As Otake’s story indicates, the impact of FLEX Experiences is nothing less than transformational. Many women like Otake have used the platform to evolve and progress their careers, as evidenced by a recent usage stat which shows that nearly two-thirds of FLEX opportunities are assigned to female employees. While the gender breakdown at Unilever is an equal 50:50 split, women have taken the lead when it comes to utilizing the talent marketplace to push their careers forward.
FLEX Experiences has also proven crucial to thriving amidst the disruptions caused by COVID-19. Within the first two months of the pandemic’s onset, Unilever leveraged their talent marketplace to staff more than 700 business-critical projects and unlock more than 26,000 hours. More than 60% of assignments were staffed cross-country, which Wels acknowledges “…could never have happened in a non-digital life, because you would’ve been stuck in your team. Now if you’re in the US, you can help out in Canada, in Germany, and in the UK. So that was a fantastic insight that changed the way we work.”
His colleague, Patrick Hull, expresses a similar sentiment, noting: “FLEX Experiences has been a real game-changer for us. We see it as more than just a platform, it’s a mindset. It’s bringing our people along and shifting their mindset from relying on the people they see in front of them to a far more flexible, resourcing mindset.”
Rather than looking at just one metric to measure FLEX’s success, Hull is quick to note that the platform has a myriad of impacts. “There’s a productivity dividend, there’s an attrition dividend, and we’re reducing time to hire. So all of these commitments have both a business benefit and a social benefit, which is why this really felt like an idea that deserved our attention in the first place.”
The success of FLEX Experiences, and the powerful role it plays in bringing the workforce into the future, hasn’t gone unnoticed by Unilever’s CEO, Alan Jope. In summarizing their experience, he says, “Agile ways of working are allowing us to redeploy both temporary and permanent resources to support our strategic priorities. Our Internal Talent Marketplace has helped us to re-prioritize 500,000 worker hours towards more than 3,000 business-critical projects.”
