 37-year career with Unilever, Nitin Paranjpe is set to leave the British consumer goods giant later this year. Paranjpe has been serving as the chief people and transformation officer from January 2022, responsible for leading both human resources and the implementation of Unilever’s new Compass Organisation globally. He leaves the firm after successfully orchestrating the once-in-a-decade, end-to-end transformation, which has seen the maker of Dove soap and Magnum ice-cream – among a whole multitude of other different products – organising its business into five new divisions – beauty and wellbeing, personal care, home care, nutrition, and ice cream. While taking up the role, he commented that his purpose was “to demonstrate that exceptional outcomes can be delivered with good old values of dignity, respect, and fairness; and that purposeful business is wholly compatible with profitable business”. This has been his personal purpose all along, and it has shaped the purpose and strategy of Unilever, particularly during his significant tenure as a member of Unilever’s Leadership Executive since October 2013.
As president of the company’s home care and nutrition and ice-cream divisions, and chief operating officer since 2019, he has over seen many Unilever brands turning into the company’s own ‘Sustainable Living Brands’ – those taking action to support positive change for people and the planet – by identifying and activating their purpose. As chief operating officer, he has been re sponsible for delivering in-year results – the all-important profit and loss column of the company’s accounts across the globe. And his elevation to lead the business transformation once again showed the company’s trust in his abilities to deliver results. Paranjpe has, in fact, been the ideal person at Unilever to lead this transformation, as he has seen up close a previous re-organisation two decades ago.
In 2000, while serving at the Indian subsidiary Hindustan Unilever Limited (HUL), he moved to London and was involved in a review of the organisation structure. Paranjpe served as executive assistant to the chair and Unilever Executive Committee, before returning to HUL two years later. He was also a member of the Project Millennium team at HUL – a project led by a group of bright young managers to develop the blue print for a new paradigm of growth at the turn of the last millennium. The recent restructuring was momentous for Unilever, with the vast majority of employees in white collar roles recast into new structures and roles, and profit and loss accountability redistributed to the new business divisions. Despite the challenging and difficult nature of transformation, under Paranjpe’s leadership, Unilever was able to make this huge change, while still ensuring consistently high company wide engagement. Engagement rate in this instance means how the company is communicating and taking its employees with it in any significant change.
Unilever’s engagement rate, tracked through the annual Uni Voice survey, was 81 per cent in offices and 84 per cent in factories in 2022, which placed them in the top quartile for employee engagement compared to industry benchmarks, at levels well above many of its corporate peers. And, this has increased to 85 per cent for office-based employees and 98 per cent for factory employees in 2023, which means that the company, made up of 127,000 people in more than 100 countries, has maintained consistent high engagement over the last few years. Paranjpe is also widely hailed for his efforts in blazing a trail for diversity, recognised by the GG2 Hammer Award, the top prize, at the GG2 Leadership Awards 2019. He has played a pivotal role in promoting and supporting Unilever’s ambition to be a beacon for Equity, Diversity and Inclusion.
“Our drive towards equity means that we are taking a very intentional approach to leveraging data insights to identify the policies and practices to create the conditions in which individuals and teams are supported and can thrive. Our Equity, Diversity and Inclusion strategy must benefit every one in order to achieve an equita ble and inclusive culture,” he said. Under his leadership as chief people and trans formation officer, and other positions as Unilever’s executive, the company has followed a progressive equity, diversity and inclusion agenda, focused on four priorities – gender, race and ethnicity, people with disabilities and LGBTQI+ communities. In 2020, Unilever established a Racial Equity Taskforce to accelerate the representation of black and brown talent in its four lead markets: Brazil, South Africa, the UK and the US, and the Compass strategy included gender as a critical component in the company’s goals on culture and leadership. Unilever has achieved gen der balance at management levels in 2020, a year ahead of the target it set itself, and women accounted for 54 per cent of all employees in man agement roles in 2022. Paranjpe recognises that the diversity agenda is not just about women. “We have to create the right conditions and allow everyone to feel they can bring all of themselves (to their work) and that they can fulfil their fullest potential,” he told the GG2 Power List previously. “Are we there? The answer is ‘no’, by any stretch of the imagination. Do we have the stamina and resilience to get that outcome (on diversity)? We are absolutely determined,” he added.
The 60-year-old is expected to be associated with Unilever for the foreseeable future in his capacity as the chair of HUL, a role he has taken up in March 2022. His exemplary leadership is helping to shape HUL as a market leader across 90 per cent of its business, a No 1 Employer of Choice and a leader in sustainability. Paranjpe can rightly claim a lot of the credit as his contribution has been pivotal in the growth this organisation, where he joined in 1987 as a management trainee and rose through the ranks to become chief executive, a role he served from 2008 and 2013. He was the youngest CEO in the history of HUL and was credited for turning around the fortunes of the business in a tough macro-economic environment. Paranjpe is a member of the supervisory board of the Dutch brewer Heineken and an independent director of Indian IT major Infosys. He is also a member of the Chinmaya Mission Advisory Council and the WeSchool Innovation Advisory Board. He holds a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering and an MBA from Jamnalal Bajaj Institute of Man agement Studies in Mumbai, India. He is married with two children.